This course helps you understand this and takes you through the methods and practices that belong to this discipline. You will learn of major critical thinkers who shaped the ways in which literary texts are now studied and those who contested the boundaries set up around the discipline in the 21^st century. This course will help you understand the role of theory and ways of seeing in literature and how the landscape of literary practices have evolved and changed over time. We study this through the broad themes of language, identity and culture. What is an author? What is a literary object? How is a story told? See how different theories and times have responded to these formative questions.