STUDENT TOPICS
When making an oral presentation of a literary theory you should normally order it in the sequence suggested under each theory below. In every case you should start with a comprehensive survey to the theory in general, then locate the place the text (or texts) from the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism occupies within the general field of that theory, and end up with a closer explanation of the text(s) (select specific passages with page numbers for detailed consideration in class). The bibliographies offer a selected list of works concerned with literary theory that student presenters might wish to consult. Use the list selectively. You won't be able to obtain every book, and you may find other books that are available helpful. Your student handout should end with a briefly annotated list of works consulted.
[If any of you are presenting applications of literary theory you will also want to consult this bibliography for an understanding of the theory. In addition you should look at the relevant chapter in Selden and/or Brooker and Widdowson, the section applying the theory where one exists from the St. Martin's edition of either Hamlet or A Portrait of the Artist, the bibliography attached to that section, and whatever other applications of the theory you can locate via the MLA bibliography and other bibliographical sources. Where an article applying the theory is found in either of the St Martin's texts use this as a starting point, and proceed to other actual or possible applications of the theory. Your student handout should also end with a list of works consulted.]
General
Bennett, Andrew, and Nicholas Royle. An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory. 2nd ed. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Booker, Keith M. A Practical Introduction to Literary Theory and Criticism. White Plains, N.Y.: Longman, 1996.
Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 2nd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1999.
Brooker, Peter, and Peter Widdowson, eds. A Practical Reader in Contemporary Literary Theory. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1997.
Castle, Gregory. Literary Theory. Blackwell Guides to Literature. Oxfrord, England: Blackwell, 2007.
Davis, Colin. After Poststructuralism: Reading, Stories and Theory. London, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996.
Groden, Michael, Martin Kreiswirth, and Imre Szewman, eds. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2004 (in the University Reference Library).
Hall, Donald E. Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.
Jefferson, Ann, and David Robey, eds. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. 2nd ed. London: Batsford, 1986.
Leitch, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.
---. ed. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. New York: Norton, 2001.
---. Theory Matters. London, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Lynn, Steven. Texts and Contexts. Writing About Literature and Critical Theory. New York: HarperCollins, 1994.
Makaryk, Irena R, ed. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory: Approaches, Scholars, Terms. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1993.
Marshall, Donald G. Contemporary Critical Theory: A Selective Bibliography. New York: MLA, 1993.
Ryan, Michael. Literay Theory: A Practical Introduction. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1999.
Selden, Raman, Peter Widdowson and Peter Brooker: A Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Liteary Theory. 4th ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Selden, Raman. Practicing Theory and Reading Literature: An Introduction. 4th ed. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice-Hall/Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.
Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. New York: Garland, 1999.
Waugh, Patricia. Modern Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide. New York: Oxford UP, 2006.
Wolfreys, Julian, ed. The Continuum Encyclopedia of Modern Criticism and Theory. New York: Continuum, 2002.
---. et al., eds. Key Concepts in Literary Theory. 2nd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2006.
The New Criticism
1. The origins of the New Criticism in I. A. Richards' concept of poetry as emotive utterance, and in T. S. Eliot's emphasis on the objective nature of poetry in "Tradition and the Individual Talent." “The Metaphysical Poets.”
2. The formalist emphasis on unity within emotive utterance: Brooks’ “The Heresy of Paraphrase” and “The Formalist Critics.”
3.. Intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic criticism. Wimsatt and Beardsley's "The Intentional Fallacy" and “The Affective Fallacy.”
Brooks, Cleanth. The Well-Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Renal, 1947.
Brooks, Cleanth, and Robert Penn Warren. Understanding Poetry. 1939. 4th ed. New York: Holt, 1976.
Cowan, Louise. The Southern Critics. Irving: U of Dallas P, 1971.
Eliot, T. S. The Sacred Wood. London: Faber, 1920.
Krieger, Murray. The New Apologists for Poetry. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1956.
Ransome, John Crowe. The New Criticism. New York: New Directions, 1941.
Richards, I.A. Principles of Literary Criticism. New York: Harcourt, 1929.
