Ask GenAI to Become a Literary Critic: A Practical Exploration of Four Critical Lenses
Introduction
Literary criticism is not merely about knowing the definitions of different literary theories. It involves using theoretical concepts as methods for reading, questioning, and interpreting literary texts. This activity explores how Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) can be used as a literary theory tutor to understand the practical method of literary criticism.
The activity focuses on four approaches: Marxist Criticism, Feminist/Gender Criticism, Ecocriticism, and Queer Criticism. The primary reference used for this activity is Dilip Barad’s “On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism.” Instead of asking GenAI to provide only definitions, the prompt asks it to demonstrate what a critic actually looks for, does, notices, and questions while reading a literary text.
The activity is divided into two AI-generated responses followed by human verification and a final student reflection. The first response explains how the four critical approaches function as methods of reading. The second response applies all four approaches to one selected literary text. The final reflection considers what I learned from using GenAI and what aspects of its interpretation needed verification.
The infographic shows four critical lenses and their different approaches to the same text.
Step 1: Understanding What a Literary Critic Actually Does
A. What does the critic look for?
A Marxist critic examines the relationship between literature and social, economic, and ideological structures. The critic looks for class divisions, economic inequality, labour, material conditions, ideology, power relations, and the ways dominant groups maintain their influence. Historical and economic contexts are also important because literary texts are produced within particular social conditions.
Major concepts include class, ideology, hegemony, economic structures, class conflict, and cultural materialism.
B. What does the critic DO with the text?
A Marxist critic examines the economic and historical context of the text. The critic identifies class relationships and questions how wealth, labour, property, and power influence characters and events. The critic may compare the experiences of dominant and marginalized groups and expose ideological assumptions that appear natural or unquestioned. The critic can also reinterpret the text by considering whether it reinforces or challenges dominant social and economic structures.
C. One concrete illustration
In Charles Dickens’s Hard Times, a Marxist critic may examine the effects of industrial capitalism on the lives of working-class characters. Stephen Blackpool’s position can be considered in relation to the unequal power between workers and industrial authorities. The critic may therefore connect the characters’ conflicts with wider economic and class structures rather than treating them only as individual problems.
D. Question the critic asks
How do class relations and economic conditions shape the characters’ opportunities, conflicts, and values?
2. Feminist/Gender Criticism
A. What does the critic look for?
A Feminist/Gender critic investigates gender, patriarchy, representation, inequality, and power. The critic considers how women and other gendered identities are represented and whether characters are restricted by socially constructed gender roles. The approach also examines who receives authority, whose voice is heard, and whose experience is marginalized.
Important concerns include patriarchy, gender construction, gender roles, representation, agency, marginalization, and inequality.
B. What does the critic DO with the text?
A Feminist/Gender critic examines how gender roles are constructed. The critic identifies unequal relationships of power and questions assumptions about masculinity and femininity. The critic may compare the agency and authority given to different characters and challenge patriarchal assumptions. The critic can also reinterpret characters and experiences that have traditionally been ignored or marginalized.
C. One concrete illustration
In Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper, a Feminist/Gender critic may examine the narrator’s restricted freedom and lack of authority within patriarchal structures. The narrator’s experience can be considered in relation to social expectations concerning women and domestic life. The critic therefore studies not simply the suffering of an individual woman but the gendered structures of authority surrounding her.
D. Question the critic asks
How does the text construct and distribute agency, authority, and freedom according to gender?
3. Ecocriticism
A. What does the critic look for?
An Ecocritic examines the relationship between literature and the natural or nonhuman world. The critic investigates how nature and the environment are represented and questions assumptions about human superiority or control over nature.
Important concepts include anthropocentrism, human–nature relations, environmental ethics, nature/culture divisions, ecological consciousness, exploitation, and sustainability.
B. What does the critic DO with the text?
An Ecocritic examines representations of nature and identifies relationships between human actions and environmental consequences. The critic questions anthropocentric assumptions and investigates ideas of domination, exploitation, responsibility, and coexistence. The critic may also reinterpret the position of human beings within a larger ecological system.
C. One concrete illustration
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein can be read through an Ecocritical lens by examining Victor Frankenstein’s desire to overcome natural limitations through scientific creation. His ambition raises questions about human attempts to control nature. The relationship between Victor, the Creature, and the natural environment can also be considered in relation to ideas of human responsibility and the boundaries between human beings and the nonhuman world.
D. Question the critic asks
How does the text represent the relationship between human ambition and the natural world, and what assumptions about human control does it reveal?
