This is a fully online unit which introduces students to the key tenets of a selection of modern critical theories, including New Criticism, Structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Deconstruction and Postcolonialism. At the completion of the unit students will be able to appreciate the interdependence of these theoretical modes, as well as their application and their limitations for the study of English. This unit will enable students who are unfamiliar with critical theory to grasp the fundamental content of six of the most influential modes of analysis of the twentieth-century, and to have practice in applying these theories to texts.