Literary theory provides tools and principles for understanding literature. It examines the relationship between authors and their works, and how elements like gender, class, and history influence interpretation. Literary theory also considers genre evolution and formal literary structures. Recent theory explores how culture shapes texts more than individual authors, and how texts shape culture in turn. Literary theory draws from fields like linguistics, philosophy, and psychology to become an interdisciplinary study of culture through texts. Different theories rise and fall in popularity within literary studies.
This document provides an overview of literary theory. It discusses how literary theory aims to reveal what literature can mean by describing the underlying principles and tools used to interpret literature. The document outlines several major theoretical approaches including formalism, New Criticism, Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, new historicism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies. It explains how these theories have shaped the interpretation of literature and expanded literary studies into a broader field of cultural theory.
This book review summarizes Italo Calvino's collection of essays on "the literature machine." Calvino explores the combinatorial possibilities of narrative structures and compares literature to an endless game of chess. He refers to this mechanism as "ars combinatoria." Calvino sees literature as situated between its historical conditions and linguistic conditions. The essays also examine problems of literary ontology, genres, levels of literary reality, and the relationship between literature, language, philosophy, and politics. The review concludes that Calvino's interpretations of classic authors provide valuable insights for history of structuralism by applying structural approaches to pre-structuralist texts.
This document discusses poetics as a system in literary history. It argues that poetics, or the theory of genres, often exhibited a tendency toward systemization in different periods. Poetic theory aimed both to elucidate the nature of poetry as a whole and to propose theories of genres or species. This dual purpose led poetic theory to organize genres according to principles derived from interpreting poetry, establishing intellectual orders. These systems provided writers conceptual frameworks and delimited their options. A system exists in literary history when no element can be understood in isolation from the whole it is part of.
This document provides an overview of several literary theories:
Formalist theory focuses only on the language and elements of the text without considering context. New historicism views history broadly and sees texts as products of social constructs rather than just backdrops. Archetypal criticism sees recurring mythic patterns and archetypes influencing literature. Reader response theory examines how readers interpret and make meaning from texts. Race theory analyzes representations of race/ethnicity and their social implications. Marxist, feminist, and gender/sexual orientation theories view art and literature as political and examine themes of power structures, gender roles, and sexual orientation.
Robert Musil's other postmodernism, by M. FreedMariane Farias
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This document provides an analysis of Robert Musil's engagement with philosophical modernism through his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften and his concept of "Essayismus". The author argues that Musil critiques philosophical modernism's tendency toward subject-centered reason and certainty, and develops Essayismus as a discursive alternative that reimagines modernity without relying on the self-privileging of modern philosophy. Positioning Musil within debates about postmodernism, the author contends that Musil's work points to a nonmodern postmodernism distinct from typical postmodern critiques that aim to overcome or destabilize philosophical modernism.
1. The document reviews Jonathan Culler's book "Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction" which provides a concise overview of key concepts and approaches in literary theory.
2. Literary theory examines the concept of "literariness" and how theories of representation relate to theories of reality. It has applications across various academic and professional fields.
3. Culler outlines the major areas, topics, and themes that constitute different approaches to literary theory in an accessible way for readers new to the subject. He examines concepts like structural linguistics, narrative theory, speech-act theory, deconstruction, and theories of subjectivity.
The document discusses the development of literary theories from structuralism to poststructuralism. It begins by explaining structuralism, which emerged in the early 20th century and viewed literature as an autonomous structure. Key theories included Russian formalism, New Criticism, and various forms of structuralism. In later developments, structuralism began to be rejected, and poststructuralist theories emerged that moved beyond analyzing just the text's structure. Poststructuralist theories include postmodernism, postcolonialism, and deconstruction. Structuralism and poststructuralism can both be used to analyze classic and modern literature.
21 3-a topological approach to reading practices in theBorislav Dimitrov
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A Topological Approach to Reading Practices in the Digital Age: Topological Reading and Drawing as Topological Reading
Draft - Part II
Borislav Dimitrov
This document provides an overview of literary theory. It discusses how literary theory aims to reveal what literature can mean by describing the underlying principles and tools used to interpret literature. The document outlines several major theoretical approaches including formalism, New Criticism, Marxism, structuralism, poststructuralism, new historicism, feminist theory, queer theory, and cultural studies. It explains how these theories have shaped the interpretation of literature and expanded literary studies into a broader field of cultural theory.
This book review summarizes Italo Calvino's collection of essays on "the literature machine." Calvino explores the combinatorial possibilities of narrative structures and compares literature to an endless game of chess. He refers to this mechanism as "ars combinatoria." Calvino sees literature as situated between its historical conditions and linguistic conditions. The essays also examine problems of literary ontology, genres, levels of literary reality, and the relationship between literature, language, philosophy, and politics. The review concludes that Calvino's interpretations of classic authors provide valuable insights for history of structuralism by applying structural approaches to pre-structuralist texts.
This document discusses poetics as a system in literary history. It argues that poetics, or the theory of genres, often exhibited a tendency toward systemization in different periods. Poetic theory aimed both to elucidate the nature of poetry as a whole and to propose theories of genres or species. This dual purpose led poetic theory to organize genres according to principles derived from interpreting poetry, establishing intellectual orders. These systems provided writers conceptual frameworks and delimited their options. A system exists in literary history when no element can be understood in isolation from the whole it is part of.
This document provides an overview of several literary theories:
Formalist theory focuses only on the language and elements of the text without considering context. New historicism views history broadly and sees texts as products of social constructs rather than just backdrops. Archetypal criticism sees recurring mythic patterns and archetypes influencing literature. Reader response theory examines how readers interpret and make meaning from texts. Race theory analyzes representations of race/ethnicity and their social implications. Marxist, feminist, and gender/sexual orientation theories view art and literature as political and examine themes of power structures, gender roles, and sexual orientation.
Robert Musil's other postmodernism, by M. FreedMariane Farias
Â
This document provides an analysis of Robert Musil's engagement with philosophical modernism through his novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften and his concept of "Essayismus". The author argues that Musil critiques philosophical modernism's tendency toward subject-centered reason and certainty, and develops Essayismus as a discursive alternative that reimagines modernity without relying on the self-privileging of modern philosophy. Positioning Musil within debates about postmodernism, the author contends that Musil's work points to a nonmodern postmodernism distinct from typical postmodern critiques that aim to overcome or destabilize philosophical modernism.
1. The document reviews Jonathan Culler's book "Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction" which provides a concise overview of key concepts and approaches in literary theory.
2. Literary theory examines the concept of "literariness" and how theories of representation relate to theories of reality. It has applications across various academic and professional fields.
3. Culler outlines the major areas, topics, and themes that constitute different approaches to literary theory in an accessible way for readers new to the subject. He examines concepts like structural linguistics, narrative theory, speech-act theory, deconstruction, and theories of subjectivity.
The document discusses the development of literary theories from structuralism to poststructuralism. It begins by explaining structuralism, which emerged in the early 20th century and viewed literature as an autonomous structure. Key theories included Russian formalism, New Criticism, and various forms of structuralism. In later developments, structuralism began to be rejected, and poststructuralist theories emerged that moved beyond analyzing just the text's structure. Poststructuralist theories include postmodernism, postcolonialism, and deconstruction. Structuralism and poststructuralism can both be used to analyze classic and modern literature.
21 3-a topological approach to reading practices in theBorislav Dimitrov
Â
A Topological Approach to Reading Practices in the Digital Age: Topological Reading and Drawing as Topological Reading
Draft - Part II
Borislav Dimitrov
The document reviews Winfried Nöth's second edition of the "Handbuch der Semiotik", which provides an extensive survey of the history, theories, and applications of semiotics. The revised edition contains nearly twice as many chapters as the first edition, with additional coverage of topics like media and cultural semiotics. The review praises Nöth for comprehensively tracing the development of semiotic thought over time and systematically introducing classical theorists while also highlighting emerging areas of study. However, it questions the classification of Julia Kristeva as a classical author of semiotics. Overall, the review assess the handbook as successfully navigating the challenges of structuring such a diverse field through its inclusive yet organized presentation of semiotics
This document outlines a presentation on rhetoric and theory. It discusses rhetoric as a techne or method according to Aristotle. It then examines rhetoric as a discipline and method according to Covino and Jolliffe. Next, it explores rhetoric's historical superficiality and critiques. It analyzes the work of Roland Barthes and Group Mu positioning semiology at rhetoric's deathbed. It also summarizes Bender and Wellbery's concept of "rhetoricality" and the modernist return of rhetoric. Finally, it considers whether post-theory involves characteristics of rhetoricality through entangled theoretical and rhetorical work with reflexivity.
1. The document outlines several modern schools of literary interpretation including textual analysis approaches like Russian Formalism, New Criticism, and Structuralism.
2. It also covers psychological analysis schools like Psychoanalytic Criticism and Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian approaches.
3. Schools of social and political analysis mentioned include Feminist Criticism, Marxist Criticism, New Historicism, and Queer Theory.
1) The Rhetoric of Error from Locke to Kleist analyzes how 18th century philosophical and literary texts from Britain and Germany explore the concept of error as the slippage between language and thought.
2) Through close readings of works by Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Goethe, and Kleist, the book traces how these authors develop ideas of error and how their rhetorical strategies are undercut by error.
3) The review praises the book for its precise and insightful examination of the figure of error in these canonical works through nuanced articulations of textual ambivalence.
