Presents the thirteen basic schools of twentieth-century literary theory and criticism in their historical and philosophical contexts. Unlike other introductions to literary criticism, this text explores the philosophical assumptions of each school of criticism and provides a clear methodology for writing essays according to each school's beliefs and tenets.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
1 Defining Criticism, Theory, and Literature
Listening to a Conversation
Eavesdropping on a Literature Classroom
Can a Text Have More Than One Interpretation?
How to Become a Literary Critic
What is Literary Criticism?
What is Literary Theory?
Making Meaning from Text
The Reading Process and Literary Theory
What is Literature?
Literature Theory and the Definition of Literature
The Function of Literature and Literary Theory
Beginning the Formal Study of Literature
2 A Historical Survey of Literary Theory
Plato (C. 427 – 347 B.C.E.)
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E)
Horace (65-8 B.C.E.)
Longinus (First Century C.E.)
Plotinus (204-270 C.E.)
Dante Alighiere (1265-1321)
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)
Sir Philip Sydney ((1554-1586)
John Dryden (1631-1700)
Joseph Addison (1672-1719)
Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
Perce Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893)
Matthew Arnold (18822-1888)
Henry James (1843-1916)
Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-175)
Modern Literary Criticism
3 Russian Formalism and New Criticism
Russian Formalism
Bridging the Gap Between Russian Formalism and New Criticism
Applying Russian Formalism to a Literary Text
New Criticism
Historical Development
Assumptions
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay “The Formalists Critics, Cleanth Brooks
4 Reader-Oriented Criticism
Historical Development
I.A. Richards
Louise M. Rosenblatt
Assumptions
Methodology
Structuralism
Phenomenology
Hans Robert Jauss
Wolfgang Iser
Subjective Criticism
Norman Holland
David Bleich
A Two-Step Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: “The Case for Reader-Response Analysis,” Stanley Fish
5 Modernity and Postmodernism: Structuralism and Deconstruction
Modernity
Poststructuralism and Postmodernism
Modernity and Modernism
Structuralism: Its Historical Development Pre-Sausseren Linguistics
Saussure’s Linguistic Revolution
The Structure of Language
Langue and Parole
Saussure’s Redefinition of a Word
Assumptions of Structuralism
Methodologies of Structuralism
Claude Levi-Strauss
Roland Barthes
Vladimir Propp and Narratology
Tvetan Todorov and Gerard Genette
Jonathan Culler
A Model of Interpretation
From Structuralism to Poststructalism: Deconstruction
Deconstruction: Its Historical Development
Deconstruction: Its Beginnings
Derrida’s Starting Place: Structuralism
Derrida’s Interpretation of Saussure’s Sign
Assumptions of Deconstruction Transcendental Signified
Logocentrism
Binary Oppositions
Phonocentrism
Metaphysics of Presence
Methodology Acknowledging Binary Operations in Western Thought
Arche-writing
Supplementation
Differance
Deconstructive Suppositions for Textual Analysis
Deconstructive: A New Reading Strategy
American Deconstructionists
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay “What Is Criticism?” Roland Barthes
Critical Essay “Convention and Meaning” Jonathan Culler
6 Psychoanalytic Criticism
Historical Development
Sigmund Freud
Model of the Human Psyche: Dynamic Model
Economic Model
Typographical Models
Freud’s Pre-Oedipal Development Phase
The Oedipus, Castration, and Electra Complexes
The Significance of Dreams
Literature and Psychoanalysis
Carl G. Jung
Northrop Frye
Jacques Lacan
Lacan’s Model of the Human Psyche
Lacan and Textual Analysis
The Present State of Psychoanalytic Criticism
Assumptions
Methodologies
Questions and Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,” C.G. Jung
7 Feminism
Historical Development
Virginia Woolf
Simone de Beauvoir
Kate Millet
Feminism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s
Elaine Showalter
Geographical Strains of Feminism
American
French
Present-day Feminist Criticisms
Ecofeminism
Assumptions
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: “Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism,” Annette Kolodny
8 Marxism
Historical Development
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
Russia and Marxism
Georg Lukaes
The Frankfurt School
Antonio Gramsci
Louis Althusser
Marxist Theorists Today
Assumptions
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” Raymond Williams
9 Cultural Poetics or New Historicism
A New-Critical Literature
Old Historicism
The New Historicism
Historical Development
Cultural Materialism
New Historicism
Assumptions
Michael Foucault
Clifford Geertz
Text, History, and Interpretation
What Cultural Poetics Rejects
What Cultural Poetics Does and Accepts
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: Arthur Kinney
10 Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism: “The Empire Writes Back”
Historical Development of Postcolonialism
Assumptions of Postcolonialism
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Response
Critical Essay: “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
11 African-American Criticism
Historical Development, Assumptions, and Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Critical Essay: “Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times,” Henry Louis Gates Jr.
12 Queer Theory: Gay and Lesbian Criticism
Historical Development and Assumptions
Queer Critical Theorists
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Response
Critical Essay: “Epistemology of the Closet”
13 Ecocriticism
What is Ecocriticism?
Historical Development
Assumptions
Methodology
Questions for Analysis
Critiques and Responses
Readings on Literary Criticism
“The Formalist Critics” Cleanth Brooks
“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” Jacques Derrida
“Heroic Enthocentrism: The Idea of Universality in Literature” Charles Larson
“Queer Theory” Annamarie Jagose
“John Keats and Nature: An Ecocritical Inquiry” Charles Ngiewih TEKE
Glossary
Credits
Index
