Knowra Literary criticism Literary criticism Literary criticism is the analysis, interpretation, and evaluation of literary works. It uses diverse methods to examine how texts create meaning and relate to their historical and cultural contexts.
Close reading : The careful analysis of a text’s language, structure, imagery, and form. It grounds interpretation in the work’s specific verbal and formal choices.
New Criticism : A school of literary criticism that treats the text as an autonomous verbal structure. Its close analysis exemplifies criticism centered on textual form rather than author or history.
Aristotle's Poetics : An ancient Greek treatise analyzing poetry, especially tragedy and epic. It established enduring questions about plot, imitation, and the effects of drama.
Reader-response criticism : An approach that treats readers’ experiences and interpretive activity as central to literary meaning. It challenges accounts that locate meaning chiefly in the text or its author.
Literary canon : A body of literary works widely regarded as culturally or artistically authoritative. Critical interpretation and evaluation help establish, challenge, and revise its boundaries.
Literary theory : A body of concepts and methods for interpreting literature and explaining how it works. Its frameworks shape the questions and assumptions behind critical readings.
Marxist literary criticism : An approach that examines literature through class relations, ideology, and material conditions. It connects a work’s forms and conflicts to economic and social structures.
Longinus : The ancient author traditionally associated with On the Sublime, a treatise on elevated writing. His account of sublimity shaped later debates about literary power and style.
Biographical criticism : An approach that interprets literature through evidence about an author’s life and circumstances. It contrasts with methods that bracket an author’s biography when interpreting a work.
Postcolonial studies : An interdisciplinary field examining colonialism, empire, and their cultural and political legacies. Literary criticism contributes methods and texts to this broader study of imperial power.
Show all 30