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100 Major Literary Theories, Movements, and Their Key Proponents

100 Major Literary Theories, Movements, and Their Key Proponents

1. New Criticism - John Crowe Ransom

2. Structuralism - Ferdinand de Saussure

3. Post-Structuralism - Jacques Derrida

4. Deconstruction - Jacques Derrida

5. Reader-Response Theory - Louise Rosenblatt

6. Formalism - Viktor Shklovsky

7. Russian Formalism - Roman Jakobson

8. Psychoanalytic Criticism - Sigmund Freud

9. Archetypal Criticism - Carl Jung

10. Mythological Criticism - Northrop Frye

11. Marxist Criticism - Karl Marx

12. Feminist Criticism - Virginia Woolf

13. Gender Studies - Judith Butler

14. Queer Theory - Judith Butler

15. Cultural Criticism - Raymond Williams

16. Postcolonialism - Edward Said

17. Ecocriticism - Raymond Williams

18. Historical Criticism - Hippolyte Taine

19. Biographical Criticism - Samuel Johnson

20. Narratology - Gérard Genette

21. Aestheticism - Walter Pater

22. Decadent Movement - Arthur Symons

23. Reader-Response Criticism - Wolfgang Iser

24. Postmodernism - Jean-François Lyotard

25. Transcendentalism - Ralph Waldo Emerson

26. Pragmatism - William James

27. Existentialism - Jean-Paul Sartre

28. Absurdist Literature - Albert Camus

29. Expressionism - August Strindberg

30. Surrealism - André Breton

31. Stream of Consciousness - William James

32. Modernism - Ezra Pound

33. Imagism - Ezra Pound

34. The New Negro Movement - Alain Locke

35. Harlem Renaissance - Langston Hughes

36. Minimalism - Raymond Carver

37. Theatre of the Absurd - Samuel Beckett

38. Marxist Feminism - Juliet Mitchell

39. Postcolonial Feminism - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

40. Postmodern Feminism - Judith Butler

41. Ecofeminism - Carolyn Merchant

42. Posthumanism - Donna Haraway

43. Dialogism - Mikhail Bakhtin

44. Genre Theory - Northrop Frye

45. Reception Theory - Hans-Robert Jauss

46. Affective Fallacy - W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley

47. Intentional Fallacy - W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley

48. Paratext - Gérard Genette

49. Hermeneutics - Friedrich Schleiermacher

50. Bildungsroman - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

51. Dystopian Literature - George Orwell

52. Utopian Literature - Thomas More

53. Dialogic Imagination - Mikhail Bakhtin

54. Nihilism - Friedrich Nietzsche

55. The Uncanny - Sigmund Freud

56. Magic Realism - Franz Roh

57. Doppelgänger - E.T.A. Hoffmann

58. Post-Postmodernism - David Foster Wallace

59. Postcolonial Criticism - Homi K. Bhabha

60. Semiotics - Ferdinand de Saussure

61. Cognitive Narratology - David Herman

62. Trauma Theory - Cathy Caruth

63. Epic Theatre - Bertolt Brecht

64. Southern Gothic - William Faulkner

65. Picaresque Novel - Anonymous

66. Historical Novel - Walter Scott

67. Neoclassicism - Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux

68. Romanticism - William Wordsworth

69. Realism - Gustave Flaubert

70. Naturalism - Émile Zola

71. Afrofuturism - Mark Dery

72. Chicano Literature - Rudolfo Anaya

73. Cosmic Horror - H.P. Lovecraft

74. Golden Age of Detective Fiction - Agatha Christie

75. Colonial Literature - Joseph Conrad

76. Cubism - Gertrude Stein

77. Dadaism - Hugo Ball

78. Epistolary Novel - Samuel Richardson

79. Structural Marxism – Louis Althusser  

80. Hegemony Theory – Antonio Gramsci  

81. New Historicism – Stephen Greenblatt  

82. Black Feminist Criticism – Bell hooks  

83. Critical Race Theory – Kimberlé Crenshaw  

84. Orientalism – Edward Said  

85. Negritude – Aimé Césaire  

86. Hyperreality & Simulacra – Jean Baudrillard  

87. Symbolism – Charles Baudelaire  

88. Cyberpunk – William Gibson  

89. Gothic Fiction – Horace Walpole  

90. Tragedy Theory – Aristotle  

91. The Grotesque – Mikhail Bakhtin  

92. Psychogeography – Guy Debord  

93. The Fantastic in Literature – Tzvetan Todorov  

94. Hypertext Theory – George P. Landow  

95. Digital Humanities – Franco Moretti  

96. Postdramatic Theatre – Hans-Thies Lehmann  

97. Ethnic Studies & Literature – Henry Louis Gates Jr.  

98. Metafiction – John Barth  

99. Existentialist Theatre – Jean Genet  

100. Intertextuality – Julia Kristeva  

This list covers a broad spectrum of literary theories and movements, ensuring diversity in perspectives. 


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