Literature: How can we study it?

Once we introduced ourselves in Literature, we need to learn the ways we can study and analyze it. However, there are many different theories about Literature and about which point of view should we consider to analyze it. In this entry, I will present some of the theories that we have studied in class.

Greeks: In the early 400s, Greeks thought that Literature was concern with human behavior and its relationship with the physical world, society and ethics.  

Romanticism: It believes that Literature expresses feelings,  everyday life and nature through common language. 

Scientific Determinism: They thought that science had the answer to all types of questions, including the Literature's ones.

New Criticism: It focuses in the text itself, leaving context, author and other information aside. 

Saussure's work.

Reader Response: It believes that reader's own experience plays an important role in the interpretation of the text.

Structuralism: Saussure's work stated that words were signs composed by a signifier (Actual word) and a signified (Mental structure or image).

Post-Structuralism: It establishes that we learn by differences. A is A because it's not B.

Marxism: All texts have subtexts that are related, in some way, with something that happens it the real world. 

Feminism: It uses Literature to describe women's experiences and lives. 

Cultural Poetics: It describes History as the central part of knowledge. It studies every part of society and its history to make relationships with human life meaning. 

Postcolonial Criticism: It's an approach to texts produced in colonized countries, considering nationalism, laws, ethnicity and language.