CriticaLink | General Introduction

CriticaLink is a web-based resource designed by to encourage students to explore the territory shared by literary criticism, literary theory, and philosophy. CriticaLink provides

• reading guides for some of the texts that have made significant contributions to contemporary literary theory
• exercises to build skills in literary-critical analysis
• information on the lives of principal philosophers and theorists
• historical backgrounds for developments in philosophy and literary theory
• discussion questions
• recommendations for further reading

The author of this site is John David Zuern, Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

Reading Guides
The Reading Guides are intended to supplement, not replace, a careful reading of the original text. They are are not necessarily meant to be read through in their entirety, but to assist readers with sections they find particularly interesting and/or challenging.

The Guides are made up of reading notes that provide a running commentary on the text. Whenever possible, divisions in the reading guides follow logical divisions of the text--books, sections, chapters,lines. To assist the user in getting oriented in the text and the guide, each section of the guide begins with a brief quotation of the lines that open the corresponding division in the text.

Terms present a glossary of names and terms that appear in the text. As a way of emphasizing the interrelationships among concepts, definitions in the Terms sections are cross-referenced with terms throughout the available CriticaLink modules.

Brief biographies of the authors appear in the Lives sections.

Times are made up of cross-referenced timelines placing the texts and their authors in historical contexts. Links in the Times sections open up new browser windows that direct users to relevant sections of the CriticaLink site.

The Questions are intended to spur discussion and further investigation into the issues rasied by the texts treated in the Guides.

Resources direct users to further reading in selected print and online sources.

The developer of this site is John Zuern (zuern@hawaii.edu), an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Hawai`i at Manoa and the co-director of the Center for English Studies Technology. The CriticaLink project got underway in March 1998 and is still, alas, in the beginning stages of its development.