The present paper discusses one of Pinterâs plays, The Birthday Party, in the light of the notion of antihumanism as proposed by Foucault, Althusser, and Freud. Arguing that an important aspect of Harold Pinterâs plays is the description of how people are forced into an antihuman state in which they have no opportunity to show and practice their individuality and free will, the present research applies Foucault to see how antihumanism is created through politics, applies Althusser to see it coming through ideology, and applies Freud to find how it comes through psychological mechanisms. Thus, all through the research, Foucaultâs notions of disindividualization and institutionalization, Althusserâs notions of Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses, and Freudâs notions of id-ego-superego and defense mechanism act as the theoretical framework to discuss how antihumanism is created in the course of the play.
The present research aims to study Mitchell (2004) Cloud Atlas from a narratological point of view for its generic hybridity which makes it a significant work of postmodern literature. David Stephen Mitchell (1969) is one of Britainâs foremost contemporary writers who won prominent literary prizes including 2004 and 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. This research analyzes the novelâs narrative style and particular conventions which lead to a certain genre to investigate the implications and their relation to reality. It tries to unsettle the following questions: Are there any significant elements of dystopian science fiction in the novel? If yes, what are the political, philosophical, and moral implications of such categorization? To answer the questions narratological approach particularly genre criticism is applied to the novel. After the "Introduction", in the "Discussion" section, key words are introduced and defined; the elements of dystopian science fiction are searched for in the novel; and the implications of those elements will be discussed. In the "Conclusions" the genre and its ontological significance will be touched upon. This article shows that Cloud Atlas is a science fiction as it depicts a future advanced in technology, economy, health, transportation, and communication. Also the dystopian attitude is dominant because the pictured world has failed to consider societal and ethical issues and for its capitalism, genetic manipulation, and ignorance of and towards human and humanity. The ontology of the story has its own kind of reality whose characteristics can be generalized to the real world out of the novel. The issues fictionalized in the novel have roots in the present time problems of the world. It is concluded that the novel tries to warn people and the ontological solutions given to these problems are considered to be useful in the reality. Mitchellâs dystopian world in "An Orison of Sonmi-451" is not the hopeless end of everything. He thinks that there is a chance to save the world by reading about other societies and creating a balance between nature and science.
This document provides a summary and review of Roland Barthes' 1977 book "Image Music Text". It discusses key concepts from Barthes' work such as the distinction between denotation and connotation in interpreting images and texts. It also summarizes Barthes' interest in structural analysis of narratives and comparison of narrative structures to sentence structures in linguistics. The review analyzes Barthes' focus on identifying basic units of analysis for constructing narratives and moving them forward in time through descriptions and causal relationships between events.
Post-structuralism emerged as a reaction against structuralism in 1960s France. It rejects the idea that there are absolute truths or facts about the world that can be discovered. Post-structuralism views meaning as dependent on the individual reader rather than being inherent in a text or determined by the author's intent. It emphasizes that meaning is unstable and that concepts like identity are socially constructed. Key figures like Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes developed theories like deconstruction that aimed to expose assumptions and destabilize perceived hierarchies in opposing concepts.
This document provides an overview of various approaches to literary criticism and analysis. It discusses formalist, reader response, new historicist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, archetypal, feminist, existentialist, and postcolonial approaches. For each approach, it outlines key concepts, principles, and advantages and disadvantages. The overall document serves as a primer on different theoretical lenses through which literary works can be examined and interpreted.
The document discusses several key concepts from post-structuralism and how they relate to writers, readers, and meaning. It argues that 1) writers are constituted by their texts and the social meanings embedded within language, rather than being original owners of meaning, 2) readers are active interpreters of texts rather than passive receivers of meaning from an author, and 3) meaning is unstable, deferred, and arises from the differences between signs rather than being directly present or fully contained within any single sign.
This document discusses literary criticism and theory. It covers Modernism and Postmodernism as literary periods. It also discusses the contributions of Henry James and Mikhail Bakhtin to literary criticism. For Henry James, it summarizes his emphasis on realism in fiction and his theory of the novel presented in "The Art of Fiction." For Bakhtin, it outlines his concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, polyphony, and carnivalism and how they apply to the novel form. The document concludes by posing questions for students about these topics.
Derrida developed the concept of deconstruction as a method of textual analysis that questions traditional philosophical assumptions about language and meaning. Deconstruction examines the inherent instability in all texts created through language and seeks to uncover multiple interpretations by challenging hierarchical oppositions such as speech over writing. While controversial, deconstruction had a significant influence on literary theory by promoting a fluid, open understanding of texts unconstrained by authorial intent or fixed meanings.
Post-structuralism emerged in the 1960s as a response to structuralism. It focuses on examining sources of meaning beyond the author, such as readers and cultural norms. Key figures include Roland Barthes, who argued the author is not the prime source of a text's meaning, and Jacques Derrida, who proposed theoretical limitations to structuralism. Post-structuralism differs from structuralism in its philosophical origins, emphasis on language as unstable rather than orderly, and aim to question assumptions rather than establish truth. Deconstruction examines how meanings play in language and change over contexts to understand silenced voices.
This document defines several common literary terms and concepts. It explains that terminology is the study of terms and their specific meanings in different contexts. It then provides definitions for various literary theories, forms of analysis, and concepts including canon, dialogic works, diegesis versus mimesis, discourse, hermeneutics, intertextuality, monologic works, narratology, and semiotics. The definitions cover terminology from structuralist linguistics, post-structuralist theory, and other approaches to analyzing and interpreting literature.
The Russian Formalists were a group of writers in the early 20th century who focused on analyzing the form and technique of literature rather than its historical or philosophical context. Major figures included Victor Shklovsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Roman Jakobson. Jakobson analyzed the different functions of language and how they are used in different genres of poetry. New Criticism originated in the 1920s and advocated an aesthetic, text-focused approach to criticism pioneered by I.A. Richards and John Crowe Ransom. While both were formalist schools, the Russian Formalists took a more theoretical approach while New Critics emphasized the practical close reading of individual texts.
Reader-response theory focuses on the reader's experience when interpreting a text and recognizes that readers play an active role in constructing meaning. Formalism examines a text as a self-contained object, analyzing elements like structure, form, and literary devices without consideration of outside contexts. Structuralism studies the inherent features and underlying structures of a text to reduce emphasis on historical context.
Academic writing is furthermore utilized for distributions that are perused by educators and scientists or introduced at meetings. Here might be a rundown of reports where scholarly composing is utilized.
This document discusses various theoretical approaches to literature. It begins by defining literary theory and criticism, noting that literary theory analyzes philosophical and methodological premises of criticism, while criticism focuses on analyzing, interpreting and evaluating primary literary texts.
It then outlines four basic approaches to literature: text-oriented, author-oriented, reader-oriented, and context-oriented. Text-oriented approaches examine the material aspects of texts, including language analysis. Author-oriented approaches emphasize connections between artistic works and their creator's biography. Context-oriented approaches consider the historical and cultural context surrounding literary works.
The document provides examples of methods within each approach, such as formalism and structuralism for text-oriented, and biographical criticism for
Literary theory and schools of criticismJohn Hosea
Â
Literary theory provides different lenses or perspectives for analyzing and discussing literature and culture. Some of the major schools of literary theory mentioned in the document include formalism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, reader-response criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, new historicism, post-colonial criticism, feminist criticism, and critical race theory. The document provides a brief overview of some of the key thinkers and concepts within these different schools of literary theory.
Post-structuralism emerged in the late 1960s as a theoretical approach that questioned structuralism. It was influenced by French theorists including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes. These theorists revealed how language, concepts, and social structures depend on elements they seek to exclude. Derrida in particular showed how meaning is unstable and dependent on difference rather than a direct link between signifier and signified. Postmodernism built on post-structuralism by further questioning truth claims and grand narratives. Theorists examined how power shapes knowledge and marginalizes groups.
This document provides an overview of literary theory. It discusses how literary theory aims to reveal what literature can mean by describing the underlying principles and tools used to interpret literature. The document outlines several major theoretical approaches including formalism/New Criticism, Marxism, structuralism/poststructuralism, new historicism, gender studies, and cultural studies. It explains that literary theory has become more interdisciplinary and now incorporates cultural theory by analyzing various human discourses as constructed systems of knowledge.
The document discusses the key differences between literary criticism and literary theory. Literary criticism involves the practical study and interpretation of specific literary works, while literary theory is a more general and systematic study of the nature of literature and methods of analyzing it. The document also outlines some of the major cultural movements in the West that shaped approaches to literature, including the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernism, and Postmodernism. Different schools of literary theory may interpret the same text in different and sometimes conflicting ways based on their perspectives and commitments.
The document reviews Winfried Nöth's second edition of the "Handbuch der Semiotik", which provides an extensive survey of the history, theories, and applications of semiotics. The revised edition contains nearly twice as many chapters as the first edition, with additional coverage of topics like media and cultural semiotics. The review praises Nöth for comprehensively tracing the development of semiotic thought over time and systematically introducing classical theorists while also highlighting emerging areas of study. However, it questions the classification of Julia Kristeva as a classical author of semiotics. Overall, the review assess the handbook as successfully navigating the challenges of structuring such a diverse field through its inclusive yet organized presentation of semiotics
This document outlines a presentation on rhetoric and theory. It discusses rhetoric as a techne or method according to Aristotle. It then examines rhetoric as a discipline and method according to Covino and Jolliffe. Next, it explores rhetoric's historical superficiality and critiques. It analyzes the work of Roland Barthes and Group Mu positioning semiology at rhetoric's deathbed. It also summarizes Bender and Wellbery's concept of "rhetoricality" and the modernist return of rhetoric. Finally, it considers whether post-theory involves characteristics of rhetoricality through entangled theoretical and rhetorical work with reflexivity.
