Narrative criticism analyzes literary works, including biblical stories, for characters, settings, and themes. It emerged in the mid-20th century as a response to historical criticism’s limitations. Narrative critics examine major characters and symbolic implications to determine thematic meaning. The movement drew on secular literary criticism, particularly New Criticism, which emphasized close reading of texts. While both secular and biblical narrative criticism later reverted to considering external factors, the influence of New Criticism remains.
Narrative criticism is a form of literary analysis that focuses on characters, stories, settings, etc. of a literary work. The term is most commonly used in the field of biblical criticism, where stories in the Bible, particularly the Gospels, are analyzed for literary rather than historical content. As a method of studying biblical literature, it emerged in the mid-20th century, where it drew on secular theories of literary criticism such as New Criticism.
20th-century methods of biblical criticism have largely focused on the historical properties of biblical texts. The Gospels – the four New Testament accounts of Jesus’ life – have often been discussed in terms of their Sitz im Leben, which is German for “Situation in life” and refers to the historical, social and political background of the authors of the books and public. Biblical scholars using the historical-critical method might also try to determine whether the gospel writers received their information about the life of Jesus through eyewitness accounts, no longer extant written sources, or other sources.
Narrative criticism arose in part to address the limitations of this style of biblical analysis. For example, a historical critic of John’s Gospel might evaluate the story of the story in which Jesus gives sight to a man born blind in relation to the historical relationship between Jews and early Christians, since the story implies a tension between Jesus and the Jewish leaders . While a narrative critic might not consider this style of interpretation invalid, he or she might think there is more to the story. A student applying narrative criticism might examine the story in terms of its major characters—Jesus, the blind man, the man’s parents, and the Jewish leaders—to determine the thematic meaning of the text. He or she might also comment on the symbolic implications of physical blindness in relation to spiritual blindness within the story.
The world of secular literary criticism contained similar tendencies at about the same time period. While early 20th-century literary critics often focused on biographical information about the author or the author’s sociopolitical background, a movement known as New Criticism arose in the 1920s, which decried this approach. According to New Critics, a literary text should be considered outside of any external information to seek meaning from a “careful reading” of the text itself, which considers its language, symbolism and other purely internal characteristics. Narrative criticism in biblical studies has drawn on these ideas and strategies for examining narratives. In the late 1940th century and early 20th century, both secular and biblical narrative criticism generally reverted to considering external factors, but the influence of New Criticism can still be seen in the use by close-readers.
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