Editing Literary Criticism (section)

== <span style="color: #FFFFFF;">Understanding</span> ==
Literary criticism is about the '''Lens''' you choose to wear.

'''Major Schools of Thought''':
1. '''New Criticism (Formalism)''': "The text is a machine." Don't look at the author's biography or the history of the time. Look at how the words on the page create irony, paradox, and tension.
2. '''Reader-Response Theory''': "The text is empty until someone reads it." The meaning of a book is created by the interaction between the writer's words and the reader's own experiences and culture.
3. '''Historicist Criticism''': "The text is a product of its time." To understand ''Shakespeare'', you must understand the politics and religion of the Elizabethan era.
4. '''Queer Theory''': Analyzing how literature challenges (or reinforces) traditional ideas about gender and sexuality.

'''The "Death of the Author" (Roland Barthes)''': This famous idea argues that once a book is published, the author's "intent" no longer matters. If the author says the book is about "love" but the reader finds "power," the reader's interpretation is just as valid. The text belongs to the language and the reader, not the writer.
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