Death of Critical Approaches: Towards Aesthetics of Literature

This paper explores the shifting landscape of literary criticism, tracing the decline of traditional frameworks—such as formalism, structuralism, and historicism—in favor of a renewed aesthetic engagement with literature. This research aims to investigate how and why critical approaches have lost prominence in literary discourse and to examine the alternative modes of interpretation emerging in their place. In response to this critical turning point, the paper introduces a speculative interpretive model termed resonant aesthetics. This emerging approach foregrounds the vibrational relationship between reader and text, where meaning arises not through analytical dissection but through intuitive, affective, and atmospheric immersion. The findings suggest that contemporary literary studies increasingly prioritize emotional resonance, experiential presence, and sensory perception, signaling a paradigm shift in how literature is valued and understood. Resonant aesthetics, as proposed in this paper, offers a new methodological framework for engaging with texts—one that embraces the ephemeral and the ineffable as integral to literary meaning. Ultimately, the paper argues for an expanded conception of literary criticism that revitalizes aesthetics as a primary mode of understanding in the 21st century.