1. The document outlines several modern schools of literary interpretation including textual analysis approaches like Russian Formalism, New Criticism, and Structuralism.
2. It also covers psychological analysis schools like Psychoanalytic Criticism and Freudian, Jungian, and Lacanian approaches.
3. Schools of social and political analysis mentioned include Feminist Criticism, Marxist Criticism, New Historicism, and Queer Theory.
1) The Rhetoric of Error from Locke to Kleist analyzes how 18th century philosophical and literary texts from Britain and Germany explore the concept of error as the slippage between language and thought.
2) Through close readings of works by Locke, Leibniz, Kant, Goethe, and Kleist, the book traces how these authors develop ideas of error and how their rhetorical strategies are undercut by error.
3) The review praises the book for its precise and insightful examination of the figure of error in these canonical works through nuanced articulations of textual ambivalence.
The present paper discusses one of Pinterâs plays, The Birthday Party, in the light of the notion of antihumanism as proposed by Foucault, Althusser, and Freud. Arguing that an important aspect of Harold Pinterâs plays is the description of how people are forced into an antihuman state in which they have no opportunity to show and practice their individuality and free will, the present research applies Foucault to see how antihumanism is created through politics, applies Althusser to see it coming through ideology, and applies Freud to find how it comes through psychological mechanisms. Thus, all through the research, Foucaultâs notions of disindividualization and institutionalization, Althusserâs notions of Repressive State Apparatus and Ideological State Apparatuses, and Freudâs notions of id-ego-superego and defense mechanism act as the theoretical framework to discuss how antihumanism is created in the course of the play.
The present research aims to study Mitchell (2004) Cloud Atlas from a narratological point of view for its generic hybridity which makes it a significant work of postmodern literature. David Stephen Mitchell (1969) is one of Britainâs foremost contemporary writers who won prominent literary prizes including 2004 and 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction. This research analyzes the novelâs narrative style and particular conventions which lead to a certain genre to investigate the implications and their relation to reality. It tries to unsettle the following questions: Are there any significant elements of dystopian science fiction in the novel? If yes, what are the political, philosophical, and moral implications of such categorization? To answer the questions narratological approach particularly genre criticism is applied to the novel. After the "Introduction", in the "Discussion" section, key words are introduced and defined; the elements of dystopian science fiction are searched for in the novel; and the implications of those elements will be discussed. In the "Conclusions" the genre and its ontological significance will be touched upon. This article shows that Cloud Atlas is a science fiction as it depicts a future advanced in technology, economy, health, transportation, and communication. Also the dystopian attitude is dominant because the pictured world has failed to consider societal and ethical issues and for its capitalism, genetic manipulation, and ignorance of and towards human and humanity. The ontology of the story has its own kind of reality whose characteristics can be generalized to the real world out of the novel. The issues fictionalized in the novel have roots in the present time problems of the world. It is concluded that the novel tries to warn people and the ontological solutions given to these problems are considered to be useful in the reality. Mitchellâs dystopian world in "An Orison of Sonmi-451" is not the hopeless end of everything. He thinks that there is a chance to save the world by reading about other societies and creating a balance between nature and science.
This document provides a summary and review of Roland Barthes' 1977 book "Image Music Text". It discusses key concepts from Barthes' work such as the distinction between denotation and connotation in interpreting images and texts. It also summarizes Barthes' interest in structural analysis of narratives and comparison of narrative structures to sentence structures in linguistics. The review analyzes Barthes' focus on identifying basic units of analysis for constructing narratives and moving them forward in time through descriptions and causal relationships between events.
Post-structuralism emerged as a reaction against structuralism in 1960s France. It rejects the idea that there are absolute truths or facts about the world that can be discovered. Post-structuralism views meaning as dependent on the individual reader rather than being inherent in a text or determined by the author's intent. It emphasizes that meaning is unstable and that concepts like identity are socially constructed. Key figures like Derrida, Foucault, and Barthes developed theories like deconstruction that aimed to expose assumptions and destabilize perceived hierarchies in opposing concepts.
This document provides an overview of various approaches to literary criticism and analysis. It discusses formalist, reader response, new historicist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, archetypal, feminist, existentialist, and postcolonial approaches. For each approach, it outlines key concepts, principles, and advantages and disadvantages. The overall document serves as a primer on different theoretical lenses through which literary works can be examined and interpreted.
The document discusses several key concepts from post-structuralism and how they relate to writers, readers, and meaning. It argues that 1) writers are constituted by their texts and the social meanings embedded within language, rather than being original owners of meaning, 2) readers are active interpreters of texts rather than passive receivers of meaning from an author, and 3) meaning is unstable, deferred, and arises from the differences between signs rather than being directly present or fully contained within any single sign.
This document discusses literary criticism and theory. It covers Modernism and Postmodernism as literary periods. It also discusses the contributions of Henry James and Mikhail Bakhtin to literary criticism. For Henry James, it summarizes his emphasis on realism in fiction and his theory of the novel presented in "The Art of Fiction." For Bakhtin, it outlines his concepts of dialogism, heteroglossia, polyphony, and carnivalism and how they apply to the novel form. The document concludes by posing questions for students about these topics.
Derrida developed the concept of deconstruction as a method of textual analysis that questions traditional philosophical assumptions about language and meaning. Deconstruction examines the inherent instability in all texts created through language and seeks to uncover multiple interpretations by challenging hierarchical oppositions such as speech over writing. While controversial, deconstruction had a significant influence on literary theory by promoting a fluid, open understanding of texts unconstrained by authorial intent or fixed meanings.
Post-structuralism emerged in the 1960s as a response to structuralism. It focuses on examining sources of meaning beyond the author, such as readers and cultural norms. Key figures include Roland Barthes, who argued the author is not the prime source of a text's meaning, and Jacques Derrida, who proposed theoretical limitations to structuralism. Post-structuralism differs from structuralism in its philosophical origins, emphasis on language as unstable rather than orderly, and aim to question assumptions rather than establish truth. Deconstruction examines how meanings play in language and change over contexts to understand silenced voices.
This document defines several common literary terms and concepts. It explains that terminology is the study of terms and their specific meanings in different contexts. It then provides definitions for various literary theories, forms of analysis, and concepts including canon, dialogic works, diegesis versus mimesis, discourse, hermeneutics, intertextuality, monologic works, narratology, and semiotics. The definitions cover terminology from structuralist linguistics, post-structuralist theory, and other approaches to analyzing and interpreting literature.
The Russian Formalists were a group of writers in the early 20th century who focused on analyzing the form and technique of literature rather than its historical or philosophical context. Major figures included Victor Shklovsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Roman Jakobson. Jakobson analyzed the different functions of language and how they are used in different genres of poetry. New Criticism originated in the 1920s and advocated an aesthetic, text-focused approach to criticism pioneered by I.A. Richards and John Crowe Ransom. While both were formalist schools, the Russian Formalists took a more theoretical approach while New Critics emphasized the practical close reading of individual texts.
Reader-response theory focuses on the reader's experience when interpreting a text and recognizes that readers play an active role in constructing meaning. Formalism examines a text as a self-contained object, analyzing elements like structure, form, and literary devices without consideration of outside contexts. Structuralism studies the inherent features and underlying structures of a text to reduce emphasis on historical context.
Academic writing is furthermore utilized for distributions that are perused by educators and scientists or introduced at meetings. Here might be a rundown of reports where scholarly composing is utilized.
This document discusses various theoretical approaches to literature. It begins by defining literary theory and criticism, noting that literary theory analyzes philosophical and methodological premises of criticism, while criticism focuses on analyzing, interpreting and evaluating primary literary texts.
It then outlines four basic approaches to literature: text-oriented, author-oriented, reader-oriented, and context-oriented. Text-oriented approaches examine the material aspects of texts, including language analysis. Author-oriented approaches emphasize connections between artistic works and their creator's biography. Context-oriented approaches consider the historical and cultural context surrounding literary works.
The document provides examples of methods within each approach, such as formalism and structuralism for text-oriented, and biographical criticism for
Literary theory and schools of criticismJohn Hosea
Â
Literary theory provides different lenses or perspectives for analyzing and discussing literature and culture. Some of the major schools of literary theory mentioned in the document include formalism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, reader-response criticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, new historicism, post-colonial criticism, feminist criticism, and critical race theory. The document provides a brief overview of some of the key thinkers and concepts within these different schools of literary theory.
Post-structuralism emerged in the late 1960s as a theoretical approach that questioned structuralism. It was influenced by French theorists including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Roland Barthes. These theorists revealed how language, concepts, and social structures depend on elements they seek to exclude. Derrida in particular showed how meaning is unstable and dependent on difference rather than a direct link between signifier and signified. Postmodernism built on post-structuralism by further questioning truth claims and grand narratives. Theorists examined how power shapes knowledge and marginalizes groups.
This document provides an overview of literary theory. It discusses how literary theory aims to reveal what literature can mean by describing the underlying principles and tools used to interpret literature. The document outlines several major theoretical approaches including formalism/New Criticism, Marxism, structuralism/poststructuralism, new historicism, gender studies, and cultural studies. It explains that literary theory has become more interdisciplinary and now incorporates cultural theory by analyzing various human discourses as constructed systems of knowledge.
