In the early 1900s, the focus shifted from what a story said to how it was built .
The story begins in Ancient Greece, where Aristotle's Poetics established the first rules for drama and tragedy. For centuries, the focus was on (imitation)—the idea that literature should reflect nature and provide moral instruction. Critics like John Dryden later expanded these ideas, but the primary goal remained evaluating a work’s beauty and its "universal" truths. The 20th Century Shift: The Text is a Machine Literary Theory
The "story" of literary theory is the history of how human beings have moved from simply asking what a story means to asking how language, power, and identity shape that meaning. It is a journey from the classical search for "truth" to a modern understanding of literature as a complex system of cultural forces. The Classical Roots: Art as Mirror In the early 1900s, the focus shifted from
By the 1960s and 70s, the "Theory Wars" broke out as scholars began to interrogation the very foundations of meaning. Literary Theory - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Critics like John Dryden later expanded these ideas,