A recent approach to the analysis of the construction of different schools of literary criticism and cultural theory, which has attracted a vast number of intelligentsia in the human sciences, is based on a philosophically oriented theory that brings into consideration the philosophical bases and backgrounds of literary criticism. The present seminar seeks to argue for a theoretical approach based on which literary criticism is first studied within the context of the philosophical doctrines and not as a self-contained area of study. Hence, literary criticism in this approach is to be examined within the philosophical backgrounds that produce it and not outside of it. The argument of the present seminar thus moves from a matter of mere criticism to a question in critical philosophy. Whereas literary criticism has been always thought of in terms of the toolboxes of the act of criticism it provides, the present seminar attempts to link it to its philosophical backgrounds. Hence, there is here a move from our general understanding of literary criticism to a critical investigation into both the philosophical context out of which it emerges and the philosophical hints it might produce. The schools of literary criticism that are discussed in association with their philosophical backgrounds in the present study include Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Cultural Studies, Post-colonial and Transnational Studies, as well as psychoanalytical and phenomenological approaches
