Literature I / Five Disciplines and Their Questions
Practice question · Multiple choice

Literary theory and literary criticism are both concerned with interpretation, but they have distinct criteria for being wrong. What follows from this distinction when a scholar's claim is challenged?

Hints
  1. What kind of evidence is each discipline answerable to when making a claim?
  2. Does a general claim about how literature functions depend on only one specific book?
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D. A theoretical claim can be undermined by an anomaly in any literary tradition

Why

Confusing the two confuses their scopes: criticism answers strictly to a specific text, whereas theory makes general claims answerable to counter-examples anywhere. Textual errors refute editorial choices, not theoretical models.

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