2016م - 1444هـ
Literary Theory

Vince Brewton

University of North Alabama

Literary-Theory_an-overview





Literary Theory

Vince Brewton

University of North Alabama

Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/#H1

“Literary theory” is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature.

By literary theory we refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that

reveal what literature can mean. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles,

one might say the tools, by which we attempt to understand literature. All literary

interpretation draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a justification for very different

kinds of critical activity. It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author

and work; literary theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study,

both from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic

presence within texts. Literary theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of

historical context in interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious

elements of the text. Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genres—

narrative, dramatic, lyric—in addition to the more recent emergence of the novel and the short

story, while also investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure. Lastly,

literary theory in recent years has sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the

product of a culture than an individual author and in turn how those texts help to create the

culture.