My thoughts!

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is known as one of the main representatives of atheistic philosophy. He is considered as an important forerunner of Existentialism movement and postmodernist thinker. He is famous for the phrase "God is dead". However, he is often characterized as the most religious atheist. In this contradictory tensions, lies the enigmatic thinker, Nietzsche, who raised a number of fundamental questions that challenge the root of the philosophical tradition of the West. He is the precursor of Jacques Derrida . He challenged the foundations of Christianity and traditional morality, famously asserting that " God is dead ", leading to charges of Atheism, Moral Skepticism, Relativism and Nihilism . His original notions of the " will to power " as mankind's main motivating principle , of the "Ubermensch" as the goal of humanity, and of " eternal return " as a means of evaluating one's life, have all gene...

          Roland Barthes (1915-80), who was undoubtedly the most entertaining, witty and daring of the French theorists of the 1960s and 1970s is one of the handful of writers who can be said to have established the foundation for modern literary and cultural theory. His writings began to make the first moves in rebellion against the structuralist reading of texts. He is famous for many things: for announcing the 'death of the author'; for articulating the theory and practice of intertextuality; for promoting the study of cultural sign systems.           Among these the short essay "The Death of the Author" (1968) is the most discussed and accessible text in which Barthes rejects the traditional view that the author is the origin of the text, the source of its meaning, and the only authority for interpretation. His formula is utterly radical in its dismissal of those traditional humanistic notions of interpretation. His author is strip...

Russian Formalism was a literary movement and primarily a school of literary criticism / theory which developed in Russia in the early twentieth century. The leading members of the Russian Formalism included Boris Eichenbaum , Roman Jacobson , Vladimir Propp , and Viktor Shklovsky . According to Rene' Wellek, the movement sharply emphasizes the difference between literature and life, it rejects the usual biographical, psychological, and sociological explanations for literature. Although the practitioners of this method had diverse way of approaching formalism, the general idea that these critics focused on poetic techniques, language and the structure of literature . This was an attempt at making the study of literature more scientific. They focused on the texts themselves, giving less attention to authorial intent, biographical information, and cultural/historical significance. One of the goals was to distinguish literary language from all other language. One of the key principle...

The poet John Donne once wrote that " no man is an island " and for postmodernists no text is an island. Post modernism, structuralism are all about the connections between texts, including the various ways in which one text references another. There are all kinds of techniques that authors can use in order to highlight these links, including pastiche', parody, quotes, and direct references as well as subtler nods to other material. What these techniques have in common is that they're examples of intertextuality. Julia Kristeva  coined the term "intertextuality" in 1966,explaining that there are two relationships going on whenever we read a text: there's the relationship between us and the author (the horizontal axis) and between the text and other texts (the vertical axis). Its the vertical axis that gives us our definition of intertextuality; still, both axes emphasize that no text exists in a bubble and that we need to recognize how existing works s...

Ferdinand De Saussure was a Swiss linguist whose ideas laid the foundation for many of the significant developments in linguistics in the twentieth century. He is considered as the 'Father of modern Linguistics' and his work laid the foundation for the approach known as structuralism. One of the hallmark of the structuralist theory is that nothing can be understood in isolation. He is also the founding father of semiotics. Semiotics is the systematic study of sign system or process also known as semiosis. Saussure's most influential work, a book " Course in General Linguistic " was published posthumously in 1961 by his former students on the basis of notes taken from Saussure's lecture at The University of Geneva. S aussure has proposed many concepts such as distinction between langue and parole,semiotic study of signified and signifier, synchronic and diachronic view of language and paradigmatic v/s syntagmatic relation of language.           Langue and Pa...

            Introduction Writing is a complex skill which most students actually need in order to successfully go through college. Because everything is based on writing during academic years, a student who possesses good writing skills will automatically do better at everything. Exams essays, assignments, and so on. As a teacher, our role is to help each and every student improve themselves, acquire new skills, and become a better individual by the end of their time spent in college. Even though one cannot improve their skills without working hard and having a desire to make progress, a teacher can definitely involved and make huge differences concerning this method.            Techniques for developing writing skill      Here are some of the important techniques of how to motivate and develop writing skill of the students. 1. Encourage good writing and penalize poor writing. If we want perfo...

Reader Response Criticism revolves around the phenomena 'Respond to Reading'. The theory identifies the reader as a significant and active agent who is responsible to impart the real meaning of the text by interpreting it. A successful reader response critic does not just respond to a text - anyone can do that - but analyzes his or her response, or the response of others. Tyson describes in critical theory today the five types of reader response theory the difference lie within each. These theories are- 1. Traditional Theory - This theory championed  by Louise Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgan Iser analyses the transaction between the text and the reader. Both are seen as equally important. They consider that as a readers read the text acts as a stimulus to which he responds feelings, associations and memories which all influence the way the reader make sense of the text. 2. Affective Stylistics- This theory championed by Stanley Fish examines a text in a 'slow motion...