This page is a work in progress. I am gathering links on different schools of criticism and other resources related to literary criticism. I will add further links as I find them.
Literary criticism is a millennia-old practice of reading, interpreting, evaluating, and explaining literary texts. It has taken many different forms over the centuries. Recent approaches (from the early 20th century to the present) have emphasized interpretation and explanation (how does it work, what does it do) over evaluation (what is "good" and what is "bad"). Consequently, there has been a heavy emphasis on "theory" (i.e. an over-arching explanation of what literature is and does), influenced as well by philosophy and the social sciences, and by the immense success of the physical sciences. In the mid-20th century one approach, which became known as the "New Criticism," dominated in the United States, but in the second half of the century there was an explosion of new approaches. Below are some links to descriptions of some of these different schools of criticism.
Links marked with a * require a Shoreline email account name and password to access from off campus.
Links marked with † require a King County Library System card number.
Here you will find links to sites that provide definitions of key terms used in one or more of the schools of criticism, as well as other resources in literary criticism.
