Literary Theory and Criticism

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Poststructuralism

February 07, 2025

Understanding Poststructuralism: Breaking the Illusion of Fixed Meaning Introduction Poststructuralism is a critical movement that emerged in the mid-20th century as a response to Structuralism. While Structuralists believed that meaning was rooted in stable systems and structures, Poststructuralists challenged this idea, arguing that meaning is fluid, shifting, and shaped by language and power. Thinkers like Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Julia Kristeva played a crucial role in shaping poststructuralist thought, radically transforming literary criticism, philosophy, and cultural studies. This blog explores the key ideas of poststructuralism, its impact on literary theory, and why it remains an essential perspective in contemporary criticism. Origins and Development To understand poststructuralism, we first need to look at Structuralism —a movement inspired by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss . Structuralists arg...

Aristotle's Poetics

April 14, 2022

Aristotle ( 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher during the Greek Classical Period. He was a student of Plato and he established Lyceum . His followers were often called ' Peripatetic ' because Lyceum was a peripatetic school of philosophy. His Poetics (335 BC) is the earliest among the surviving treatises on drama. In this work, he talks about poetry (or, the poetic art which includes verse drama, lyric poetry, and epic). Poetics Chapter I Aristotle divides poetry into three kinds; Epic poetry, Drama (Tragedy and Comedy), and Lyric Poetry. He proposes to treat poetry in terms of their quality, structure, number, and parts required to compose a poem. According to him, Epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, flute music, and lyre music are all modes of imitation. However, they differ from one another in three respects— the medium, the objects, and the manner or mode of imitation. Let's break it down in...

Marxism

April 10, 2022

Marxism is a theory/philosophy named after Karl Marx. It focuses on the social, political, and economic aspects of life. The Marxist theory first came into being when in 1848, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels collaboratively published The Communist Manifesto, a pamphlet where they formulated the concept of class conflict and talked about an inevitable revolution. Later, in his book, Das Capital (published in 1867), Marx focused on criticizing Capitalism and discussed the effects of capitalism on labor. Let us now look at the fundamental premises of Marxism. 1. Marxism is concerned with the economic structures of human society. 2. Marxism believes that keeping economic power is the motive behind every activity in this world including education, politics religion, etc. 3. Economics is the 'base' on which the 'superstructure' of social, political, and ideological realities are built. 4. Economic power therefore al...

Plato and His Key Concepts

February 22, 2022

We all know that Socrates was the teacher of Plato. And when Socrates died, many of his followers and friends ran away from Athens. He went to places like Sicily and Southern Italy. He made some political and scholarly friends there. Then, in 385 BCE, he came back to Athens and founded Academy , a place where he would give his lectures to his disciples. At present, whatever we know about Socrates is what we got from the writings of the historian, Xenophon, and the philosopher, Plato. Plato put his critical ideas in the mouth of Socrates in his dialogues. (Thirty-six dialogues are attributed to Plato. Republic is one of them.) Republic When we talk about literature and literary criticism, Plato's Republic inevitably pops up in our minds. Not only because he opinioned for kicking out poets from an ideal state, but also because he gave us some crucial concepts on which later critics would build their works. ...