Critical Theory

 

Warning! The ideas on this page can be quite complex and you do not need to include them in your essays or orals in order to do well. However, if you feel confident with English  and feel that you can understand and use these ideas then they can provide you with interesting new ways of looking at texts and some good ideas about what to say when commenting on them.

 

Reading Against The Grain

What is Critical Theory? Reading Practices Resistant Readings
Feminist Reading Marxist Reading Psychoanalytic Reading

 

Some Key Ideas

Structuralism Post Structuralism Post Modernism
The Death of the Author    

 

Discourse

Discourse Deconstructionism Gaps and Silences
Binary Opposition    

 

Other Theories

Queer Theory Post Colonial Theory