Carl Jung described the “the collective unconscious” as the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, and aspirations that all human beings share from all cultures and eras.
Archetypes, products of the “collective unconscious,” are symbols, characters, situations, or images that all people react to in the same way.
Practice using the archetypal lens here:
Postcolonial/Cultural
Colonized groups are forced to the margins by their colonizers (called “Othering”), despite having historical claim to the land they inhabit.
This lens examines what it means to be a part of or excluded from a particular group based on one’s religion, ethnicity, race, social class, political beliefs, etc
New Historicism/Historcial
Considers the social, cultural, and political context of the author in an effort to understand the text’s meaning.
Interpretation is a kind of cultural production. All writers are influenced by a particular historical context
Psychological
The psychological explores the unconscious world and the manner in which it reveals itself in a text.
There are some patterns such as anxiety, repression, fear of death or the unknown, that can be applied to characters, authors, and human beings in general.
Biographical
Requires the reader to know about the author’s life in order to fully understand the meaning of the text.
Writing reflects the systems of meaning available to the author.
Desconstruction
There can be no absolute knowledge about anything because language can never say what we intend it to mean.
Language is self-contradictory. The deconstructionist’s job then is to point out places in the text that are contradictory.
New Criticism
Emphasizes the form of a text (i.e. literary devices, structure, etc.) and how the form influences meaning.
The complexities of the text can be resolved through careful analysis of its form.