A Quiet Journey through Literary Depths
How Mikhail Bakhtin Turned the Novel into a Carnival of Clashing Truths and Talking Minds From The Professor’s Desk When Voices Collide: The Rise of Dialogism In the hushed intellectual corridors of early 20th-century Russia, amid the stifling airs of Stalinist ideology and the dry certainties of Formalist criticism, a quiet yet thunderous voice began […]
LIT Theory 009 Bakhtin and Dialogism: When Voices Collide Read More »
From Silent Observer to Meaning-Maker—The Rise of the Reader in Literary Theory From The Professor’s Desk When the Reader Walked In: The Rise of Reader-Response Theory For centuries, literature was a monologue—written by the author, decoded by the critic, and quietly admired by the reader. The text was sacred, the author was sovereign, and the
LIT Theory 008 Reader-Response Theory in Literature: When the Reader Walked In Read More »
From Pastoral Reverie to Planetary Grief—How Literature Listens When Nature Speaks From The Professor’s Desk The Roots Beneath the Text Literary criticism, for centuries, has walked through drawing rooms, courtrooms, battlefields, and broken hearts—but seldom through forests. While love, power, identity, and rebellion have commanded the interpretive spotlight, the rustling of leaves, the groan of
LIT Theory 007 Ecocriticism in Literature: Reading Nature as Text Read More »
Challenging Patriarchy through Text and Form from Woolf to Cixous From The Professor’s Desk Opening: Feminism in Literature – A Revolutionary Voice Against Patriarchy For centuries, literature has been largely shaped and controlled by male voices, with male authors dictating the narratives, moral values, and structures of storytelling. From Homer’s Odyssey to Shakespeare’s tragedies, to
LIT Theory 005 Feminism in Literature: Voices, Bodies, Power Read More »
Empire Writes Back—And the Center Can’t Handle It From The Professor’s Desk There was a time when literature came wearing a powdered wig and spoke only in the accents of empire. Its maps were colored red, its characters were explorers and missionaries, and its readers were taught to see the world through the monocle of
LIT Theory 004 : Postcolonialism in Literature: Reading from the Margins Read More »
From The Professor’s Desk The professor often wonders why meaning, that most cherished possession of readers and critics, behaves like a well-mannered ghost: present enough to be sensed, but never quite caught in full. Literature, once thought to be the house of meaning, turns out to be haunted by absence, difference, and instability. And the
The Literary Rollercoaster with No Center, Only Play From The Professor’s Desk The Age of Uncertainty Begins There was a time—let’s say, mid-20th century—when we believed texts had stable meanings. Words behaved, authors ruled their pages like monarchs, and critics arrived with a magnifying glass and a firm belief in objective interpretation. That time is
LIT Theory 002: Poststructuralism in Literature Read More »
(from the series: Literary Theory Explained) From The Professor’s Desk What if stories didn’t mean what they seemed to mean?What if literature wasn’t a mirror of reality or a confession of the author’s soul—but a kind of language machine, structured by rules we don’t even realize we’re following? Welcome to the sharp, angular, and brilliantly
LIT Theory 001: Structuralism and the Science of Stories Read More »