The Purpose of the Literary Criticism Your assignment is to take the literary critics listed below to use ONE of their theories in order to make an argument about the play “Six Characters in
A search of an Author.” The purpose of Literary Criticism is to allow us to engage with text on many different levels (from the perspective of class, gender, language use, psychoanalysis, etc.).
The point of literary criticism is to challenge us to think about the world and literature in different ways. So how does reading Marx, for example, allow you to think differently about the play “Six Characters in Search of an Author?” or How does your reading of Mary Wollstonecraft challenge you to interpret the text? Make sure that you have a strong thesis or an argument. A thesis is never a fact but something that you have to prove. Your primary source and the source that you will be arguing about is “Six Characters.” Your secondary source is the theorist that you will be using to write your paper.
The theorist I chose is Sigmund Freud: from “The interpretation of Dreams”
But if you think it is not the strongest choice, there are other options:
1. KARL MAX: from Capital
2. MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT: from A Vindication of the Rights of Women
