Literary criticism analyzes and interprets literature, with various schools of thought including psychoanalytic, Marxist, postcolonial, and feminist. Different theories influence how a text is viewed, and criticism can help resolve conflicts and offer a clearer understanding of a text’s meaning.
Literary criticism has multiple functions. It is used as a vehicle for interpreting or analyzing various types of literature, including poetry, novels, and plays. There are many different types, or schools, of literary criticism that can be applied to works of literature. Critical essays are the most common form of literary criticism and are usually found in scholarly journals or in books of collected essays or anthologies.
Indeed, literary criticism explores several possible meanings that a text can have. Criticism can examine an idea in a single text or it can compare ideas found in multiple texts. These texts may be by the same author, or may be from the same period, or may include similar themes. Literary critics often use examples from the text or texts to emphasize or support the points they are making in their interpretations or analyses. Also, ideas from other critical essays can be used to support or defend a point in an essay.
This type of criticism, also known as literary theory, has many different schools of thought. The type of criticism used will influence how the critic sees the text, and because of this, texts can be interpreted in many different ways. This is often referred to as looking at literature through different lenses, depending on the type of criticism used. For example, a psychoanalytic critic will see a text very differently from a critic using Marxist theory, who sees the text from an economic point of view.
Another school of literary criticism is postcolonial. A critic using this theory will often look at how colonized people were viewed and treated by the colonizers in a work of literature, for example. New Historicism, or cultural theory, is another school of criticism. This theory sees a text in the cultural and social context in which it was written. For example, a critic who uses this theory to explore a work of literature may also look to letters written by the author or newspaper accounts of what was happening at the time the work was written to try to more fully understand the meaning of the text.
Reader response critique is another theory used to study literature. This school of criticism examines how groups of readers respond to the same text and explores differences and similarities in their interpretations. Feminist criticism looks at works from a female perspective; for example, she may explore how female characters in literature are treated by male characters and draw conclusions based on that examination.
There are other schools of literary criticism as well, including formalism, deconstruction, and gender/queer criticism. The main purpose of any type of literary criticism is to form a judgment about the text and its meaning. It can also allow the reader to see things through closer exploration of the text. Also, if there are conflicts within the text, the use of literary criticism can help resolve them and offer a clearer understanding.
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