The document discusses the key differences between literary criticism and literary theory. Literary criticism involves the practical study and interpretation of specific literary works, while literary theory is a more general and systematic study of the nature of literature and methods of analyzing it. The document also outlines some of the major cultural movements in the West that shaped approaches to literature, including the Renaissance, Enlightenment, Modernism, and Postmodernism. Different schools of literary theory may interpret the same text in different and sometimes conflicting ways based on their perspectives and commitments.
This document provides an overview of New Historicism and Queer Theory literary theories. It discusses how New Historicism views literary texts as situated within the totality of institutions, practices, and discourses that constitute the culture of a particular time and place. It also acknowledges that both the text and the critic's interpretation are influenced by their unique historical contexts. For Queer Theory, it notes how the term "queer" was originally derogatory but has been reclaimed to identify non-heterosexual lifestyles and areas of study, and discusses how views have evolved from seeing fixed gay/lesbian identities to being more complex and acknowledging a spectrum of diverse experiences.
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and methods for analyzing literature. It has roots in ancient Greece and Rome but emerged as a modern academic discipline in the 1950s influenced by structuralist linguistics. There are many different schools and approaches to literary theory that take different views on defining literature and interpreting texts, including New Criticism, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, and reader-response theory. These schools draw on diverse intellectual traditions and often have conflicting views.
Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and methods of analyzing literature. It has roots in ancient Greece and Rome but modern literary theory emerged in the 1950s under the influence of structural linguistics. There are many schools of literary theory that take different approaches, including New Criticism, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, and reader-response theory. The key differences between theories relate to their priorities, methods, and how they define a text. Literary theory remains an important part of literary scholarship today.
This document provides an overview of the study of literary movements. It begins by defining what a literary movement is, noting that it refers to a group of writers or critics who share similar views, styles, or approaches. It then discusses definitions of literature and its genres. The document distinguishes between literary criticism and literary theory. It provides a brief history of the discipline and its main concerns. It describes some of the key differences between literary schools and theories. Finally, it outlines the main categories of literary theories, including imitative, expressive, and affective theories.
Take the quiz to discover what poem you have been assigned to discus.docxbriankimberly26463
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Take the quiz to discover what poem you have been assigned to discuss this week;
"On Being Brought From Africa to America" By: Phillis Wheatley
2.Look through the critical approaches in the Week 4 lesson, and CHOOSE 2Â that you think could be used to analyze the poem you chose.
Literary Critical Theory:Â
 Interpretive Strategies
1. Historicism considers the literary work in light of "what really happened" during the period reflected in that work. It insists that to understand a piece, we need to understand the author's biography and social background, ideas circulating at the time, and the cultural milieu. Historicism also "finds significance in the ways a particular work resembles or differs from other works of its period and/or genre," and therefore may involve source studies. It may also include examination of philology and linguistics. It is typically a discipline involving impressively extensive research.
2. New Criticism examines the relationships between a text's ideas and its form, "the connection between what a text says and the way it's said." New Critics/Formalists "may find tension, irony, or paradox in this relation, but they usually resolve it into unity and coherence of meaning." New Critics look for patterns of sound, imagery, narrative structure, point of view, and other techniques discernible on close reading of "the work itself." They insist that the meaning of a text should not be confused with the author's intentions nor the text's affective dimension--its effects on the reader. The objective determination as to "how a piece works" can be found through close focus and analysis, rather than through extraneous and erudite special knowledge.
3. Archetypal criticism "traces cultural and psychological 'myths' that shape the meaning of texts." It argues that "certain literary archetypes determine the structure and function of individual literary works," and therefore that literature imitates not the world but rather the "total dream of humankind." Archetypes (recurring images or symbols, patterns, universal experiences) may include motifs such as the quest or the heavenly ascent, symbols such as the apple or snake, or images such as crucifixion--all laden with meaning already when employed in a particular work.Â
4. Psychoanalytic criticism adopts the methods of "reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret what a text really indicates. It argues that "unresolved and sometimes unconscious ambivalences in the author's own life may lead to a disunified literary work," and that the literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Psychoanalytic critics focus on apparent dilemmas and conflicts in a work and "attempt to read an author's own family life and traumas into the actions of their characters," realizing that the psychological material will be expressed indirectly, encoded (similar to dreams) through principles such as "condensation," "displacement," and "symbolism."
5. Femini.
This document provides an overview of literary theory, including definitions, key approaches, and examples. It discusses several influential theoretical movements and thinkers that helped shape the development of literary criticism in the 20th century, such as New Criticism, structuralism, Marxist criticism, reader-response theory, and deconstruction. The document also provides summaries of sample poems to demonstrate how different theoretical lenses can be applied in literary analysis.
This document provides an overview of various schools of literary theory and criticism that have developed over time, including approaches such as Cambridge School, Chicago School, Deconstruction, Feminist criticism, Psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, New Criticism, New Historicism, and Structuralism. It also defines and explains key literary terms and theories used in literary analysis and interpretation.
Literary criticism involves analyzing, interpreting, evaluating, and discussing literature. It examines elements like genre, structure, and value. Literary criticism aims to understand what literature is, what purpose it serves, and what value it possesses. It provides frameworks for interpreting works through considering aspects like historical context, social influences, and symbolic meanings embedded in the text. Different schools of criticism offer various lenses for revealing important aspects of literary works.
Introduction: what is comparative literature Today ?JanviNakum
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Abstract
There have been various definitions of comparative literature, which greatly varies from one scholar to another, but they all agree that it is one of the most modern literary sciences. Throughout the past two decades, new critical theories, such as gender-based criticism, translation studies, deconstruction and Orientalism, have changed approaches to literature and accordingly have had a profound impact on the work of the comparatists.
Sooner or later, anyone who claims to be working in comparative literature has to try and answer the inevitable question : What is it ? The simplest answer is that comparative literature involves the study of texts across cultures, that it is interdisciplinary and that it is concerned with patterns of connection in literature across both time and space.( Bassnett, p.1). "Everywhere there is connection, everywhere there is illustration," as Matthew Arnold puts it. According to Susan Bassnett, everybody who is interested in books is on the path to comparative literature.
Key Arguments
A comparative analysis you should have already read for different prominent writer for instance Chaucer, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Poe, Joyce.
âComparative Literature revolves around the study of literature outside the borders of one particular culture, the study of relations between literature on the one hand and other areas of human expression such as philosophy on the other hand. Critics have also related it to history as it examines the convergence (junction) of different literatures and its historical aspects of influence, considering that Comparative Literature is the essence of the history of literature, beyond the scope of one culture or language
âAnother arguments is there west students of 1960 claimed that comparative literature could be put in single boundaries for comparative literature study, but she says that there is no particular method used for claiming.
âCritics at the end of the twentieth century, in the age of postmodernism, still wrestle with the same questions that were posed more than a century ago :
What is the object of the study in comparative literature?
How can comparison be the objective of anything?
If individual literatures have canon, what might a comparative canon be?
How can be comparatist select what to compare ?
Is comparative literature a discipline? Or is it simply a field of study ?
Introduction: What is comparative Literature Today ?
Susan Bassnett says that most of the people do not start with comparative literature but they end up with it in some way or other. Generally, we, first start reading the text and then we arrive at comparison. I mean to say, we start comparing that text with another that has similarities and dissimilarities. Comparative Literature emerged in 19th century. Comparative Literature is different from national literature, general literature and world literature. It was begun as âLiterature Compareâ in 1860 in Germany.
I hope, it is quite helpful for the beginner to understand the concept of contemporary Literary theory. Students can take the help to study and understand the basics of contemporary literary theory. It includes concise concepts, tenets and components to make the strategic study for competitive examination at one specific study material.
Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. It has existed for as long as literature itself, with important early examples found in the works of Aristotle and Plato from ancient Greece. Literary criticism developed further during the Renaissance and was heavily influenced by Aristotle's Poetics. In the early 20th century, schools like Russian Formalism and New Criticism came to dominate literary study by emphasizing close reading of texts over considerations of authorial intent or biography. Literary theory also grew influential starting in the late 1960s, introducing philosophical and structuralist perspectives. Today, literary criticism incorporates diverse theoretical and historical approaches.
This document discusses approaches to modern literary theories. It begins by providing context on the relationship between literature and literary criticism. It then summarizes A.N. Jeffares' view that understanding literature requires knowledge of both texts and their contexts. The document goes on to categorize modern literary theories into intrinsic theories that emphasize a work's essence and extrinsic theories that examine a work's relationship to the external world. Specific modern theories discussed include formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, psychoanalytic criticism, and Marxism. The document aims to identify and explain these major modern literary theories and their approaches to analyzing texts.
This document provides an overview of New Historicism and the work of Hayden White. It discusses key ideas of New Historicism, such as reading texts in their historical context and acknowledging the role of power and ideology. It outlines White's argument that history involves narrative structures and literary devices like plots and tropes. White identified four potential plot structures (tragic, comic, romantic, ironic) that correspond to four master tropes (metaphor, metonymy, synechdoque, irony). The document examines White's view that historians construct narratives and meanings from raw data through emplotment, rather than objectively representing reality.
This course provides an overview of modern literary theories and methodologies. It will familiarize students with major questions and debates in literary studies from the 19th century onward. Students will gain understanding of theoretical paradigms like New Criticism, structuralism, reader-response theory, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, historicisms, feminism, and post-colonial studies. They will learn to analyze literature through these theoretical lenses and apply concepts in close readings. The course aims to help students appreciate the relevance of theory to literary analysis and discussion.
