Introduction to Literary Theory

Approaching literary texts is not an easy business and it cannot be a random activity nor can it be based on simplistic immature thought nor reduced to personal opinions. It requires deep careful organized thoughts that should be based on precise established modes of thinking each based on a set of coherent principles not subject to contradictions. In that respect, literary theory constitutes the non exhaustive blueprint or database encompassing all the possibilities about the nature of literature that helps us approach texts in a more organized and purposeful way. Depending on the theoretical angle through which we approach a given text, theory helps bringing into light a precise aspect about that text. The theoretical machinery helps us discover meanings, techniques, processes as well as artistic, intellectual and philosophical implications about the text that we couldn't have discovered otherwise. Theory is important in that it provides us with a deeper understanding of texts and accentuents by that the literary excitement and pleasure about those texts.

Difference between Literary Theory and Literary Criticism

Difference between Literary Theory and Criticism from Dilip Barad

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Feminism and Post-colonialism

(From Post-colonial Studies Reader by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin) In many different societies, women, like colonised subjects, have been relegated to the position of ‘ Other ’ , ‘ colonised ’ by various forms of patriarchal domination. They thus share with colonised races and cultures an intimate experience of the politics of oppression and repression. It is not surprising therefore that the history and concerns of feminist theory have paralleled developments in post-colonial theory. Feminist and post-colonial discourses both seek to reinstate the marginalised in the face of the dominant, and early feminist theory, like early nationalist post-colonial criticism, was concerned with inverting the structures of domination, substituting, for instance, a female tradition or traditions for a male-dominated canon. But like postcolonial criticism, feminist theory has rejected such simple inversions in favour of a more general questioning of forms and modes, a...

Formalism

(from Penguin's Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory) Russian Formalism: The Russian Formalists were primarily interested in the way that literary texts achieve their effects and in establishing a scientific basis for the study of literature. In their early work, human content in literature ( e.g. emotions, ideas, actions, 'reality' in general ) did not possess, for them, any significance in defining what was specifically 'literary' about a text. Indeed, the formalists collapse the distinction between form and content . And they regard the writer as a kind of cipher merely r eworking available literary devices and conventions . The writer is of negligible importance. All the emphasis is on the 'literariness' of the formal devices of a text. OPOJAZ went so far as to suggest that there are no poets or literary figures: there is just poetry and literature. Viktor Shklovsky summarizes the attitude in his definition of literature as 'th...

Charlie Chaplin's The Kid: A Psychoanalytic Approach

In a letter to one of his friends about Charlie Chaplin: Dear Doctor: It is such a fascinating experience to have to justify my theories towards Mme. Yvette and Uncle Max. I only wish it were possible otherwise than in writing, in spite of my bad speech and my declining hearing. And I really have not the intention at all to give in to you beyond the confession that we know so little. You know for instance, in the last few days Charlie Chaplin has been in Vienna. Almost I, too, would have seen him, but it was too cold for him here and he left again quickly. He is undoubtedly, a great artist; certainly he always portrays one and the same figure; only the weakly, poor, helpless, clumsy youngster for whom, however, things turn out well in the end. Now do you think that for this role he has to forget his own ego? On the contrary, he always plays only himself as he was in his early dismal youth. He cannot get away from those impressions and to this day he obtains for himself t...

Literary Theory in Practice

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