Spurlin, William J., and Michael Fischer, eds. The New Criticism and Contemporary Literary Theory: Connections and Continuities. New York: Garland, 1995.
Webster, Grant. The Republic of Letters: A History of Postwar American Literary Opinion. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979.
Wellek, Rene. A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950. Vol. 6: American Criticism, 1900-1950. New Haven: Yale UP, 1986. 7 vols. 1955-91.
Winchell, Mark Royden. Cleanth Brooks and the Rise of Modern Criticism. Charlottesville: U of Virginia P, 1996.
Wimsatt, W. K., and Monroe Beardsley. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1954.
The Bakhtin Circle
1. Background: the Bakhtin circle. Language as utterance or discourse. Language, viewed as a socially constructed sign system, is a material reality. The ideological sign as a material segment of reality, not something confined to the realm of consciousness. Voloshinov.
2. Dialogics. Heteroglossia and polyglossia. Bakhtin's differentiation between monologic and polyphonic or dialogic novels. Discourse analysis. "Discourse in the Novel." (extract)
3. The carnivalesque and the grotesque body.
Bakhtin, Mikhail M. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Ed. Holquist. Austin: U of Texas P, 1981.
---. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Trans. and ed. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.
---. Rabelais and His World. Trans. Helen Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
Hirschkop, Ken, and David Shepherd, eds. Bakhtin and Cultural Theory. New York: St. Martin's, 1989.
Holquist, Michael. Dialogism. Bakhtin and his World. 1990. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Lodge, David. After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Medvedev, P.N. The Formal method in Literary Scholarship. Trans. Albert J. Wehrle. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1985.
Morson, Gary Saul, and Caryl Emerson. Mikhail Bakhtin: Creation of a Prosaics. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1991.
Pechey, Graham. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Word in the World. Critics of the Twentieth Century. London: Routledge, 2007.
Roberts, Graham, ed. The Bakhtin Reader: Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev, Voloshinov. London: Hodder Arnold, 1998.
Stam, Robert. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
Todorov, Tzvetan. Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle. Trans. Wlasd Godzich. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1984.
Vice, Sue. Introducing Bakhtin. New York: Manchester UP / St. Martin’s, 1998.
Volosinov, V. N. Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. 1929. Trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986.
Marxist Literary Criticism
1. Classical Marxism. Dialectical materialism. Alienation. The relationship between the socio-economic base of society and its superstructure which includes ideology, art and literature. Marx and Engels. Extracts from their writings.
2. Gramsci and the social role of culture. The reciprocal relationship between base and superstructure. The role of hegemony and ideology in the construction of a dominant social class or historical block. The role of literature in opposing existing hegemonies and formulating new ones. "The Function of the Intellectuals."
3. Althusser's structuralist challenge to classical Marxism. His revisionist reading of Capital. The relative autonomy of various elements in the superstructure from the economic base. Ideology and interpellation. From "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses."
Althusser, Louis. Lenin and Philosophy, and Other Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Monthly Review P, 1971.
---. For Marx. Trans. Ben Brewster. New York: Pantheon, 1969.
Anderson, Perry. Considerations on Western Marxism. London: NLB, 1984.
Dombrowski, Robert S. Antonio Gramsci. Boston: Hall, 1989.
Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: A Study in Marxist Literary Theory. London: Verso, 1978.
---. Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: U of California P, 1976. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
---. and Drew Milne, eds. Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996.
Elliott. Louis Althusser. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 2007.
Ferretter, L. Louis Althusser. Routledge Critical Thinkers. London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
Gottlieb, Roger s., ed. An Anthology of Western Marxism: From Lukács and Gramsci to Socialist-Feminism. New York: Oxford UP, 1989.
Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. Ed. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International P, 1971.
---. The Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings, 1916-35. Ed. David Forqacs and Eric J. Hobsbawm. New York: New York UP, 2000.
Haslett, Moyra. Marxist Literary and Cultural Theory. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.
Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1974.
Morton, Adam David. Unravelling Gramsci: Hegemony and Passive Revolution in the Global Political Economy. London and Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto P, 2007.
Mulhern, Francis, ed. Contemporary Marxist Literary Criticism. White Plains, N. Y.: Longman, 1992.
