What the New Critics argued — the poem is an autonomous object, ignore the author's biography and intentions

What Derrida's 'there is nothing outside the text' means for literary criticism — all meaning is textual, context is text

Derrida's assertion implies that all meaning is derived from textual analysis, dismissing external contexts

What Sylvia Plath's confessional poetry does — turns personal suffering into art without flinching from extremity

Transforms personal anguish into poignant artistry, unflinching in its raw intensity

What Barthes means by 'the death of the author' — the reader, not the author, creates meaning

"Author's intent is irrelevant; readers generate text's meaning."

What Whitman's Leaves of Grass celebrates — the democratic self, the body, and the American landscape

Whitman's Leaves of Grass celebrates individualism, physicality, and the American spirit

What Rilke's 'You must change your life' demands — art is not passive contemplation but a call to transformation

Art beckons active change, not mere passive observation

Why Blake is both poet and visual artist — his illuminated printing fused word and image as inseparable

Blake's illuminated printing merged text and imagery, creating inseparable artistic expressions