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Interpretation and Critical Theories, help?

Hello. I'm in college and I'm taking a class called Introduction to Criticism and Theory. I need to write a final paper on one school of thought. Formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, Semiology, Psychoanalysis, Marxism, Poststructuralism, and Deconstruction are all options. I'm not trying to cheat here or anything, but I'm up in the air about which to focus on. My question is: Which do you recommend, which do you like best, which do you find the most interesting, which do you dislike the most, why?


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:

I'm personally oriented toward semiology/semiotics. Get some Barthes and Eco in there, maybe some third-person perspective with Kaja Silverman's "Subject of Semiotics," and you'll be in good shape. I like that any artifact has a semiological component--you don't have to get weird in order to derive a semiological approach. It's just linking up perception with symbol-use/representation. I answer a lot of things in here from that perspective. Sometimes, however, people hate it--I really went off on "scrapbooking" the other day. Professors from several disciplines tend to like it, however, because it's really very pragmatic. You just have to go slow and trace the associations clearly.

Whatever you do, there's lots of crossover. Freud is sort of the great grandfather of semiotics, for example, with Locke, of course. There are a few "Formalisms." I assume you're talking about the Russians. Really fun stuff there if you're into it--but after awhile, the word "carnivalesque" loses its luster. New Criticism is kind of a cop out--it's too approachable and commonplace. If you have an affinity for Deconstruction or Post-Structuralism, then have fun. But it can tie you into knots.

Really, the best approach is to figure out what kind of subjects (e.g., a certain book or poem, a sculpture, movies, cereal boxes, etc.) for criticism interest you, and then decide which school of criticism is best suited for explicating it. Very abstract art, for example, would be difficult for semiotics, because it's difficult to nail down whether it's representing anything. But Poststructuralist perspectives may yield something interesting where semiotics does not.

Get a couple of ideas, then run them by your professor. S/he'll steer you in a fruitful direction.