Slaughter, Cliff. Marxism, Ideology and Literature. London: Macmillan, 1980.
Smith, Steven B. Reading Althusser: An Essay on Structural Marxism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1984.
Soloman, Maynard, ed. Marxism and Art: Essays Classic and Contemporary. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1979.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977.
Reader-Response Criticism
1. Husserl and phenomenology. Consciousness actively constitutes or "intends" the world of phenomena. Pioneers of reader-response criticism: I. A. Richards, D. W. Harding and Louise Rosenblatt.
2. The Geneva School of Criticism's application of phenomenology. Its attempt to give an imminent reading of the text as the embodiment of the author's mind. Poulet's view of the work-as-consciousness that the reader animates. "Phenomenology of Reading."
3. Iser's concept of the convergence of the reader and the text. Gaps and negations in a text which invite the reader to construct an illusory consistency. Iser's "Interaction between Text and Reader.” The text's construction of an implied reader.
4. Fish's attempt to limit the reader's subjectivity by appealing to the concepts of "interpretative communities" of readers and reading "competence." "Interpreting the Variorum."
Beach, Richard. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories. Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.
Clifford, John. The Experience of Reading: Louise Rosenblatt and Reader Response Theory. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton Cook/Heinemann, 1990.
Davis, Todd F, and Kenneth Womak. Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory. Houndmills, England: Palgrave, 2002.
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.
---. The Stanley Fish Reader. Ed. H. Aram Veeser. Oxford, England: Blackwell, 1998.
Freund, Elizabeth. The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism. London: Methuen, 1987.
Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. London: Methuen, 1984.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1979.
---. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. Trans. Michael Shore. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1982.
LeSage, Laurent, ed. The French New Critics: An Introduction and Sampler. University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1963.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.
Suleiman, Susan R., and Inge Crosman, eds. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience \and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980.
Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1980.
Psychoanalytic Criticism: Freud (and Jung)
1. Like literary criticism, psychoanalysis focuses on unconscious aspects of utterance. Freud's concept of manifest and latent dream-content. Dream work: condensation, displacement, representation and secondary revision. The psychoanalytic interpretation needed to work back from manifest to latent content. The Interpretation of Dreams (extract). Freud's "Creative Writers and Daydreaming." Cf. Marie Bonaparte’s The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe.
2. Freud: repression, repetition-compulsion and the uncanny. “The Uncanny.”]
3. Introverted and extroverted artistic creation. Symbols and Jung’s concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious. “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry.”
Allen, Graham. Harold Bloom: A Poetics of Conflict. Hemel Hempstead, Herts: Harvester / Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Berman, Emanuel. Essential Papers on Literature and Psychoanalysis. New York: New York UP, 1993.
Bloom, Harold. The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry. New York: Oxford UP, 1973
Bonaparte, Marie. The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psychoanalytical Interpretation. 1933. Trans. John Rodker. New York: Humanities P, 1949.
Elliott, Anthony, ed. Freud 2000. New York: Routledge, 1998.
---. Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Duke UP, 2002.
Felman, Shoshana, ed. Literature and Psychoanalysis: The Question of Reading--Otherwise. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.
Freud, Sigmund. The Interpretation of Dreams. 1900. Trans. James Strachey. 1953. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976.
---. Writings on Art and Literature. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1997.
Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957.
Hoffman, Frederick J. Freudianism and the Literary Mind. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1957.
Holland, Norman H. Holland's Guide to Psychanalytic Psychology and Literature-and-Psychology. New York: Oxford UP, 1990.
Jones, Ernest. Hamlet and Oedipus. New York: Norton, 1949.
Kaplan, Morton, and Robert Kloss. The Unspoken Motive: A Guide to Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism. New York: Free, 1973.
Knapp, Betina L. A Jungian Approach to Literature. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984.
Lesser, Simon O. Fiction and the Unconscious. Boston: Beacon P, 1957.
Mullinger, Robert N. Psychoanalysis and Literature: An Introduction. 1981.
Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. London: Macmillan, 1989.
