CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY by John Lye
Note: This essay was published in the Brock Review Volume 2 Number 1, 1993 pp. 90-106, which publication holds the copyright. The article addresses contemporary theory in its more post-structural mode, and were I to rewrite it today I would put more emphasis on the cultural studies model, on the growth of gender studies, and on New Historicism, than I do here. I believe however that what I have to say here is still relevant and describes the fundamental paradigm shift which has altered the direction and mandate of literary study. July 2001

Studies in literature in universities in the last two decades have been marked by the growing interest in and bitter division over a set of related theoretical approaches known collectively as Literary Theory. Many Departments have become divided between "theory people" and opponents who see themselves as defending the traditional values central to the culture against Theory’s perceived anti-humanism. Literary Theory is part of a wide-spread movement in the culture which has affected a number of disciplines, occasioning similar disputes in some, a movement which has explored and elucidated the complexities of meaning, textuality and interpretation. Literary Theory is not a single enterprise but a set of related concepts and practices — most importantly deconstruction, post-Althusserian ideological or 'political' criticism, post-Lacanian psychoanalytic criticism, New Historicist or 'cultural' criticism, some reader-response criticism and much feminist criticism. The aim of this essay is to define the issues that ground these contemporary literary theories.
There have always been literary theories — about how literature works, what meaning is, what it is to be an author and so forth. The central interpretive practices in force and in power in the academy which are being