Literary theory and criticism, and its relevance today assignment

Literary Theory is not a single venture but a set of interrelated concepts and practices ??? most significantly deconstruction, post-Althusserian ideological or ‘ political’ criticism, post-Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism, New Historicist or ‘ cultural’ criticism, some reader-response criticism and much feminist criticism. The aim of this essay is to identify the issues that ground these contemporary literary theories. There have always been literary theories ??? about how literature works, what connotation is, what it is to be an author and so forth.

The essential interpretive practices in force and in power in the academy which are being challenged by Theory were themselves ground-breaking, theory-based practices which became the norm. The two main crucial practices in the mid portion of the century have been the formalist tradition, or ‘ New Criticism’, which sees a text as a comparatively self-enclosed meaning-production system which develops gigantic signifying power through its formal properties and through its conflicts, ambiguities and complexities, and the Arnoldian humanist tradition exemplified most clearly in the work of F.

Without critics, writers themselves can become negligent, passive, lazy and unresponsive to being held responsible for what they create. If writers know there are astute and educated critics waiting to receive what they have written, they are more likely to hone their skills, do their research, and proofread their texts more closely. In the end, the writer is more prone to care about their literary production in the presence of critics, though the individual writer might feel subjugated or hurt by a negative review.

Critics can be wrong of course. But then that is the job of another critic, to point out that flaw and thus to stimulate literary debate and discussion. Although John Updike claimed that writing criticism is to the composition of literature as “ hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea” this doesn’t have to be the case. Writers of literature can be critics and vice versa. Criticism can be daring, but literature will be less likely to stick to what is safe in the presence of the impassioned, compelled pens of critics.