A Short History of Literary Criticism.pdfWendy Berg
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This document provides an introduction to literary theory and criticism. It discusses the three main approaches to literature - literary history, literary criticism, and literary theory. Literary history takes a diachronic perspective, literary criticism analyzes individual texts synchronically, and literary theory develops general methodologies. The approaches are interrelated and influence each other. Literary criticism combines theoretical analysis with subjective response. It applies theories in practical analysis and can help develop new theories. The document also discusses models of the elements in a literary communication system, including the author, text, reader, and societal context. Different theories focus on different elements.
This document provides a summary of the historical development of literary criticism from antiquity to ancient Greek and Roman critics. It discusses how Plato and Aristotle were early critics who debated the purpose and social value of literature. Aristotle established principles of literary criticism in his Poetics. Other ancient critics mentioned include Horace, who wrote on the different genres of poetry, and Quintilian, whose work Institutio Oratoria addressed rhetoric and recommended authors to study. The document also discusses the literary critic Longinus and his work On the Sublime, which defined sublime literature as reflecting the moral and imaginative power of the writer.
New Criticism was a major literary theory movement of the mid-20th century that advocated for close reading of texts and rejection of biographical or historical context. Key concepts of New Criticism included ambiguity, the intentional fallacy which rejected authorial intent, and the affective fallacy which rejected reader reaction. Prominent figures included I.A. Richards, William K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley, T.S. Eliot, F.R. Leavis, William Empson, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks. New Criticism was criticized for being ahistorical and for isolating texts from their contexts.
Beyond Degrees - Empowering the Workforce in the Context of Skills-First.pptxEduSkills OECD
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IvĂĄn Bornacelly, Policy Analyst at the OECD Centre for Skills, OECD, presents at the webinar 'Tackling job market gaps with a skills-first approach' on 12 June 2024
Chapter wise All Notes of First year Basic Civil Engineering.pptxDenish Jangid
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Chapter wise All Notes of First year Basic Civil Engineering
Syllabus
Chapter-1
Introduction to objective, scope and outcome the subject
Chapter 2
Introduction: Scope and Specialization of Civil Engineering, Role of civil Engineer in Society, Impact of infrastructural development on economy of country.
Chapter 3
Surveying: Object Principles & Types of Surveying; Site Plans, Plans & Maps; Scales & Unit of different Measurements.
Linear Measurements: Instruments used. Linear Measurement by Tape, Ranging out Survey Lines and overcoming Obstructions; Measurements on sloping ground; Tape corrections, conventional symbols. Angular Measurements: Instruments used; Introduction to Compass Surveying, Bearings and Longitude & Latitude of a Line, Introduction to total station.
Levelling: Instrument used Object of levelling, Methods of levelling in brief, and Contour maps.
Chapter 4
Buildings: Selection of site for Buildings, Layout of Building Plan, Types of buildings, Plinth area, carpet area, floor space index, Introduction to building byelaws, concept of sun light & ventilation. Components of Buildings & their functions, Basic concept of R.C.C., Introduction to types of foundation
Chapter 5
Transportation: Introduction to Transportation Engineering; Traffic and Road Safety: Types and Characteristics of Various Modes of Transportation; Various Road Traffic Signs, Causes of Accidents and Road Safety Measures.
Chapter 6
Environmental Engineering: Environmental Pollution, Environmental Acts and Regulations, Functional Concepts of Ecology, Basics of Species, Biodiversity, Ecosystem, Hydrological Cycle; Chemical Cycles: Carbon, Nitrogen & Phosphorus; Energy Flow in Ecosystems.
Water Pollution: Water Quality standards, Introduction to Treatment & Disposal of Waste Water. Reuse and Saving of Water, Rain Water Harvesting. Solid Waste Management: Classification of Solid Waste, Collection, Transportation and Disposal of Solid. Recycling of Solid Waste: Energy Recovery, Sanitary Landfill, On-Site Sanitation. Air & Noise Pollution: Primary and Secondary air pollutants, Harmful effects of Air Pollution, Control of Air Pollution. . Noise Pollution Harmful Effects of noise pollution, control of noise pollution, Global warming & Climate Change, Ozone depletion, Greenhouse effect
Text Books:
1. Palancharmy, Basic Civil Engineering, McGraw Hill publishers.
2. Satheesh Gopi, Basic Civil Engineering, Pearson Publishers.
3. Ketki Rangwala Dalal, Essentials of Civil Engineering, Charotar Publishing House.
4. BCP, Surveying volume 1
A Visual Guide to 1 Samuel | A Tale of Two HeartsSteve Thomason
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These slides walk through the story of 1 Samuel. Samuel is the last judge of Israel. The people reject God and want a king. Saul is anointed as the first king, but he is not a good king. David, the shepherd boy is anointed and Saul is envious of him. David shows honor while Saul continues to self destruct.
This presentation was provided by Racquel Jemison, Ph.D., Christina MacLaughlin, Ph.D., and Paulomi Majumder. Ph.D., all of the American Chemical Society, for the second session of NISO's 2024 Training Series "DEIA in the Scholarly Landscape." Session Two: 'Expanding Pathways to Publishing Careers,' was held June 13, 2024.
Level 3 NCEA - NZ: A Nation In the Making 1872 - 1900 SML.pptHenry Hollis
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The History of NZ 1870-1900.
Making of a Nation.
From the NZ Wars to Liberals,
Richard Seddon, George Grey,
Social Laboratory, New Zealand,
Confiscations, Kotahitanga, Kingitanga, Parliament, Suffrage, Repudiation, Economic Change, Agriculture, Gold Mining, Timber, Flax, Sheep, Dairying,
ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 42001, and GDPR: Best Practices for Implementation and...PECB
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Denis is a dynamic and results-driven Chief Information Officer (CIO) with a distinguished career spanning information systems analysis and technical project management. With a proven track record of spearheading the design and delivery of cutting-edge Information Management solutions, he has consistently elevated business operations, streamlined reporting functions, and maximized process efficiency.
Certified as an ISO/IEC 27001: Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) Lead Implementer, Data Protection Officer, and Cyber Risks Analyst, Denis brings a heightened focus on data security, privacy, and cyber resilience to every endeavor.
His expertise extends across a diverse spectrum of reporting, database, and web development applications, underpinned by an exceptional grasp of data storage and virtualization technologies. His proficiency in application testing, database administration, and data cleansing ensures seamless execution of complex projects.
What sets Denis apart is his comprehensive understanding of Business and Systems Analysis technologies, honed through involvement in all phases of the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC). From meticulous requirements gathering to precise analysis, innovative design, rigorous development, thorough testing, and successful implementation, he has consistently delivered exceptional results.
Throughout his career, he has taken on multifaceted roles, from leading technical project management teams to owning solutions that drive operational excellence. His conscientious and proactive approach is unwavering, whether he is working independently or collaboratively within a team. His ability to connect with colleagues on a personal level underscores his commitment to fostering a harmonious and productive workplace environment.
Date: May 29, 2024
Tags: Information Security, ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 42001, Artificial Intelligence, GDPR
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This presentation was provided by Rebecca Benner, Ph.D., of the American Society of Anesthesiologists, for the second session of NISO's 2024 Training Series "DEIA in the Scholarly Landscape." Session Two: 'Expanding Pathways to Publishing Careers,' was held June 13, 2024.
1. Literary Theory
Vince Brewton
University of North Alabama
Source: http://www.iep.utm.edu/literary/#H1
âLiterary theoryâ is the body of ideas and methods we use in the practical reading of literature.
By literary theory we refer not to the meaning of a work of literature but to the theories that
reveal what literature can mean. Literary theory is a description of the underlying principles,
one might say the tools, by which we attempt to understand literature. All literary
interpretation draws on a basis in theory but can serve as a justification for very different
kinds of critical activity. It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author
and work; literary theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study,
both from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic
presence within texts. Literary theory offers varying approaches for understanding the role of
historical context in interpretation as well as the relevance of linguistic and unconscious
elements of the text. Literary theorists trace the history and evolution of the different genresâ
narrative, dramatic, lyricâin addition to the more recent emergence of the novel and the short
story, while also investigating the importance of formal elements of literary structure. Lastly,
literary theory in recent years has sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the
product of a culture than an individual author and in turn how those texts help to create the
culture.
1. What Is Literary Theory?
âLiterary theory,â sometimes designated âcritical theory,â or âtheory,â and now undergoing a
transformation into âcultural theoryâ within the discipline of literary studies, can be
understood as the set of concepts and intellectual assumptions on which rests the work of
explaining or interpreting literary texts. Literary theory refers to any principles derived from
internal analysis of literary texts or from knowledge external to the text that can be applied in
multiple interpretive situations. All critical practice regarding literature depends on an
underlying structure of ideas in at least two ways: theory provides a rationale for what
constitutes the subject matter of criticismââthe literaryââand the specific aims of critical
practiceâthe act of interpretation itself. For example, to speak of the âunityâ of Oedipus the
King explicitly invokes Aristotleâs theoretical statements on poetics. To argue, as does Chinua
Achebe, that Joseph Conradâs The Heart of Darkness fails to grant full humanity to the
Africans it depicts is a perspective informed by a postcolonial literary theory that presupposes
a history of exploitation and racism. Critics that explain the climactic drowning of Edna
Pontellier in The Awakening as a suicide generally call upon a supporting architecture of
feminist and gender theory. The structure of ideas that enables criticism of a literary work
may or may not be acknowledged by the critic, and the status of literary theory within the
academic discipline of literary studies continues to evolve.
