Foreword

1 Defining Criticism, Theory, and Literature

Listening to a Conversation

Eavesdropping on a Literature Classroom

Can a Text Have More Than One Interpretation?

How to Become a Literary Critic

What is Literary Criticism?

What is Literary Theory?

Making Meaning from Text

The Reading Process and Literary Theory

What is Literature?

Literature Theory and the Definition of Literature

The Function of Literature and Literary Theory

Beginning the Formal Study of Literature

2 A Historical Survey of Literary Theory

Plato (C. 427 – 347 B.C.E.)

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E)

Horace (65-8 B.C.E.)

Longinus (First Century C.E.)
Plotinus (204-270 C.E.)

Dante Alighiere (1265-1321)

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

Sir Philip Sydney ((1554-1586)

John Dryden (1631-1700)

Joseph Addison (1672-1719)

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Perce Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893)

Matthew Arnold (18822-1888)

Henry James (1843-1916)

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-175)

Modern Literary Criticism

3 Russian Formalism and New Criticism

Russian Formalism

Bridging the Gap Between Russian Formalism and New Criticism

Applying Russian Formalism to a Literary Text

New Criticism

Historical Development

Assumptions

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay “The Formalists Critics, Cleanth Brooks

4 Reader-Oriented Criticism

Historical Development

I.A. Richards

Louise M. Rosenblatt

Assumptions

Methodology

Structuralism

Phenomenology

Hans Robert Jauss

Wolfgang Iser

Subjective Criticism

Norman Holland

David Bleich

A Two-Step Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: “The Case for Reader-Response Analysis,” Stanley Fish

5 Modernity and Postmodernism: Structuralism and Deconstruction

Modernity

Poststructuralism and Postmodernism

Modernity and Modernism

Structuralism: Its Historical Development Pre-Sausseren Linguistics

Saussure’s Linguistic Revolution

The Structure of Language

Langue and Parole

Saussure’s Redefinition of a Word

Assumptions of Structuralism

Methodologies of Structuralism

Claude Levi-Strauss

Roland Barthes

Vladimir Propp and Narratology

Tvetan Todorov and Gerard Genette

Jonathan Culler

A Model of Interpretation

From Structuralism to Poststructalism: Deconstruction

Deconstruction: Its Historical Development

Deconstruction: Its Beginnings

Derrida’s Starting Place: Structuralism

Derrida’s Interpretation of Saussure’s Sign

Assumptions of Deconstruction Transcendental Signified

Logocentrism

Binary Oppositions

Phonocentrism

Metaphysics of Presence

Methodology Acknowledging Binary Operations in Western Thought

Arche-writing

Supplementation

Differance

Deconstructive Suppositions for Textual Analysis

Deconstructive: A New Reading Strategy

American Deconstructionists

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay “What Is Criticism?” Roland Barthes

Critical Essay “Convention and Meaning” Jonathan Culler

6 Psychoanalytic Criticism

Historical Development

Sigmund Freud

Model of the Human Psyche: Dynamic Model

Economic Model

Typographical Models

Freud’s Pre-Oedipal Development Phase

The Oedipus, Castration, and Electra Complexes

The Significance of Dreams

Literature and Psychoanalysis

Carl G. Jung

Northrop Frye

Jacques Lacan

Lacan’s Model of the Human Psyche

Lacan and Textual Analysis

The Present State of Psychoanalytic Criticism

Assumptions

Methodologies

Questions and Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,” C.G. Jung

7 Feminism

Historical Development

Virginia Woolf

Simone de Beauvoir

Kate Millet

Feminism in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s

Elaine Showalter

Geographical Strains of Feminism

American

French

Present-day Feminist Criticisms

Ecofeminism

Assumptions

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: “Dancing through the Minefield: Some Observations on the Theory, Practice, Politics of Feminist Literary Criticism,” Annette Kolodny

8 Marxism

Historical Development

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

Russia and Marxism

Georg Lukaes

The Frankfurt School

Antonio Gramsci

Louis Althusser

Marxist Theorists Today

Assumptions

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” Raymond Williams

9 Cultural Poetics or New Historicism

A New-Critical Literature

Old Historicism

The New Historicism

Historical Development

Cultural Materialism

New Historicism

Assumptions

Michael Foucault

Clifford Geertz

Text, History, and Interpretation

What Cultural Poetics Rejects

What Cultural Poetics Does and Accepts

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: Arthur Kinney

10 Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism: “The Empire Writes Back”

Historical Development of Postcolonialism

Assumptions of Postcolonialism

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Response

Critical Essay: “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”

11 African-American Criticism

Historical Development, Assumptions, and Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Critical Essay: “Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times,” Henry Louis Gates Jr.

12 Queer Theory: Gay and Lesbian Criticism

Historical Development and Assumptions

Queer Critical Theorists

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Response

Critical Essay: “Epistemology of the Closet”

13 Ecocriticism

What is Ecocriticism?

Historical Development

Assumptions

Methodology

Questions for Analysis

Critiques and Responses

Readings on Literary Criticism

“The Formalist Critics” Cleanth Brooks

“Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” Jacques Derrida

“Heroic Enthocentrism: The Idea of Universality in Literature” Charles Larson

“Queer Theory” Annamarie Jagose

“John Keats and Nature: An Ecocritical Inquiry” Charles Ngiewih TEKE

Glossary

Credits

Index

Table of Contents