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Literary Movements

What is Psychoanalytic Criticism in Literature

Thinking novels as an analogy of dreams seems an excellent natural example. Same as dreams, novels are fictitious inventions of the human mind, which are although reality based but by definition they are not true. Just like a novel, dreams are said to interpret some truth, coming from one’s personal experiences or sub-conscious mind. Many reasons make an analogy between...

The Basics of Marxist Criticism

During the twentieth century, many philosophies bloomed and attempted to understand the world in various ways. The literary criticism, as a different school of thought, perceives, defines and interprets the world considering several ideologies. Marxist school of criticism is one of them that set its aim to explain the world with logical and concrete evidence. Marxist perspective opposes the idealist philosophy that...

Feminist Criticism Theory in Literature

Feminist criticism is a form of literary criticism that is based on feminist theories. It is broadly explained as the politics of feminism and uses feminist principles to critique the male-dominated literature. The root cause of this type of criticism lies in the oppression of women in social, political, economic and psychological literature. Women have been ignored or mostly considered...

What is Ecocriticism in Literature

Ecocriticism is a term used for the observation and study of the relationship between the literature and the earth’s environment. It takes an interdisciplinary point of view by analysing the works of authors, researchers, and poets in the context of environmental issues and nature. Since the purpose, scope, and methodology of this theory are a bit confusing, it is difficult to...

What is Reader Response Criticism

The domain of literature has a vast horizon representing a cluster of literary theories. Each of these theories has come from a different school of thoughts, forming a strict sense of the systematic study of literature. The purpose is to analyze the subtleties of literature that includes social prophecy, interdisciplinary themes, intellectual history, and moral philosophy. Hence, it considers anything...

Postcolonialism Criticism – Description

What is postcolonialism criticism and where is it used? Post-colonialism definition: It refers to the human consequences resulting from exploitation and control of colonized people on their lands. Key concepts in postcolonialism Othering Others entail the “Demonic Other” and “Exotic Other.” The “Demonic Other” represents the negative, savage, inferior and evil. The demonic other is based on in the literature such...

What is Formalist Criticism

A discreet school of thought, Hawthorne criticism has much of its emphasis on formalist analysis of the text. Emerged between the 1940s and 1950s, many colleges, institutes, and universities adopted the approach and started practicing it. Many of them called it ‘New Criticism’ an innovative way of creating and interpreting the text. This new way of thinking and writing about...

What is New Historicism

New historicism theory – an explanation As described, the new historicism theory evaluates literature through a comprehensive analysis of the social and cultural events that surround the event being described and so much more how these socio-cultural events help to build the event. In essence, new historicism aims at understanding intellectual history through literature and literature through the cultural context surrounding...

Structuralism

Defining ‘Structuralism’ in a brief statement is not less than a challenge. It is not only hard to define but also takes multiple forms of a common denominator as evidence. The ‘structures’ which many ‘ ‘structuralists’ used have acquired diverse significations. Fortunately, upon comparing and analyzing various meanings of this discipline to define structuralism, this synthesis seems possible and feasible...

Literary Criticism

The term literary criticism refers directly to the ‘reasoned consideration’ of literary works and their relatable issues. It encompasses all arguments about literature – whether or not specific literary works are analyzed. The earliest form of literary criticism can be seen in Plato’s warnings against the potentially detrimental effects of poetic inspiration in his work, Republic. More specifically, literary criticism...