Literary theory and the formal practice of literary interpretation runs a parallel but less well
known course with the history of philosophy and is evident in the historical record at least as
far back as Plato. The Cratylus contains a Platoâs meditation on the relationship of words and
the things to which they refer. Platoâs skepticism about signification, i.e., that words bear no
etymological relationship to their meanings but are arbitrarily âimposed,â becomes a central
2. concern in the twentieth century to both âStructuralismâ and âPoststructuralism.â However, a
persistent belief in âreference,â the notion that words and images refer to an objective reality,
has provided epistemological (that is, having to do with theories of knowledge) support for
theories of literary representation throughout most of Western history. Until the nineteenth
century, Art, in Shakespeareâs phrase, held âa mirror up to natureâ and faithfully recorded an
objectively real world independent of the observer.
Modern literary theory gradually emerges in Europe during the nineteenth century. In one of
the earliest developments of literary theory, German âhigher criticismâ subjected biblical texts
to a radical historicizing that broke with traditional scriptural interpretation. âHigher,â or
âsource criticism,â analyzed biblical tales in light of comparable narratives from other
cultures, an approach that anticipated some of the method and spirit of twentieth century
theory, particularly âStructuralismâ and âNew Historicism.â In France, the eminent literary
critic Charles Augustin Saint Beuve maintained that a work of literature could be explained
entirely in terms of biography, while novelist Marcel Proust devoted his life to refuting Saint
Beuve in a massive narrative in which he contended that the details of the life of the artist are
utterly transformed in the work of art. (This dispute was taken up anew by the French theorist
Roland Barthes in his famous declaration of the âDeath of the Author.â See âStructuralismâ
and âPoststructuralism.â) Perhaps the greatest nineteenth century influence on literary theory
came from the deep epistemological suspicion of Friedrich Nietzsche: that facts are not facts
until they have been interpreted. Nietzscheâs critique of knowledge has had a profound impact
on literary studies and helped usher in an era of intense literary theorizing that has yet to pass.
Attention to the etymology of the term âtheory,â from the Greek âtheoria,â alerts us to the
partial nature of theoretical approaches to literature. âTheoriaâ indicates a view or perspective
of the Greek stage. This is precisely what literary theory offers, though specific theories often
claim to present a complete system for understanding literature. The current state of theory is
such that there are many overlapping areas of influence, and older schools of theory, though
no longer enjoying their previous eminence, continue to exert an influence on the whole. The
once widely-held conviction (an implicit theory) that literature is a repository of all that is
meaningful and ennobling in the human experience, a view championed by the Leavis School
in Britain, may no longer be acknowledged by name but remains an essential justification for
the current structure of American universities and liberal arts curricula. The moment of
âDeconstructionâ may have passed, but its emphasis on the indeterminacy of signs (that we
are unable to establish exclusively what a word means when used in a given situation) and
thus of texts, remains significant. Many critics may not embrace the label âfeminist,â but the
premise that gender is a social construct, one of theoretical feminisms distinguishing insights,
is now axiomatic in a number of theoretical perspectives.
While literary theory has always implied or directly expressed a conception of the world
outside the text, in the twentieth century three movementsââMarxist theoryâ of the Frankfurt
School, âFeminism,â and âPostmodernismââhave opened the field of literary studies into a
broader area of inquiry. Marxist approaches to literature require an understanding of the
primary economic and social bases of culture since Marxist aesthetic theory sees the work of
art as a product, directly or indirectly, of the base structure of society. Feminist thought and
practice analyzes the production of literature and literary representation within the framework
that includes all social and cultural formations as they pertain to the role of women in history.
Postmodern thought consists of both aesthetic and epistemological strands. Postmodernism in
art has included a move toward non-referential, non-linear, abstract forms; a heightened
degree of self-referentiality; and the collapse of categories and conventions that had
3. traditionally governed art. Postmodern thought has led to the serious questioning of the so-
called metanarratives of history, science, philosophy, and economic and sexual reproduction.
Under postmodernity, all knowledge comes to be seen as âconstructedâ within historical self-
contained systems of understanding. Marxist, feminist, and postmodern thought have brought
about the incorporation of all human discourses (that is, interlocking fields of language and
knowledge) as a subject matter for analysis by the literary theorist. Using the various
poststructuralist and postmodern theories that often draw on disciplines other than the
literaryâlinguistic, anthropological, psychoanalytic, and philosophicalâfor their primary
insights, literary theory has become an interdisciplinary body of cultural theory. Taking as its
premise that human societies and knowledge consist of texts in one form or another, cultural
theory (for better or worse) is now applied to the varieties of texts, ambitiously undertaking to
become the preeminent model of inquiry into the human condition.
Literary theory is a site of theories: some theories, like âQueer Theory,â are âin;â other
literary theories, like âDeconstruction,â are âoutâ but continue to exert an influence on the
field. âTraditional literary criticism,â âNew Criticism,â and âStructuralismâ are alike in that
they held to the view that the study of literature has an objective body of knowledge under its
scrutiny. The other schools of literary theory, to varying degrees, embrace a postmodern view
of language and reality that calls into serious question the objective referent of literary studies.
The following categories are certainly not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive, but
they represent the major trends in literary theory of this century.
2. Traditional Literary Criticism
Academic literary criticism prior to the rise of âNew Criticismâ in the United States tended to
practice traditional literary history: tracking influence, establishing the canon of major writers
in the literary periods, and clarifying historical context and allusions within the text. Literary
biography was and still is an important interpretive method in and out of the academy;
versions of moral criticism, not unlike the Leavis School in Britain, and aesthetic (e.g. genre
studies) criticism were also generally influential literary practices. Perhaps the key unifying
feature of traditional literary criticism was the consensus within the academy as to the both
the literary canon (that is, the books all educated persons should read) and the aims and
purposes of literature. What literature was, and why we read literature, and what we read,
were questions that subsequent movements in literary theory were to raise.
3. Formalism and New Criticism
âFormalismâ is, as the name implies, an interpretive approach that emphasizes literary form
and the study of literary devices within the text. The work of the Formalists had a general
impact on later developments in âStructuralismâ and other theories of narrative. âFormalism,â
like âStructuralism,â sought to place the study of literature on a scientific basis through
objective analysis of the motifs, devices, techniques, and other âfunctionsâ that comprise the
literary work. The Formalists placed great importance on the literariness of texts, those
qualities that distinguished the literary from other kinds of writing. Neither author nor context
was essential for the Formalists; it was the narrative that spoke, the âhero-function,â for
example, that had meaning. Form was the content. A plot device or narrative strategy was
examined for how it functioned and compared to how it had functioned in other literary works.
Of the Russian Formalist critics, Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are probably the
most well known.
4. The Formalist adage that the purpose of literature was âto make the stones stonierâ nicely
expresses their notion of literariness. âFormalismâ is perhaps best known is Shklovskyâs
concept of âdefamiliarization.â The routine of ordinary experience, Shklovsky contended,
rendered invisible the uniqueness and particularity of the objects of existence. Literary
language, partly by calling attention to itself as language, estranged the reader from the
familiar and made fresh the experience of daily life.
The âNew Criticism,â so designated as to indicate a break with traditional methods, was a
product of the American university in the 1930s and 40s. âNew Criticismâ stressed close
reading of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical precept âexplication du texte.â As
a strategy of reading, âNew Criticismâ viewed the work of literature as an aesthetic object
independent of historical context and as a unified whole that reflected the unified sensibility
of the artist. T.S. Eliot, though not explicitly associated with the movement, expressed a
similar critical-aesthetic philosophy in his essays on John Donne and the metaphysical poets,
writers who Eliot believed experienced a complete integration of thought and feeling. New
Critics like Cleanth Brooks, John Crowe Ransom, Robert Penn Warren and W.K. Wimsatt
placed a similar focus on the metaphysical poets and poetry in general, a genre well suited to
New Critical practice. âNew Criticismâ aimed at bringing a greater intellectual rigor to
literary studies, confining itself to careful scrutiny of the text alone and the formal structures
of paradox, ambiguity, irony, and metaphor, among others. âNew Criticismâ was fired by the
conviction that their readings of poetry would yield a humanizing influence on readers and
thus counter the alienating tendencies of modern, industrial life. âNew Criticismâ in this
regard bears an affinity to the Southern Agrarian movement whose manifesto, Iâll Take My
Stand, contained essays by two New Critics, Ransom and Warren. Perhaps the enduring
legacy of âNew Criticismâ can be found in the college classroom, in which the verbal texture
of the poem on the page remains a primary object of literary study.
4. Marxism and Critical Theory
Marxist literary theories tend to focus on the representation of class conflict as well as the
reinforcement of class distinctions through the medium of literature. Marxist theorists use
traditional techniques of literary analysis but subordinate aesthetic concerns to the final social
and political meanings of literature. Marxist theorist often champion authors sympathetic to
the working classes and authors whose work challenges economic equalities found in
capitalist societies. In keeping with the totalizing spirit of Marxism, literary theories arising
from the Marxist paradigm have not only sought new ways of understanding the relationship
between economic production and literature, but all cultural production as well. Marxist
analyses of society and history have had a profound effect on literary theory and practical
criticism, most notably in the development of âNew Historicismâ and âCultural Materialism.â
The Hungarian theorist Georg Lukacs contributed to an understanding of the relationship
between historical materialism and literary form, in particular with realism and the historical
novel. Walter Benjamin broke new ground in his work in his study of aesthetics and the
reproduction of the work of art. The Frankfurt School of philosophers, including most notably
Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuseâafter their emigration to the
United Statesâplayed a key role in introducing Marxist assessments of culture into the
mainstream of American academic life. These thinkers became associated with what is known
as âCritical theory,â one of the constituent components of which was a critique of the
instrumental use of reason in advanced capitalist culture. âCritical theoryâ held to a
distinction between the high cultural heritage of Europe and the mass culture produced by
6. If signifier and signified are both cultural concepts, as they are in âPoststructuralism,â
reference to an empirically certifiable reality is no longer guaranteed by language.
