Literary Criticism

Contemporary means "with the time" and literally refers to literature written during the lifetime of the reader. So any literature can be described as cotemporary when discussing its reception at...

Formalism and Deconstructionism are both schools of literary criticism, but they look at texts in completely different ways. Formalism focuses on the text itself in its various elements without...

Traditional criticism requires a critic, or analyst, to examine a text in regards to both the author's history and the relevance of the original text to those who read it during the time period it...

We first need to define what traditional literary criticism is. Usually, this refers to the interpretative methodologies practiced prior to the rise of post-structuralism, which began in the 1960s...

"Criticism" is the branch of literary study that defines, analyzes, interprets, and judges a work of literature according to various aesthetic systems. The two main traditional Greek systems of...

“Formalist” criticism, as the term implies, is chiefly concerned with the “form” of a literary work rather than with its “content.” In other words, formalists tend to be more concerned with how a...

There are numerous critical approaches to literature, some more illuminating than others. A number of these approaches can be put under the broad heading of formalism, which encompasses New...

Biographical criticism assumes that knowledge of an author’s life is important to knowledge of an author’s work. It assumes that the more we know about the author’s ideas, beliefs, and personality,...

The term "literary appreciation" requires analysis of how an author uses form, structure and technique to create meaning in combination with well reasoned and soundly supported personal opinion in...

Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle claim that the pleasure in literature is too rarely discussed in theoretical analyses today. As evidence, they refer to frequent use of the word (not just related...

New criticism emphasized reading poems as self-contained, except for noting overt allusions to other literary works. The most extreme version of this was the “practical criticism” of I. A. Richards...

Mythic-archetypal interpretation contends that there are universal symbols and motifs encoded in all literature (and, unconsciously, in human minds) across time and place. For example, "the...

“New historicism,” as those very words suggest, is thought of as a response and even alternative to earlier kinds of historical criticism. According to many “new historicists,” traditional...

There are many different ways to approach analyzing a work of literature. Conventionally, we look at plot, theme, character, setting, and tone. Other forms of criticism focus on reading through a...

Formalism, like its name suggests, is concerned with form rather than content. Generally speaking, a formalist—whether in literature, philosophy, sociology, or other fields—argues that there is no...

While no theory of literary criticism is completely objective, some theories are more subjective than others. Even though their goal might not be consistently accomplished, both formalists and new...

Literary criticism and literary theory are terms that have, in the last century, become interchangeable. Now, to say either is to refer to the study, critique, analysis, and interpretation of...

The aim of literary criticism is to help readers better understand a work of literature. To do this, literary critics closely study and interpret works of literature according to various...

In traditional literary theory and criticism, scholars analyze works of literature, and, using critical procedures, they determine the truth and meaning of those works. The focus of those truths...

Contemporary literary criticism is defined, as is much modern academic analysis of culture , through a lens of what is referred to as “intersectionality,” a term coined by law professor and...

In literary theory, a structure is a general term. It can refer to linguistic structure: grammar and syntax. It can refer to the structure of how signifiers (words, written and said) refer to...

If we use Foster's analysis in terms of assessing how "It's All Political," then I think that one has to recognizes Foster's point that literature is usually composed by the people who are...

A brief addition: the literature's approach to reality, to society, and to readership all cause sea-changes to the history and taxonomy of literature.

The Romantic Movement, out of all other literary movements, in general, had the most pensive and long-lasting effect on modern criticism. And in a way, the contribution of the two major figures of...

In the fifth chapter, Pelagia Goulimari describes the nineteenth century as a period of “rapid change” and instability. She begins with Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels. These two thinkers saw...

Before the revolutionary movement of new criticism, the majority of literary scholarship was of three genres, rhetorical, philological and belletristic. Belletristic writing was for a generally...

If you read a criticism of Poe's poem "The Raven" about the light/dark motifs in which the author discusses Poe's alabaster-skinned virginal image in death against the dark, sinister...

If I understand you correctly, you are asking about aesthetics in relation to cultural fiction and traditional literary fiction. If so, then it is first necessary to know what "classical Indian...

Gina Wisker, as illustrated in her co-edited essay collection Post-Colonial and African American Women's Writing, approaches postcolonial literary criticism (critique) through the eyes of white...

We cannot describe structuralism in 700 words, but we can tell you about its main ideas. Afterwards, you should have little to no problem in describing it in 700 words yourself. Structuralism can...

I cannot do this assignment for you, but I am happy to provide you with some main ideas to help you get started! Romanticism arose in opposition to the Enlightenment ideals that propelled the...

Perhaps the best way to start is to quote the whole first paragraph, since it is no too long. "I hope that the Chinese people enjoy their Olympic Games. But once they are over and everybody has...

Northrop Frye's work on/in archetypal criticism is as relevant today as it was when he was writing, in my opinion. Together with the work of Joseph Campbell - another scholar developing Carl Jung's...

This is a great question. The author, Alexander McCall, is livid with what has happened to the Olympic Games. He argues that there are three major problems. First, instead of allowing amateurs to...

The tone of the sentence, especially within the context of the article, is negative. The author deplores what has happened to the Olympic Games. The author, Alexander McCall argues that the Olympic...

One can best understand Jauss’s hermeneutics as seeing it as a halfway point between two rival hermetical approaches. First of all, we have the historical approach, exemplified by Marxism, that...

There are many things you can do to make an argument strong in a paper. In light of this, let me give you three points. First, to inspire confidence that you actually know what you are talking...

The suggestion that the era of literary criticism has or is in the process of ending is, to paraphrase an oft-repeated quote from Mark Twain, highly exaggerated. And, the introduction of...

In order to find useful materials on the authors, like Joseph Conrad, who wrote Heart of Darkness, you will be covering in your essay, you need to survey the existing scholarship on the topic....

Allow me to correct an error on my part: When stating that I refused to give scientific advancement a second thought (though the wording has now been edited to "refused to give scientific...