Systematic study of the nature of literature
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis.[1] Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, moral philosophy, social philosophy, and interdisciplinary themes relevant to how people interpret meaning.[1] In the humanities in modern academia, the latter style of literary scholarship is an offshoot of post-structuralism.[2] Consequently, the word theory became an umbrella term for scholarly approaches to reading texts, some of which are informed by strands of semiotics, cultural studies, philosophy of language, and continental philosophy.