Penley, Constance, ed. Feminism and Film Theory. New York: Routledge, 1989.
Sugg, Richard P, ed. Jungian Literary Criticism. Evanston, IL: Northwestern UP, 1992.
Thurschwell, Pamela. Sigmund Freud. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.
Wright, Elizabeth. Psychoanalytic Criticism: Reappraisal. 2nd ed.. London: Routledge, 1998.
Vice, Sue. Psychoanalytic Criticism: A Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996.
Saussure
1. Saussure's lectures and the status of the text. The sign. Its arbitrariness. Identity a function of differences within the system. Langue and parole. The synchronic and diachronic study of language. Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations within the language system. Extracts from the Course on General Linguistics.
Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course in General Linguistics. Trans. Wade Baskin. New York: MaGraw-Hill, 1966.
Culler, Jonathan. Ferdinand de Saussure. Rev.ed. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986.
Gadet, Françoise. Saussure and Contemporary Culture. Trans. Gregory Elliott. London: Century, 1989.
Holdcroft, David. Saussure: Signs, System and Arbitrariness. New York: Cambridge UP, 1991.
Leader, Darian. Introducing Lacan. 3rd ed. Thripling, England: Icon/Totem, 2006.
Tejera, Victorino. Literature, Criticism, and the Theory of Signs. Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1995.
Thibault, Paul J. Re-Reading Saussire: The Dynamics of Signs in Social Life. London, New York: Routledge, 1997.
Psychoanalytic Criticism: Lacan
1. Lacan's rereading of Freud. The decentred subject. “The Mirror Stage...” Freud's narcissism = Lacan's "mirror stage" and the "imaginary order." Freud's post-Oedipal stage = Lacan's "symbolic order" to which language belongs. The subject split between unconscious desire and conscious language. The unconscious seen as repressed signifiers.
2. The constant sliding of the signified under the signifier. The non-referential nature of language and meaning. The link between metaphor/metonymy, nerurosis/desire and Freud's condensation/displacement. "The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious."
Benvenuto, Rice. and Roger Kennedy, The Works of Jacques Lacan: An Introduction. London: Free, 1986.
Bowie, Malcolm. Lacan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1991.
Brennan, Teresa. History After Lacan. London, New York: Routledge, 1993.
Davis, Robert Con, ed. Lacan and Narration: The Psychoanalytic Difference in Narrative Theory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1984.
Felman, Shoshana. Jacques Lacan and the Adventure of Insight: Psychoanalysis in Copntemporary Culture. Cambridge: Harvard UP,1987.
Gallop, Jane. Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.
Hill, Philip. Lacan for Beginners. New York: Writers and Readers P, 1999.
Homer, Sean. Jacques Lacan. London and New York: Routledge, 2005.
Lacan, Jacques. Écrits: A Selection. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Norton, 1977.
---. The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Trans. Alan Sheridan. Ed. Jacques Alain-Miller. New York: Norton, 1978.
---. Speech and Language in Psychoanalysis: The Language of the Self. Trans. with notes and commentary by Anthony G. Wilden. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.
MacCabe, Colin, ed. The Talking Cure: Essays in Psychoanaysis and Language. New York: St. Martin's, 1981.
McQuillan, Martin. Paul de Man. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Mellard, James M. Using Lacan, Reading Fiction. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1992.
Mitchell, Juliet, and Jacqueline Rose, eds. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the École Freudiènne. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Muller, John P., and William J. Richardson, eds. The Purloined Poe: Lacan, Derrida, and Psychoanalytic Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1988.
Rabaté, Jean-Michel. The Cambridge Companion to Lacan. New York: Cambridge UP, 2003.
Zizek, Slavoj. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1992.
---. and Simon Critchley. How to Read Lacan. New York: Norton, 2007.
Structuralism and Semiotics
1. The roots of French structuralism of the 1960s in Saussure's concept of langue. Lévi-Strauss and the analysis of cultural codes as languages. The synchronic study of myths. (From Tristes Tropiques).
2. The parallel between language seen as langue and literature seen synchronically as structure. The universal grammar of narrative. Narratology. Todorov: “Structural Analysis of Narrative.”
