This theory emphasizes the role of literature in everyday life.
Formalism analyzes the form of the work, focusing on literary devices and structure.
This theory analyzes role of gender identity and sexuality in literature
This school analyzes works through its historical context and seeks to understand history through literature.
This theory focuses on the relationship between literature and the social—mainly economic—conditions under which it was produced.
Post-structuralism expresses the belief that individual meaning and values are taken from their milieu and the common meanings of a group of individuals so that their reality is contextualized and socially constructed.
This critical approach deals with literature produced in countries that were once, or are now, colonies of other countries.
This form of critical argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses.
This theory focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.
This theory focuses on analyzing material by examining underlying structures, such as characterization or plot, and attempts to show how these patterns were universal and could thus be used to develop general conclusions about both individual works and the systems from which they emerged.