Literary Theory

Literary Theory

1. is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature.

2. description of the underlying principles, one might say the tools, by which we attempt to understand literature.

   • offers varying approaches for understanding the role of historical context in interpretation
   • develops the significance of race, class, and gender
   • the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions

3. Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres

   • also investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure.

4. text is more the product of a culture than an individual author .

   • those texts help to create the culture

5. theory provides a rationale for what constitutes the subject matter of criticism

   • The structure may or may not be acknowledged by the critic, and the status of literary theory
   • tracking influence, establishing the canon of major writers in the literary periods, and clarifying historical context and allusions within the text.
   • "New Criticism"
     • stressed close reading of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical precept "explication du texte."

6. Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century.

   • German "higher criticism" subjected biblical texts to a radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation.
   • In France, the eminent literary critic Charles Augustin Saint Beuve maintained that a work of literature could be explained entirely in terms of biography

7. alerts us to the partial nature of theoretical approaches to literature.

8. twentieth century three movements

   • Marxist theory
     • Approaches to literature require an understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture
   • Feminism
     • includes all social and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women in history.
       • Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as feminist theory
   • Postmodernism
     • collapse of categories and conventions that had traditionally governed art.

9. Formalism

   • approach that emphasizes literary form and the study of literary devices within the text.
   • general impact on later developments in "Structuralism" and other theories of narrative.
   • adage that the purpose of literature was "to make the stones stonier" nicely expresses their notion of literariness.

10. "Structuralism"

    • sought to bring to literary studies a set of objective criteria for analysis and a new intellectual rigor.
    • can be viewed as an extension of "Formalism"

11. New Historicism

    • designates a body of theoretical and interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early modern literature
    • seek to understand literary texts historically and reject the formalizing influence of previous literary studies

12. Ethnic Studies

    • art and literature produced by identifiable ethnic groups either marginalized or in a subordinate position to a dominant culture.

13. Postcolonial Criticism

    • investigates the relationships between colonizers and colonized in the period post-colonization.

14. Cultural Studies

    • embraces a wide array of perspectives:media studies, social criticism, anthropology, and literary theory