Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Literary Theory
- is the body of ideas and methods
we use in the practical reading of
literature.
- 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
- Literary theorists trace the history
and evolution of the different
genres
- also investigating the importance of
formal elements of literary structure.
- text is more the product of
a culture than an individual
author .
- those texts help to
create the culture
- 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."
- 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
- alerts us to the partial
nature of theoretical
approaches to literature.
- 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.
- 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.
- "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"
- 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
- Ethnic Studies
- art and literature produced by
identifiable ethnic groups
either marginalized or in a
subordinate position to a
dominant culture.
- Postcolonial
Criticism
- investigates the relationships
between colonizers and colonized
in the period post-colonization.
- Cultural Studies
- embraces a wide array of
perspectives:media studies,
social criticism,
anthropology, and literary
theory