The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Hardcover) | Released: 01 Dec 1993

This text is a reference designed to serve as an international, encyclopaedic guide to the important figures, schools, and movements in the influential and expanding area of literary theory and criticism. While concentrating on the explosion of contemporary critical and theoretical works, the guide provides a comprehensive historical survey of ideas and individuals ranging from Plato and Aristotle to 20th-century scholars. It includes nearly 200 alphabetically arranged entries on critics and theorists, critical schools and movements, and the critical and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. It also examines developments in other disciplines which have shaped literary theory and criticism. Each entry provides an original and authoritative overview of its subject and includes a selected primary and secondary bibliography. The guide's two indexes - "Names" and "Topics" - should make it easy to locate critics, major terms, and significant concepts discussed within the titled entries. The preface, together with a foreword by Richard Macksey, considers the role and form of theory in literary studies. With coverage of the varied subjects that literary theory and criticism have come to encompass, the Guide should be a valuable resource for scholars, students, and other readers who want essential facts about particular critics and schools. From Booklist With coverage ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Richard Rorty and Edward Said, this work is an overview of major landmarks of criticism from classical antiquity to the present day. Included, in addition to literary critics, are theorists whose affiliation or discipline is not primarily literary studies: philosophers, political theorists, anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. For example, an essay on Hegel appears between those on Hazlitt and Heidegger. The editors state that they shortened the entries on twentieth-century critics in an effort to entice the reader into making selective sorties into earlier entries, earlier in the historical sense. In addition to those figures who have affected literary theory and criticism, the work includes important groups, schools, and movements; major national or ethnic schools of criticism; and theoretical innovations of specific countries and historical periods. The 226 entries are arranged alphabetically so that such entries as Caribbean Theory and Criticism, Chicago Critics, Chinese Theory and Criticism, and Chomsky, Noam appear in that order. Entries on Arabic, African, biblical, feminist, gay, Indian, psychoanalytic, and Russian criticism are joined by essays on film theory, cultural studies, hermeneutics, postmodernism, and stylistics.Each contribution is signed. The authors are literary scholars from leading universities throughout the U.S. and Canada with a few from institutions in other countries. Each entry is followed by at least one bibliography; most have two, a primary and a secondary one. Ample cross-references are noted within entries in small-capital letters. Related references appear at the end of each entry. Quotations are signaled by parenthetical page numbers that refer to works in the bibliographies. The appended material includes a list of contributors with academic affiliations, an index of names, and an index of topics.Histories and anthologies of literary theory and criticism abound, but there are few encyclopedic works that treat critics, schools, and movements in a reference format. This more scholarly work complements Gale's Contemporary Literary Critics, which gives biobibliographic information about modern critics but treats no schools or movements. Another recent work, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms (Univ. of Toronto, 1993), also emphasizes contemporary themes. The Johns Hopkins Guide is an excellent overview with a wider time frame. Academic libraries with strong literature programs,