Introduction: Critical Worlds

What is literature and why do we study it? What skills do we need, and how can we apply those skills in other contexts? In the introduction to our textbook, we’ll learn more about how literature has traditionally been defined, how literary analysis functions to support those definitions, and how you can become a literary scholar. We will also briefly preview the critical lenses presented in this book. Finally, we’ll preview and practice literary analysis using a biographical criticism approach to a text.