4. Queer Criticism
A. What does the critic look for?
Queer Criticism examines assumptions about gender, sexuality, identity, and normative relationships. It questions heteronormativity, or the assumption that heterosexual identity and relationships represent the normal or default position.
The critic may investigate gender fluidity, non-normative identities, coded representation, secrecy, repression, and gender performativity.
B. What does the critic DO with the text?
A Queer critic identifies assumptions about what is considered normal in relation to gender and sexuality. The critic questions fixed categories and examines how characters perform or resist expected gender roles. The critic may uncover meanings that have been suppressed or overlooked and interrogate social pressures surrounding identity. A queer reading, however, should remain an interpretation rather than assuming that every text necessarily contains one particular queer meaning.
C. One concrete illustration
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray can be examined through a Queer Critical lens by considering the relationship between Dorian and Basil and the homoerotic possibilities identified by some readers. A critic may also examine secrecy and social restrictions surrounding identity and desire in the Victorian context. Such a reading can reveal tensions between individual identity and socially accepted norms without claiming that there is only one possible interpretation.
D. Question the critic asks
What assumptions about heterosexuality, gender identity, and acceptable desire does the text reinforce, question, or leave unsettled?
Comparative Table
| Critical Lens | What does the critic look for? | What does the critic DO? | Illustration | Question the critic asks |
| Marxist | Class, ideology, economic relations, labour, power, material conditions | Examines class relations, identifies ideology, questions economic power, compares social positions | Hard | How do class relations and economic conditions shape the characters’ opportunities and conflicts |
| Feminist/Gender | Patriarchy, gender roles, representation, agency, inequalit | Examines gender representation, questions patriarchal assumptions, compares agency | The Yellow Wallpaper: gendered authority and restricted | How does the text construct and distribute agency and authority according to gender? |
| Ecocritical | Nature | Examines environmental representation, questions human-centred assump | Frankenstein: human ambition and control over nature | How does the text represent the relationship betw |
| Queer | Heteronormativity, gender identity, per | Questions fixed categories, examines gender performance, uncovers suppressed meanings | The Picture of Dorian | What assumptions about gender and acceptable desire does the text reinforce or quest |
Knowing a critical theory means understanding its concepts, terminology, historical background, and general concerns. For example, a student may know that Marxist Criticism examines class and ideology or that Feminist Criticism examines patriarchy and gender inequality. However, actually using a critical theory means applying those concepts to specific textual evidence. A critic identifies characters, events, narrative patterns, images, relationships, or language and explains how they connect with a particular theoretical concept. The process involves asking questions, examining evidence, identifying assumptions, comparing relationships, and developing an interpretation. Therefore, theory provides the framework, while criticism is the practice of using that framework to produce a reasoned interpretation. GenAI can help explain this difference, but the student must still check whether its interpretation is supported by the actual literary text.
Source-Supported Material and GenAI Synthesis
The major theoretical concerns presented above are supported by Dilip Barad’s discussion of the four critical approaches. These include class and ideology in Marxist Criticism; patriarchy and gender inequality in Feminist/Gender Criticism; anthropocentrism and human–nature relations in Ecocriticism; and heteronormativity and gender performativity in Queer Criticism.
The organization into “What does the critic look for?”, “What does the critic DO?”, “Illustration,” and “Question” is a synthesis created in response to the worksheet instructions. The analytical questions and step-by-step explanations of critical practice are also explanatory syntheses rather than direct quotations from the source.
This distinction is important because GenAI can reorganize theoretical material into a more accessible form, but its explanations must still be checked against the supplied source and the actual literary text.
Victor attempts to create life through scientific experimentation, crossing a boundary that the novel presents as dangerous. At several points, the natural environment provides an important contrast to human conflict. Mountains, forests, lakes, and other landscapes become significant spaces in which characters experience reflection, isolation, or temporary relief.
Step 2: Applying Four Critical Lenses to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
For this stage of the activity, all four critical approaches are applied to the same literary text: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). The purpose is not to produce four general summaries of the theories but to act as four different critics and identify what each lens makes visible in the novel.
1. Marxist Reading
What might a Marxist critic notice that another reader might overlook?
A Marxist critic may examine the relationship between power, social position, exclusion, labour, and material conditions in Frankenstein. The Creature’s experience can be considered in relation to his exclusion from human society and his lack of social power. The novel also presents differences between characters based on education, wealth, social position, and access to resources.