3. Barthes’ separation of text from authorial origin: “The Death of the Author.” Barthes’ move to a poststructuralist understanding of textuality as a process: “From Work to Text.”
Allen, Graham. Roland Barthes. London, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill, 1978.
---. Elements of Semiology. Trans. A. Lavers and C. Smith. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977.
Boon, James. From Symbolism to Structuralism: Lévi-Strauss in a Literary Tradition. New York: Harper, 1972.
Cohan, Steven, and Linda M. Shires, Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction. London and New York: Routledge, 1988.
Culler, Jonathan. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics and the Study of Literature. London and New York: Routledge, 1975. Rev. ed. 2002.
---. Roland Barthes. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.
Dosse, François. History of Structuralism. Trans. Deborah Glassman. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997.
Eco, Umberto. A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1984.
Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.
Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, Trans. Jane E. Lewin. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979.
Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Lavers, Annette. Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982.
Macksey, Richard A., and Eugenio Donato, eds. The Structuralist Controversy: The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP,1972.
Martin, Wallace. Recent Theories of Narrative. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986.
Moriarty, Michael. Roland Barthes. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992.
Prince, Gerald. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. The Hague: Mouton, 1982.
Rylance, Rick. Roland Barthes. New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1994.
Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. New Haven: Yale Up, 1974.
Sebeok, Thomas A, and Marcel Danesi. Signs: An Introduction to Semiotics. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 2001.
Sturrock, John, ed. Structuralism and Since: From Lévi-Strauss to Derrida. Oxford, New York: Oxford UP, 1979.
Todorov, Tzvetan. An Introduction to Poetics. Trans. Richard Howard. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1981.
Deconstruction and Derrida
1. Derrida's separation of structuralism from its reliance on a center, on a metaphysics of meaning and on a metaphysics of presence. His detachment of the signifier from the signified. Meaning as dependent on "différance." Logocentrism and phonocentrism. Deconstruction both as a reversal of the classical opposition and a general displacement of the system.
2. Deconstruction and writing. The idea that all texts contain within them their own destructive potential. The way that "aporias" betray the linguistic dissemination of meaning beyond all bounds of conceptual closure. Derrida's "From Of Grammatology."
3. De Man's claim that "every text is an allegory of its own unreadability." Literature's awareness of this fact leading to endless re-readings and interpretations. "Semiology and Rhetoric."
Arac, Jonathan, et al. The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1083.
Atkins, G. Douglas. Reading Deconstruction, Deconstructing Reading. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1983.
Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. London: Methuen, 1980.
Collins, Jeff. Introducing Derrida. 3rd ed. Thripling, England: Icon/Totem, 2006.
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.
De Man, Paul. Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism. 2nd rev. ed. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983.
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri C. Spivak. Baltimore: Johns hopkins UP, 1976
---. Writing and Difference. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1978.
Deutscher, Penelope, and Simon Critchley. How to Read Derrida. New York: Norton, 2006.
Gasché, Rodolphe. Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1994.
Hartman, Geoffrey H. Saving the Text: Literature/Derrida/Philosophy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981.
Howells, Christina. Derrida: Deconstruction from Phenomenology to Ethics. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.
Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1985.
---. The Wake of Deconstruction. Cambridge, MA.: Blackwell, 1994.
Kamuf, Peggy, ed. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. New York: Columbia UP, 1991.
Leitch, Vincent B. Deconstructive Criticism: An Advanced Introduction and Survey. New York: Columbia UP, 1982.
McQuillan, Martin, ed. Deconstruction: A Reader. New York: Routledge, 2001.
---. Paul de Man. London, New York: Routledge, 2001.
Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. 3rd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
---. Derrida. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1988.
---. Paul de Man: Deconstruction and the Critique of Aesthetic Ideology. New York: Methuen, 1988.
Royle, Nicholas. Jacques Derrida. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Sarup, Madan. An Introductory Guide to Poststructuralism and Postmodernism. 2nd ed. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1993.
Silverman, Hugh, and Gary E. Aylesworth, eds. The Textual Sublime: Deconstruction and Its Differences. Albany: State U of New York P, 1990.
