Editing Literary theory (section)

==Overview<!--linked from 'New Historicism'-->==
One of the fundamental questions of literary theory is "what is [[literature]]?" and "how should or do we read?". Some contemporary theorists and literary scholars believe either that  "literature" cannot be defined or that it can refer to any use of [[language]]. Specific theories are distinguished not only by their methods and conclusions, but even by how they create meaning in a "[[text (literary theory)|text]]". However, some theorists acknowledge that these texts do not have a singular, fixed meaning which is deemed "correct".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sullivan|first=Patrick|date=2002-01-01|title="Reception Moments," Modern Literary Theory, and the Teaching of Literature|jstor=40012241|journal=Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy|volume=45|issue=7|pages=568–577}}</ref>

Since theorists of literature often draw on very heterogeneous traditions of [[Continental philosophy]] and the [[philosophy of language]], any classification of their approaches is only an approximation. There are many types of literary theory, which take different approaches to texts. Broad schools of theory that have historically been important include historical and [[biographical criticism]], [[New Criticism]], [[formalism (literature)|formalism]], [[Russian formalism]], and [[structuralism]], [[post-structuralism]], [[Marxism]] or [[historical materialism]], [[feminism]] and [[French feminism]], [[post-colonialism]], [[new historicism]], [[deconstruction]], [[reader-response criticism]], [[narratology]] and [[Psychoanalytic literary criticism|psychoanalytic]] criticism.