The Basics (because I sense the need for some common foundational ground or understanding): Words on Literary Theory The Basics (because I sense the need for some common foundational ground or understanding): Words on Literary Theory

What is literary theory:
According to an article (What Is Literary Theory) I recently read, literary theory, also known as “critical theory”, or plainly “theory” is a set of concepts and intellectual assumptions which are used in explaining or interpreting literary texts. Presently, it is undergoing a transformation into “cultural theory”. Literary theory is inclusive to any principles derived from internal analysis from either literary texts, or that knowledge which is external to the text that can be applied to multiple interpretive situations. It is assumed that all critical practice related to literature depends upon an underlying structure of ideas in at least two ways. The first being that theory provides a rationale for that which constitutes the subject matter of criticism, or “the literary” and secondly, the specific aims of critical practice, the act of interpretation in and of itself.

From whence did literary theory come:
Literary theory and the formal practice of such interpretation draws a parallel with history and philosophy. Evidence shows that it dates back at least as far as Plato.

The evolution of literary theory:
That which might be termed "modern literary theory" emerged in Europe during the nineteenth century. Friedrich Nietzsche has been credited as perhaps the greatest nineteenth century influence on literary theory due at least in part to his deep epistemological suspicion.

Three twentieth century literary theory movements:

1. Marxist theory

- of the Frankfurt School

- approaches to literature require an understanding of the primary economic and social bases of culture since Marxist aesthetic theory sees work of art as product, directly or indirectly, of base structure of society

2. Feminism

- analyzes production of literature and literary representation within framework that includes all social and cultural formations as they pertain to role of women in history

3. Postmodernism

- consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands

- in art this included a move toward non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms; heightened degree of self-referential; and the collapse of categories and conventions that had traditionally governed art

- has led to series questioning of the so-called metanarratives of history, science, philosophy, and economic and sexual reproduction

- all knowledge seen as constructed (hence desconstructism which all good Messiah College English majors remember quite well from heteroglossia class) within historical self-contained systems of understanding

• All three of the above have brought about the incorporation of all human discourses