Wood, David, ed. Derrida: A Critical Reader. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
Foucault, the New Historicism, and Cultural Materialism
1. Foucault's opposition to a developmental view of history. History as a series of discontinuous discursive formations. Discourses as institutional forms of knowledge used as power. The growing intervention of power in the private life of the subject in the modern era. The carceral nature of modern institutions (educational, industrial, etc). Discipline and Punish: “The Carceral.”
2. Foucault's historicization of the concept of authorship. The use of an author's name to define different kinds of texts at different times. Literary criticism as a discipline used to circumscribe the dangerous freeplay of imaginative texts. The subject as (s)he who inserts into the troublesome language of fiction its unities and coherence. "What is an Author?"
3. The relationship between knowledge (the search for truth) and power. The construction of the subject by power. The History of Sexuality (extract). Foucault’s late attempts to avoid a deterministic view of the subject. Truth and Power (extract).
4. The New Historicism's emphasis on socio-historical context, the interaction between politics and literature, and the breakdown of barriers between literary, sociological and historical materials. Literary texts dramatize and reproduce the powerful discourses which sustain the social and political system. Greenblatt. The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance: “Introduction.”
5. The more politically radical historicism of the cultural materialists, influenced by marxism. Their resistance to the idea that works reinscribe the dominant ideologies of their day. The possibility of subjects producing new subject positions.
Brannigan, John. New Historicism and Cultural Materialism. New York: St Martin’s P, 1998.
Cousins, Mark, and Athar Hussain. Michel Foucault. London: Macmillan, 1984.
Diamond, Irene and Lee Quinby, eds. Feminism and Foucault: Reflections on Resistance. Boston: Northeastern UP,1988.
Dreyfus, Hubert L, and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.
During, Simon. Foucault and Literature: Towards a Genealogy of Writing. London: Routledge, 1992.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge: Including the Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon, 1972.
---. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Vintage, 1990.
---. Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Eassays and Interviews. Trans. Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon. Ed. and introd. Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1977.
---. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966. New York: Pantheon, 1971.
Gallagher, Catherine, and Stephen Greenblatt. Practicing New Historicism. Chicago: U of Chicago P 2000.
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Berkeley: U of California P, 1988.
Gutting, Gary. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2005.
Hamilton, Paul. Historicism. The New Critical Idiom. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
McGann, Jerome, ed. Historical Studies and Literary Criticism. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1985.
Merquior, J. G. Foucault . London: Fontana, 1985.
Mills, Sarah. Michel Foucault. London and New York: Routledge, 2003.
Morris, Wesley. Towards a New Historicism. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1972.
Pieters, Jurgen. Moments of Negotiation: The New Historicism of Stephen Greenblatt. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2002.
Sheridan, Alan. Michel Foucault: The Will to Truth. London: Tavistock, 1980.
Sinfield, Alan. Faultiness: Cultural Materialism and the Politics of Dissident Reading. Oxford: Clarendon, 1992.
Smart, Barry. Michel Foucault. New York: Methuen, 1985.
Thomas, Brook. The New Historicism and Other Old-Fashioned Topics. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.
Veeser, H. Aram, ed. The New Historicism. London: Routledge, 1989.
Wilson, Scott. Cultural Materialism in Theory and in Practice. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Gender Theories
1. A brief history of the feminist movement. First-Wave feminist criticism. Women’s material disadvantages. The need to recognize the distinctive experience of women and their writing. The concept of androgyny. Woolf and A Room of One’s Own (3 extracts).
2. The feminist turn to psychology and ideology. Simone de Beauvoir. Women’s definition by men as their other. Their internalization of this definition. Women’s supposed imminence and men’s transcendence. The authenticity of “being female.” (The Second Sex chap. XI).
3. French poststructuralist feminists and their focus on textuality. The concept and problems associated with écriture féminine, and the writing of the female body. Kristeva’s differentiation between the symbolic and the semiotic. The dialectical interaction of the two. The connection between the semiotic chora and the female body. Revolution in Poetic Language (extract).