Textual Evidence
The Creature describes learning about human society by observing the De Lacey family. He learns about their relationships, work, poverty, language, and social conditions while remaining outside their community. His desire to participate in society is repeatedly frustrated by his social exclusion.
Critical Concept
Class, social inequality, power, marginalization, and ideology.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A Marxist reading shifts attention from the Creature as simply an individual “monster” toward the social structures that contribute to his marginalization. His exclusion can be understood partly as a consequence of social judgments and unequal access to acceptance, education, and community. The reading therefore asks whether society itself contributes to producing the outsider it later fears.
Question
How do social position, access to resources, and structures of power influence the Creature’s relationship with human society?
2. Feminist/Gender Reading
What might a Feminist/Gender critic notice that another reader might overlook?
A Feminist/Gender critic may examine the limited agency of women in the novel and the importance of male authority, gender roles, reproduction, and patriarchal structures. Victor’s attempt to create life without a female reproductive role can also raise questions about the relationship between scientific ambition and traditional ideas of reproduction.
Textual Evidence
Victor creates the Creature through his own scientific experiment rather than through a conventional reproductive relationship. Female characters such as Elizabeth Lavenza, Justine Moritz, and Caroline Beaufort occupy important emotional and social positions, but their opportunities and agency are shaped by the patriarchal society surrounding them.
Critical Concept
Patriarchy, gender roles, agency, reproduction, and gendered power.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A Feminist/Gender reading makes visible the ways in which the novel represents male authority and female agency. Victor’s attempt to control the creation of life can be interpreted as raising questions about male control over reproduction. At the same time, the experiences of female characters demonstrate how gender expectations influence their social possibilities.
Question
How does the novel represent male authority, female agency, and control over reproduction?
3. Ecocritical Reading
What might an Ecocritic notice that another reader might overlook?
An Ecocritic may focus on the novel’s repeated representation of nature, the human–nature relationship, and the consequences of human attempts to control natural processes. Natural landscapes frequently provide settings for reflection and emotional experience, while Victor’s scientific ambition challenges conventional boundaries between human beings and nature.
Textual Evidence
Normativity, identity, otherness, social exclusion, and boundaries of acceptable identity.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A Queer reading can shift attention from the Creature’s physical difference to the social process through which difference becomes “abnormal.” The novel raises questions about who has the authority to define normality and how identities outside dominant categories are treated. This interpretation does not mean that the Creature is literally a queer character; rather, Queer Criticism provides a framework for questioning fixed categories of identity and belonging.
Question
How does the novel construct the boundary between “normal” and “abnormal,” and what happens to characters who exist outside that boundary?
4. Queer Reading
What might a Queer critic notice that another reader might overlook?
A Queer critic may examine the novel’s treatment of identity, social norms, belonging, isolation, and the boundaries between what society considers normal and abnormal. The Creature occupies an unstable position because he does not fit conventional categories of human identity and appearance.
Textual Evidence
The Creature repeatedly experiences rejection because he does not conform to the appearance and identity expected by human society. His desire for companionship and belonging is opposed by a social world that defines him as an outsider. His identity therefore becomes closely connected with the norms through which society defines who belongs.
Critical Concept
Normativity, identity, otherness, social exclusion, and boundaries of acceptable identity.
How does this deepen the interpretation?
A Queer reading can shift attention from the Creature’s physical difference to the social process through which difference becomes “abnormal.” The novel raises questions about who has the authority to define normality and how identities outside dominant categories are treated. This interpretation does not mean that the Creature is literally a queer character; rather, Queer Criticism provides a framework for questioning fixed categories of identity and belonging.
Question
How does the novel construct the boundary between “normal” and “abnormal,” and what happens to characters who exist outside that boundary?
What Becomes Visible Through Four Different Critical Lenses?
Reading Frankenstein through four critical approaches demonstrates that a literary text does not have to produce only one interpretation. A Marxist reading draws attention to social power, exclusion, resources, and marginalization. A Feminist/Gender reading makes questions of patriarchy, gender roles, reproduction, and agency more visible. An Ecocritical reading focuses on the relationship between human ambition, scientific control, and the natural world. A Queer reading questions the boundaries through which society defines normality, identity, and belonging.
The four approaches do not simply provide four different labels for the same interpretation. Each lens directs the reader toward different textual details and asks different questions. Consequently, applying multiple critical approaches can make previously overlooked relationships, assumptions, and power structures more visible. The activity demonstrates that literary criticism is an active process of questioning, examining evidence, and developing interpretations, rather than simply memorising theoretical definitions.
