How far is (or should) critical literary theory be independent from other fields?
Do we have purely literary theoretical approaches or does literary criticism rely mainly on other disciplines like history, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc...?
Has literature been able to produce its own epistemological tools or approaches?
Your thoughts are much appreciated!
Literary theory is a distinct field of study, however over the years, it is obvious it is a multi-faceted discipline. Literary theory can generate her own theories and it many times relies on inquiries and theoretical breakthroughs in other and allied fields. This is because it has a philosophical basis and philosophy is foundational to and feeds all disciplines. Literary theory cannot be and need not be isolated from theoretical developments in other disciplines.
Thanks, Adewale Ajayi. Can you name some of these independently generated literary theories that save us from being considered as parasitic creatures by other colleagues in academia?!
We have the literary theory of Bakhtin in which he talks about the multiple voices and thus discourses in novel. There is also the literary theory which Anne Whitehead has established for the sake of discussing the main features of trauma fiction. There are many other examples .
First, we must agree on what is called Literature. I have the weird sensation scientists call Literature any kind of scientific text. Most of them are not Literature. At the maximum, they can be called informative notes. But they never respect any Literature structure, or even create their own. It give the idea science is much above Letters and have nothing to learn from them, so texts are just delivering information, with zero consideration for the readers, because science's message must be delivered, above any reader's caprices. Just as if science was not depending on words. What a ridiculous idea.
Yes, @Fred Romano. In my setting it's more like a latent conflict between experts in linguistics and their counterparts in literature. Some linguist colleagues don't hesitate expressing their antagonism to literature publicly.
I really think Literature as an art or a science to make the words understandable, so it's impossible, as linguists dream, to consider the words apart from their meaning.
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