1. Marxist Literary Criticism

2. Historical Context
• began with Karl Marx, 19th century German philosopher
best known for Das Kapital (1867), the seminal work of the
communist movement.
• Marx was also the first Marxist literary critic, writing critical
essays in the 1830s on such writers as Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe and William Shakespeare.

3. Definition
• A sociological approach to literature that viewed works of
literature or art as the products of historical forces that can
be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which
they were formed.

4. Key Ideas
• What we think of as world view is actually the product of
the dominant class
• Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the
dominant and repressed classes

5. Key Terms
• Commodification
• Conspicuous consumption
• Dialectical materialism
• Material circumstances
• Reflectionism
• Superstructure

6. Points to consider
• Literature expresses the ideas, beliefs and values of a
culture
• Literature of any significance actively engages in
controversy or argument
• Literature reveals power struggles (sexual power, economic
power, social power, and so on) and how this operates and
with what consequences

7. Points to consider
• Literature reveals how the author, reader, and characters
demonstrate an awareness or lack of awareness of their
economic and social situations and what oppresses them
• Literature and authors can manipulate readers into
sympathizing with rather than critiquing the dominant (and
oppressive) social order.

8. Strengths
• Encourages a careful reading of the text
• Doesn’t limit reader to view text in isolation

9. Weaknesses
• Only examines limited aspect of text
• Some people feel threatened by the focus on “ideology”
• Dismisses the beauty of writing and does not allow reader
to simply enjoy tex

10. Testers
• Huckleberry Finn and Jim need to escape from their homes
in order to recognize the oppressiveness of their lives
• Three symbols represent youth and immaturity in the story
“Groom Service” are the drawing, the beaver tail, and the
eagle feather

11. Testers
• In David French’s play Leaving Home, Jacob, Mary , and
Kathy are unable to find true happiness because of the
limitations of their economic situation

12. Testers
• The snowball incident at the start of Fifth Business controls
the lives of Dunstable Ramsay, Percy Boyd Stanton, and
Paul Dempster

13. Testers
• Romeo and Juliet might have lived if they had not been
controlled by various societal pressures.

14. Applying this to a text
• To what degree does the protagonist or other
characters believe in and live by the prevailing
social order?
• At what point(s) do characters recognize the
oppressiveness of the prevailing social order?
• How do they respond? What affects their options
for changing things?
• How is social objectification evident and how does
it operate in the text?
• What are the social forces that affect the author’s
writing or the text’s marketing and reception?

15. the attitude of valuing things not for
their utility but for their power to
impress others or for their resale
possibilities

16. the obvious acquisition of things only for their
sign value and/or exchange value

17. the theory that history develops neither in a
random fashion nor in a linear one but instead as
struggle between contradictions that ultimately find
resolution in a synthesis of the two sides. For
example, class conflicts lead to new social systems

18. the economic conditions underlying the society. To understand
social events, one must have a grasp of the material
circumstances and the historical situation in which they occur

19. a theory that the superstructure of a society mirrors its
economic base and, by extension, that a text reflects
the society that produced it

20. The social, political, and ideological systems and
institutions--for example, the values, art, and legal
processes of a society--that are generated by the base