Literary Theory & Criticism

Talking “Too Muchness” with Writer Rachel Vorona Cote

A few weeks ago, I held Le Salon’s first ever author event with Rachel Vorona Cote to discuss her 2020 book Too Much: How Victorian...

That Creepy Feeling You Get with a Spooky Book

Why does somethings seem scary? Read about Freud's theory of the uncanny to understand how writers and movies manipulate our expectations.

Getting Serious About Humour!

It may seem like it removes the funny ha-ha part of humour to talk about why we laugh, but there is a good reason to take a closer look:...

Book Diversity in Canadian Literature

Traditionally Canadian Literature, or CanLit, has highlighted voices of European settlers, been divided along English versus French...

Filling the Literary Gaps: English Female Writers 1750 - 1915

Not Just Jane: Rediscovering Seven Amazing Women Writers Who Transformed British Literature (2016) by Shelley DeWees is a delightful...

Reviewing One of the First English Novels

How do you review a book that is 300 years old? The grammar, punctuation, and narrative structure are not like anything we see in today's...

Finding Their Voice: The Female Bildungsroman

"Bildungsroman" is a German word meaning novel of education or formation. The term has become a literary category for written works whose...

Reader-Response Theory: Putting the "You" Back into Literary Criticism!

When diving into literary criticism, I always encourage people to start with reader-response theory because it is something most people...

Distance Learning During Covid-19: Teaching Classic Literature to your Teen

Back to school this year looks a lot different for many students with parents having to step into roles traditionally filled by their...

Western Literary Theory in 500 Words

Don’t let your eyes glaze over! These bullets distill the complex types of literary criticism. Not only have you likely already heard of...