Theory, Culture

This combination of three concepts is an extension of literary theory

Prelude
One may begin by asking what is 'literary theory'? The answer would be : the collective attempt by scholars who mostly began with the study of literary works, to spell out in clear-cut terms the biases or the predilections with which they actually explained those literary texts. In doing this work of spelling-out, scholars (naturally) drew upon the insights provided by scholars working in other fields such as philosophy, psychology or history.The final shape in which literary theory makes its appearance is a set of theories with different names such as Russian Formalism, Structuralism, New Criticism, etc.

The above is a very brief description of a very wide and still-evolving field.

Just note in the above passage that we have mentioned scholars who were really 'literary critics', as we would call them today. The category, literary critic, itself needs to be probed because 'literature' as a category of writing should be seen as having emerged through a certain set of circumstances. So 'literary critic' is a term that arises due to a combination of factors. What you need to be clearly aware of, when learning of literary theory,is that the word 'literature' itself must come under the scanner.