Human Verification
After receiving the two responses from GenAI, I reviewed the interpretations instead of accepting them without question. The purpose of this verification was to check whether the AI had used the four critical approaches accurately and whether its interpretations were supported by the literary text and the supplied theoretical source.
1. Is the explanation consistent with the source?
Yes. The explanations of Marxist, Feminist/Gender, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism are broadly consistent with Dilip Barad’s supplied source. The response focuses on the major concerns discussed in the source, including class and ideology, patriarchy and gender construction, anthropocentrism and human–nature relations, and heteronormativity and gender performativity.
2. Has GenAI confused Feminist Criticism with a general discussion of women?
No. The response does not treat Feminist/Gender Criticism simply as a discussion of female characters. It focuses on patriarchal structures, gender roles, agency, authority, and power relations. In the Frankenstein application, the analysis considers male authority, female agency, and control over reproduction rather than merely describing the women characters.
3. Has GenAI reduced Marxism merely to “rich versus poor”?
No. The Marxist reading goes beyond a simple rich-versus-poor interpretation. It considers social power, material conditions, marginalization, resources, class relations, and ideology. The Creature’s exclusion is examined in relation to the social structures that determine belonging and power.
4. Has GenAI treated Ecocriticism merely as “nature description”?
No. The Ecocritical reading goes beyond identifying natural landscapes. It examines anthropocentrism, human–nature relationships, scientific ambition, human control, and natural limits. This makes the ecological approach analytical rather than merely descriptive.
5. Has GenAI assumed that every text must contain a queer reading?
No. The response presents the Queer reading as an interpretive framework, not as an unquestionable fact. It specifically explains that the Creature should not simply be labelled as a queer character. Instead, the reading uses Queer Criticism to question social ideas of normality, abnormality, identity, and belonging.
6. Has GenAI provided actual textual evidence?
The response refers to identifiable elements of Frankenstein, including the Creature’s observations of the De Lacey family, Victor’s creation of life, the representation of natural landscapes, and the Creature’s social rejection. These examples provide a basis for interpretation rather than relying only on abstract theoretical claims.
7. Has GenAI invented quotations, characters, events, or interpretations?
No obvious invented quotations or characters appear in the response. However, some interpretations are necessarily analytical rather than directly stated by Shelley. Therefore, they should be understood as possible critical readings, not as facts about what Shelley definitively intended.
8. One point where I agree with GenAI
I agree with the Ecocritical interpretation that Frankenstein can be examined through the relationship between human ambition and natural limits. Victor’s attempt to create life provides a useful basis for questioning the desire to control processes associated with nature. This reading helped me understand that Ecocriticism is not simply about identifying descriptions of landscapes; it can also examine deeper assumptions about humanity’s relationship with the nonhuman world.
Overall Verification
The verification process showed me that GenAI can organize theoretical concepts and suggest useful interpretations, but its responses should not automatically be treated as final critical conclusions. A student must check whether the interpretation is supported by the actual text and must distinguish textual evidence from the interpretation developed from that evidence.
My Reflection
This activity helped me understand that knowing a literary theory is different from actually practising literary criticism. Before this activity, I mainly understood theories through their definitions and key terms. Through GenAI, I learned that a critical theory becomes useful when its concepts are applied to specific textual evidence. For example, Marxist Criticism does not simply mean studying rich and poor characters; it involves examining class relations, ideology, power, and material conditions. Similarly, Ecocriticism is not limited to descriptions of nature but can question anthropocentrism and the relationship between human ambition and the natural world.
One important insight I gained from GenAI was that the same literary text can produce different interpretations when viewed through different critical lenses. In Frankenstein, for example, the Creature can be examined through questions of social exclusion, gendered power, human control over nature, and ideas of normality.
At the same time, I learned that GenAI responses need verification. I had to question the Queer reading because the text should not automatically be labelled as containing a particular queer meaning. The interpretation must be supported by textual evidence. Thus, GenAI became a useful starting point, while critical judgement and textual verification remained my responsibility.
AI Tool Used: ChatGPT
Reference:
Barad, Dilip. “On Marxist, Feminist, Ecocritical, and Queer Criticism.” ResearchGate, Nov. 2024, DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16827.02082. ResearchGate
Barad, Dilip. “Literary Criticism and Gen AI.” ResearchGate, 2026. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/414530437_Literary_Criticism_and_Gen_AI
.png)