âDeconstructionâ argues that this loss of reference causes an endless deferral of meaning, a
system of differences between units of language that has no resting place or final signifier that
would enable the other signifiers to hold their meaning. The most important theorist of
âDeconstruction,â Jacques Derrida, has asserted, âThere is no getting outside text,â indicating
a kind of free play of signification in which no fixed, stable meaning is possible.
âPoststructuralismâ in America was originally identified with a group of Yale academics, the
Yale School of âDeconstruction:â J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartmann, and Paul de Man.
Other tendencies in the moment after âDeconstructionâ that share some of the intellectual
tendencies of âPoststructuralismâ would included the âReader responseâ theories of Stanley
Fish, Jane Tompkins, and Wolfgang Iser.
Lacanian psychoanalysis, an updating of the work of Sigmund Freud, extends
âPostructuralismâ to the human subject with further consequences for literary theory.
According to Lacan, the fixed, stable self is a Romantic fiction; like the text in
âDeconstruction,â the self is a decentered mass of traces left by our encounter with signs,
visual symbols, language, etc. For Lacan, the self is constituted by language, a language that
is never oneâs own, always anotherâs, always already in use. Barthes applies these currents of
thought in his famous declaration of the âdeathâ of the Author: âwriting is the destruction of
every voice, of every point of originâ while also applying a similar âPoststructuralistâ view to
the Reader: âthe reader is without history, biography, psychology; he is simply that someone
who holds together in a single field all the traces by which the written text is constituted.â
Michel Foucault is another philosopher, like Barthes, whose ideas inform much of
poststructuralist literary theory. Foucault played a critical role in the development of the
postmodern perspective that knowledge is constructed in concrete historical situations in the
form of discourse; knowledge is not communicated by discourse but is discourse itself, can
only be encountered textually. Following Nietzsche, Foucault performs what he calls
âgenealogies,â attempts at deconstructing the unacknowledged operation of power and
knowledge to reveal the ideologies that make domination of one group by another seem
ânatural.â Foucaldian investigations of discourse and power were to provide much of the
intellectual impetus for a new way of looking at history and doing textual studies that came to
be known as the âNew Historicism.â
6. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism
âNew Historicism,â a term coined by Stephen Greenblatt, designates a body of theoretical and
interpretive practices that began largely with the study of early modern literature in the United
States. âNew Historicismâ in America had been somewhat anticipated by the theorists of
âCultural Materialismâ in Britain, which, in the words of their leading advocate, Raymond
Williams describes âthe analysis of all forms of signification, including quite centrally writing,
within the actual means and conditions of their production.â Both âNew Historicismâ and
âCultural Materialismâ seek to understand literary texts historically and reject the formalizing
influence of previous literary studies, including âNew Criticism,â âStructuralismâ and
âDeconstruction,â all of which in varying ways privilege the literary text and place only
secondary emphasis on historical and social context. According to âNew Historicism,â the
circulation of literary and non-literary texts produces relations of social power within a culture.
New Historicist thought differs from traditional historicism in literary studies in several
crucial ways. Rejecting traditional historicismâs premise of neutral inquiry, âNew
7. Historicismâ accepts the necessity of making historical value judgments. According to âNew
Historicism,â we can only know the textual history of the past because it is âembedded,â a
key term, in the textuality of the present and its concerns. Text and context are less clearly
distinct in New Historicist practice. Traditional separations of literary and non-literary texts,
âgreatâ literature and popular literature, are also fundamentally challenged. For the âNew
Historicist,â all acts of expression are embedded in the material conditions of a culture. Texts
are examined with an eye for how they reveal the economic and social realities, especially as
they produce ideology and represent power or subversion. Like much of the emergent
European social history of the 1980s, âNew Historicismâ takes particular interest in
representations of marginal/marginalized groups and non-normative behaviorsâwitchcraft,
cross-dressing, peasant revolts, and exorcismsâas exemplary of the need for power to
represent subversive alternatives, the Other, to legitimize itself.
Louis Montrose, another major innovator and exponent of âNew Historicism,â describes a
fundamental axiom of the movement as an intellectual belief in âthe textuality of history and
the historicity of texts.â âNew Historicismâ draws on the work of Levi-Strauss, in particular
his notion of culture as a âself-regulating system.â The Foucaldian premise that power is
ubiquitous and cannot be equated with state or economic power and Gramsciâs conception of
âhegemony,â i.e., that domination is often achieved through culturally-orchestrated consent
rather than force, are critical underpinnings to the âNew Historicistâ perspective. The
translation of the work of Mikhail Bakhtin on carnival coincided with the rise of the âNew
Historicismâ and âCultural Materialismâ and left a legacy in work of other theorists of
influence like Peter Stallybrass and Jonathan Dollimore. In its period of ascendancy during
the 1980s, âNew Historicismâ drew criticism from the political left for its depiction of
counter-cultural expression as always co-opted by the dominant discourses. Equally, âNew
Historicismâsâ lack of emphasis on âliterarinessâ and formal literary concerns brought disdain
from traditional literary scholars. However, âNew Historicismâ continues to exercise a major
influence in the humanities and in the extended conception of literary studies.
7. Ethnic Studies and Postcolonial Criticism
âEthnic Studies,â sometimes referred to as âMinority Studies,â has an obvious historical
relationship with âPostcolonial Criticismâ in that Euro-American imperialism and
colonization in the last four centuries, whether external (empire) or internal (slavery) has been
directed at recognizable ethnic groups: African and African-American, Chinese, the subaltern
peoples of India, Irish, Latino, Native American, and Philipino, among others. âEthnic
Studiesâ concerns itself generally with art and literature produced by identifiable ethnic
groups either marginalized or in a subordinate position to a dominant culture. âPostcolonial
Criticismâ investigates the relationships between colonizers and colonized in the period post-
colonization. Though the two fields are increasingly finding points of intersectionâthe work
of bell hooks, for exampleâand are both activist intellectual enterprises, âEthnic Studies and
âPostcolonial Criticismâ have significant differences in their history and ideas.
âEthnic Studiesâ has had a considerable impact on literary studies in the United States and
Britain. In W.E.B. Dubois, we find an early attempt to theorize the position of African-
Americans within dominant white culture through his concept of âdouble consciousness,â a
dual identity including both âAmericanâ and âNegro.â Dubois and theorists after him seek an
understanding of how that double experience both creates identity and reveals itself in culture.
Afro-Caribbean and African writersâAime Cesaire, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebeâhave
made significant early contributions to the theory and practice of ethnic criticism that explores
8. the traditions, sometimes suppressed or underground, of ethnic literary activity while
providing a critique of representations of ethnic identity as found within the majority culture.
Ethnic and minority literary theory emphasizes the relationship of cultural identity to
individual identity in historical circumstances of overt racial oppression. More recently,
scholars and writers such as Henry Louis Gates, Toni Morrison, and Kwame Anthony Appiah
have brought attention to the problems inherent in applying theoretical models derived from
Euro-centric paradigms (that is, structures of thought) to minority works of literature while at
the same time exploring new interpretive strategies for understanding the vernacular (common
speech) traditions of racial groups that have been historically marginalized by dominant
cultures.
Though not the first writer to explore the historical condition of postcolonialism, the
Palestinian literary theorist Edward Saidâs book Orientalism is generally regarded as having
inaugurated the field of explicitly âPostcolonial Criticismâ in the West. Said argues that the
concept of âthe Orientâ was produced by the âimaginative geographyâ of Western scholarship
and has been instrumental in the colonization and domination of non-Western societies.
âPostcolonialâ theory reverses the historical center/margin direction of cultural inquiry:
critiques of the metropolis and capital now emanate from the former colonies. Moreover,
theorists like Homi K. Bhabha have questioned the binary thought that produces the
dichotomiesâcenter/margin, white/black, and colonizer/colonizedâby which colonial
practices are justified. The work of Gayatri C. Spivak has focused attention on the question of
who speaks for the colonial âOtherâ and the relation of the ownership of discourse and
representation to the development of the postcolonial subjectivity. Like feminist and ethnic
theory, âPostcolonial Criticismâ pursues not merely the inclusion of the marginalized
literature of colonial peoples into the dominant canon and discourse. âPostcolonial Criticismâ
offers a fundamental critique of the ideology of colonial domination and at the same time
seeks to undo the âimaginative geographyâ of Orientalist thought that produced conceptual as
well as economic divides between West and East, civilized and uncivilized, First and Third
Worlds. In this respect, âPostcolonial Criticismâ is activist and adversarial in its basic aims.
Postcolonial theory has brought fresh perspectives to the role of colonial peoplesâtheir
wealth, labor, and cultureâin the development of modern European nation states. While
âPostcolonial Criticismâ emerged in the historical moment following the collapse of the
modern colonial empires, the increasing globalization of culture, including the neo-
colonialism of multinational capitalism, suggests a continued relevance for this field of
inquiry.
