Yale School of Criticism

The Yale School of Criticism was a group of literary scholars in the 1950s and 1960s who focused on analyzing literature by exploring its language, structure, and cultural context rather than just its themes or author’s biography. They emphasized the importance of close reading and understanding the text itself, seeing literature as a complex system of symbols and meanings. Their approach shifted literary studies toward examining how texts work internally, influencing modern literary theory and criticism by highlighting formal techniques and interconnected meanings within a work.