Thoughts About Theory

To start off, I am an English Communications student at a private liberal-arts college in the middle of Boston. I will be using this blog to go deeper into discussing topics about literary theory and criticism.

Going into a theory class seemed to be intimidating at first, not knowing what to expect or what exactly will be covered. After touching base with literary criticism I feel as though I have more understanding of what theory is.

In order to describe what I think theory is, I must define what liberal humanism is, since the two go hand in hand. For  myself I define liberal humanism as enjoying a piece of work for what the work is, and not what the author intends, or what I as the reader get out of it.  I understood theory as being a combative to liberal humanism. Theories like Marxist, Feminist, and Post-Structuralist theory are ways to look at pieces of works. Whether it is examining a piece due to an authors point of view, or a women's point of view, it is different that liberal humanism because liberal humanism the reader takes the piece of work as is, and does not examine or dissect the reading for other meanings.