8. Gender Studies and Queer Theory
Gender theory came to the forefront of the theoretical scene first as feminist theory but has
subsequently come to include the investigation of all gender and sexual categories and
identities. Feminist gender theory followed slightly behind the reemergence of political
feminism in the United States and Western Europe during the 1960s. Political feminism of the
so-called âsecond waveâ had as its emphasis practical concerns with the rights of women in
contemporary societies, womenâs identity, and the representation of women in media and
culture. These causes converged with early literary feminist practice, characterized by Elaine
Showalter as âgynocriticism,â which emphasized the study and canonical inclusion of works
by female authors as well as the depiction of women in male-authored canonical texts.
Feminist gender theory is postmodern in that it challenges the paradigms and intellectual
premises of western thought, but also takes an activist stance by proposing frequent
9. interventions and alternative epistemological positions meant to change the social order. In
the context of postmodernism, gender theorists, led by the work of Judith Butler, initially
viewed the category of âgenderâ as a human construct enacted by a vast repetition of social
performance. The biological distinction between man and woman eventually came under the
same scrutiny by theorists who reached a similar conclusion: the sexual categories are
products of culture and as such help create social reality rather than simply reflect it. Gender
theory achieved a wide readership and acquired much its initial theoretical rigor through the
work of a group of French feminist theorists that included Simone de Beauvoir, Luce Irigaray,
Helene Cixous, and Julia Kristeva, who while Bulgarian rather than French, made her mark
writing in French. French feminist thought is based on the assumption that the Western
philosophical tradition represses the experience of women in the structure of its ideas. As an
important consequence of this systematic intellectual repression and exclusion, womenâs lives
and bodies in historical societies are subject to repression as well. In the creative/critical work
of Cixous, we find the history of Western thought depicted as binary oppositions:
âspeech/writing; Nature/Art, Nature/History, Nature/Mind, Passion/Action.â For Cixous, and
for Irigaray as well, these binaries are less a function of any objective reality they describe
than the male-dominated discourse of the Western tradition that produced them. Their work
beyond the descriptive stage becomes an intervention in the history of theoretical discourse,
an attempt to alter the existing categories and systems of thought that found Western
rationality. French feminism, and perhaps all feminism after Beauvoir, has been in
conversation with the psychoanalytic revision of Freud in the work of Jacques Lacan.
Kristevaâs work draws heavily on Lacan. Two concepts from Kristevaâthe âsemioticâ and
âabjectionââhave had a significant influence on literary theory. Kristevaâs âsemioticâ refers
to the gaps, silences, spaces, and bodily presence within the language/symbol system of a
culture in which there might be a space for a womenâs language, different in kind as it would
be from male-dominated discourse.
Masculine gender theory as a separate enterprise has focused largely on social, literary, and
historical accounts of the construction of male gender identities. Such work generally lacks
feminismsâ activist stance and tends to serve primarily as an indictment rather than a
validation of male gender practices and masculinity. The so-called âMenâs Movement,â
inspired by the work of Robert Bly among others, was more practical than theoretical and has
had only limited impact on gender discourse. The impetus for the âMenâs Movementâ came
largely as a response to the critique of masculinity and male domination that runs throughout
feminism and the upheaval of the 1960s, a period of crisis in American social ideology that
has required a reconsideration of gender roles. Having long served as the de facto âsubjectâ of
Western thought, male identity and masculine gender theory awaits serious investigation as a
particular, and no longer universally representative, field of inquiry.
Much of what theoretical energy of masculine gender theory currently possesses comes from
its ambiguous relationship with the field of âQueer theory.â âQueer theoryâ is not
synonymous with gender theory, nor even with the overlapping fields of gay and lesbian
studies, but does share many of their concerns with normative definitions of man, woman, and
sexuality. âQueer theoryâ questions the fixed categories of sexual identity and the cognitive
paradigms generated by normative (that is, what is considered ânormalâ) sexual ideology. To
âqueerâ becomes an act by which stable boundaries of sexual identity are transgressed,
reversed, mimicked, or otherwise critiqued. âQueeringâ can be enacted on behalf of all non-
normative sexualities and identities as well, all that is considered by the dominant paradigms
of culture to be alien, strange, unfamiliar, transgressive, oddâin short, queer. Michel
Foucaultâs work on sexuality anticipates and informs the Queer theoretical movement in a
10. role similar to the way his writing on power and discourse prepared the ground for âNew
Historicism.â Judith Butler contends that heterosexual identity long held to be a normative
ground of sexuality is actually produced by the suppression of homoerotic possibility. Eve
Sedgwick is another pioneering theorist of âQueer theory,â and like Butler, Sedgwick
maintains that the dominance of heterosexual culture conceals the extensive presence of
homosocial relations. For Sedgwick, the standard histories of western societies are presented
in exclusively in terms of heterosexual identity: âInheritance, Marriage, Dynasty, Family,
Domesticity, Population,â and thus conceiving of homosexual identity within this framework
is already problematic.
9. Cultural Studies
Much of the intellectual legacy of âNew Historicismâ and âCultural Materialismâ can now be
felt in the âCultural Studiesâ movement in departments of literature, a movement not
identifiable in terms of a single theoretical school, but one that embraces a wide array of
perspectivesâmedia studies, social criticism, anthropology, and literary theoryâas they
apply to the general study of culture. âCultural Studiesâ arose quite self-consciously in the 80s
to provide a means of analysis of the rapidly expanding global culture industry that includes
entertainment, advertising, publishing, television, film, computers and the Internet. âCultural
Studiesâ brings scrutiny not only to these varied categories of culture, and not only to the
decreasing margins of difference between these realms of expression, but just as importantly
to the politics and ideology that make contemporary culture possible. âCultural Studiesâ
became notorious in the 90s for its emphasis on pop music icons and music video in place of
canonical literature, and extends the ideas of the Frankfurt School on the transition from a
truly popular culture to mass culture in late capitalist societies, emphasizing the significance
of the patterns of consumption of cultural artifacts. âCultural Studiesâ has been
interdisciplinary, even antidisciplinary, from its inception; indeed, âCultural Studiesâ can be
understood as a set of sometimes conflicting methods and approaches applied to a questioning
of current cultural categories. Stuart Hall, Meaghan Morris, Tony Bennett and Simon During
are some of the important advocates of a âCultural Studiesâ that seeks to displace the
traditional model of literary studies.
10. References and Further Reading
a. General Works on Theory
ï· Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997.
ï· During, Simon. Ed. The Cultural Studies Reader. London: Routledge, 1999.
ï· Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1996.
ï· Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1980.
ï· Moore-Gilbert, Bart, Stanton, Gareth, and Maley, Willy. Eds. Postcolonial Criticism.
New York: Addison, Wesley, Longman, 1997.
ï· Rice, Philip and Waugh, Patricia. Eds. Modern Literary Theory: A Reader. 4th
edition.
ï· Richter, David H. Ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends.
2nd
Ed. Bedford Books: Boston, 1998.
ï· Rivkin, Julie and Ryan, Michael. Eds. Literary Theory: An Anthology. Malden,
Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1998.
11. b. Literary and Cultural Theory
ï· Adorno, Theodor. The Culture Industry: Selected Essays on Mass Culture. Ed. J. M.
Bernstein. London: Routledge, 2001.
ï· Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy: And Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1971.
ï· Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Trans.
ï· Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953.
ï· Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael
Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1981.
ï· Barthes, Roland. ImageâMusicâText. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1994.
ï· Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text. Trans. Richard Miller. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1975.
ï· Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. Tr. H.M. Parshley. New York: Knopf, 1953.
ï· Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Ed. Hannah Arendt. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York:
Schocken, 1988.
ï· Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New
York: Harcourt, 1947.
ï· Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1976.
ï· Dubois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches. Chicago: A. C.
McClurg & Co., 1903.
ï· Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities. Harvard, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980.
ï· Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. An Introduction. Trans. Robert
Hurley. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1981.
ï· Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New
York: Vintage, 1973.
ï· Gates, Henry Louis. The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary
Criticism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
ï· hooks, bell. Ainât I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism. Boston: South End Press,
1981.
ï· Horkheimer, Max and Adorno, Theodor. Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical
Fragments. Ed. Gunzelin Schmid Noerr. Trans. Edmund Jephcott. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2002.
ï· Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985.
ï· Jameson, Frederic. Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999.
ï· Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. London: Routledge, 2001.
ï· Lemon Lee T. and Reis, Marion J. Eds. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays.
Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1965.
ï· Lukacs, Georg. The Historical Novel. Trans. Hannah and Stanley Mitchell. Lincoln,
NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1962.
ï· Marcuse, Herbert. Eros and Civilization. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955.
ï· Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Genealogy of Morals. Trans. Walter Kaufmann. New York:
Vintage, 1969.
12. ï· Plato. The Collected Dialogues. Ed. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961.
ï· Proust, Marcel. Remembrance of Things Past. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and
Terence Kilmartin. New York: Vintage, 1982.
ï· Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon, 1978.
ï· Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Between Men. Between Men: English literature and Male
Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
ï· Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky Epistemology of the Closet. London: Penguin, 1994.
ï· Showalter, Elaine. Ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature,
and Theory. London: Virago, 1986.
ï· Tompkins, Jane. Sensational Designs: the Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-
1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
ï· Wellek, Rene and Warren, Austin. Theory of Literature. 3rd
ed. New York: Harcourt
Brace, 1956.
ï· Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. New York: Oxford University Press,
1973.