Cultural Criticism

1. Cultural Criticism

2. Cultural criticism is • geared more towards political issues and popular culture. Cultural criticism draws quite a bit from other forms of criticism, such as Marxism, feminism, African American criticism, etc. Basically, any type of criticism that examines the culture in which the work was written could be defined as Cultural criticism.

3. Cultural critics do not • see a distinction between different forms of culture. For example, "high" culture, things such as the theatre, opera, art, the symphony, aren't considered any more or less important than "low" culture items, such as television, pop music, or stand-up comedians. To a cultural critic, all these forms of culture are equally important.

4. A cultural critic • would look at a literary work to determine what kinds of social behavior the work might promote, what kind of readers might enjoy the work, why, what social understandings the work relies on, if the values of the reader are similar to the values promoted in the work, and other questions that would help connect the work to the culture that produced it and those cultures interpreting it

5. –All authors write as a part of a cultural context in which they participate • –A Cultural-critical thesis should illuminate why and how a specific factor (or factors) of culture contributed to the creation of specific facets of the text • –The two most important elements of this approach are: • –Situating the text in its historical and cultural context • –Explaining how that context allows us to see the text in a new way