Literary criticism is not merely the act of finding faults; it is the art of interpretation and the science of understanding the underlying layers of a text. To understand how we analyze literature at Danistnama, we must first look at its roots.
Historically, criticism began with the Greeks. Aristotle’s Poetics served as the first formal “rulebook” for literature, focusing on the structure of tragedy and the concept of catharsis. For centuries, criticism was prescriptive—telling authors how they should write.
However, the 20th century changed everything. With the rise of “New Criticism,” the focus shifted entirely to the text itself, ignoring the author’s biography or the historical context. This was followed by the radical “Death of the Author” theory by Roland Barthes, which argued that the meaning of a book lies with the reader, not the writer.
Today, criticism is diverse. We use Marxist, Feminist, and Psychoanalytic lenses to see how power, gender, and the subconscious mind influence a story. In the digital age, criticism has become more democratic, allowing voices from across the globe to share their unique perspectives on a single piece of art.
