Alice Lock discusses literary criticism and explores how to understand literature beyond the scope of school academics. This leads to questions over why certain authors or texts are considered more valuable than other, and indeed, assessing the very purpose of literature.

For those interested in further exploration of this area:

- Aristotle’s Poetics is super easy to read and a great start.

- Barthes’ essay ‘Death of the Author’ is classic

- Saussure ‘Course in General Linguistics’

- Rivkin and Ryan’s ‘Anthology of Theory’ is a great starting point for people looking to get a wide view of theory as it exists.

- Cixous’ ‘Le rire de la méduse’ (Laugh of the Medusa) is an ideologically central and very beautiful account of écriture féminine

- If the Victorian theory mentioned interests you, then Ruskin and Pater are the classics there

- Terry Eagleton is a very famous and well regarded Marxist critic, with a colloquial and exciting style