Literary Theory Cheat Sheet
The core ideas of Literary Theory distilled into a single, scannable reference — perfect for review or quick lookup.
Quick Reference
Deconstruction
A critical approach developed by Jacques Derrida that questions the stability of meaning in texts by revealing internal contradictions, binary oppositions, and the ways language undermines its own claims to fixed meaning.
Structuralism
An intellectual movement rooted in Ferdinand de Saussure's linguistics that analyzes cultural phenomena as systems of signs governed by underlying rules and relationships, rather than focusing on individual elements in isolation.
Feminist Literary Criticism
A critical approach that examines how literature represents gender, challenges patriarchal assumptions embedded in texts and literary traditions, and recovers marginalized women writers from obscurity.
Postcolonial Theory
A framework for analyzing literature produced in or about formerly colonized nations, examining how colonial power structures, cultural imperialism, and resistance to domination shape literary representation and identity.
New Criticism
A formalist approach dominant in mid-twentieth-century Anglo-American criticism that treats the literary text as a self-contained, autonomous object to be analyzed through close reading without reference to authorial intention or historical context.
Reader-Response Theory
A school of criticism that shifts attention from the text or author to the reader, arguing that meaning is not fixed in the text but is created through the reader's active engagement and interpretation.
Psychoanalytic Criticism
An approach that applies the theories of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and other psychoanalysts to literature, examining unconscious desires, repression, dream symbolism, and the psychic dynamics of characters, authors, and readers.
Marxist Literary Criticism
A critical approach grounded in the work of Karl Marx that examines how literature reflects, reinforces, or challenges class structures, economic relations, and ideological systems of capitalist society.
New Historicism
A critical method that reads literary texts alongside non-literary texts from the same period, arguing that literature and history are mutually constitutive -- literature shapes and is shaped by the cultural and political forces of its time.
Narratology
The study of narrative structure and the techniques through which stories are constructed and communicated, including concepts such as focalization, narrative voice, temporal order, and the distinction between story and discourse.
Key Terms at a Glance
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