Intro to Literary Theory

Comic from XKCD:


AP English Lit is mainly a survey of British (and some European) literature.  What that means is that we will be engaging in literary criticism about major works of literature from England.  The course is a "survey" because it covers select works of literature from England and those works are selected from the most influential and periods of British lit.


The term "literary criticism" is somewhat harder to define.  Google tells me that it is "The art or practice of judging and commenting on the qualities and character of literary works."  Which is true, but doesn't capture the complexity of the field.


The Purdue "Online Writing Lab" (OWL) provides a more complete overview  of literary theory at this link.  We will be using some of these approaches to analyze the works that we will be reading in AP Lit.


A brief timeline (from OWL) of the major fields of literary theory can be found inside this post.

Timeline (most of these overlap)

• Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)
• Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
• Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-present)
• Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
• Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
• Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
• Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
• New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
• Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
• Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
• Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)