4. Radical lesbian feminism. Heterosexuality as a social construct. Butler’s appropriation of French theory to show how the gendered subject is constructed by repetitive cultural discourse. The subversion of fixed sexual identities. Gender Trouble (extracts). The rise of queer theory and identity politics. Sedgwick’s Between Men and Epistemology of the Closet.
Barber, Stephen. Regarding Sedgwick: Essays on Queer Culture and Critical Theory. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex. 1949. Trans. and ed. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1974.
Belsey, Catherine, and Jane Moore, eds. The Feminist Reader: Essays in Gender and the Politics of Literary Criticism. London: Macmillan, 1989.
Beer, Gillian. Virginia Woolf: The Common Ground. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1996.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1989.
---. Bodies That Matter. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.
---. and Sara Salih, eds. The Judith Butler Reader. Oxford, UK, and Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2003.
Cain, William E, ed. Making Feminist History: The Literary Scholarship of Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar. New York: Garland, 1994.
Eagleton, Mary, ed. Feminist Literary Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Evans, Mary. Introducing Contemporary Feminist Thought. Malden, MA: Polity P, 1997
Fuss, Diana. Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature and Difference. London: Routledge, 1989.
Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar, eds. Feminist Literary Theory and Criticism: A Norton Reader. New York: Norton, 2006.
Glover, David, and Cora Kaplan. Genders. London: Routledge, 2000.
Grossholz, Emily R., ed. The Legacy of Simone de Beauvoir. Oxford, UK, New York: Oxford UP, 2004.
Gubar, Susan. Critical Condition: Feminism at the Turn of the Century. New York: Columbia UP, 2000.
Jardine, Alice. Gynesis: Configurations of Women and Modernity. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985.
Lovaas, Karen E., John P. Elia, and Gust A. Yep, eds. Lgbt Studies and Queer Theory: New Conflicts, Collaborations, and Contested Terrain. Binghampton, NY.: Haworth P, 2007.
McAfee, Noelle. Julia Kristeva. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivan, eds. New French Feminisms: An Anthology. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1979.
Mills, Sara, Lynne Peirce, Sue Spaull, and Elaine Millard. Feminist Readings/Feminists Reading. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1989.
Mitchell, Juliet. Women: The Longest Revolution. New York: Pantheon, 1984.
Mitchell, Juliet, and Jacqueline Rose, eds. Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the Ecole Freudiènne. London: Macmillan, 1982.
Moi, Toril. Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. Rev. ed. London and New York:
Routledge, 2002.
---. ed. The Kristeva Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1986.
Newton, Judith, and Deborah Rosenfelt, eds. Feminist Criticism and Social Change: Sex, Class and Race in Literature. London: Methuen, 1985.
Robins, Ruth. Literary Feminisms. New York: St. Martin’s P, 2000.
Roe, Sue, ed. Women Reading Women’s Writing. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1987.
Rooney, Ellen. The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2006.
Rosenman, Ellen Bayuk. A Room of One’s Own: Women Writers and the Politics of Creativity. New York: Twayne, 1995.
Salih, Sara. Judith Butler. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Sellers, Susan. Language and Sexual Difference: Feminist Writing in France. 1991.
Showalter, Elaine, ed. The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature and Theory. New York: Pantheon, 1985.
Simons, Margaret A, ed. Feminist Interpretations of Simone de Beauvoir. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania UP, 1995.
Smith, Anne-Marie. Julia Kristeva: Speaking the Unspeakable. Sterling, VA: Pluto P, 1998.
Smith, Barbara. Towards a Black Feminist Criticism. Brooklyn: Out and Out; Trumanburg: Crossing, 1977.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politics. London: Routledge, 1988.
Tidd, Ursula. Simone de Beauvoir. London and New York: Routledge, 2004.
Weedon, Chris. Feminist Practice and Poststructuralist Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK, Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1997.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. 1929. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1989
Postcolonial Theory
1. The postcolonial writers’ celebration of marginality and plurality in the face of the cultural hegemony of the colonizers’ writings. Senghor and the philosophies of negritude, critiqued by Cabral and Fanon
2. The rise of postcolonial theory in the 1980s under the stimulus of Edward Said’s Orientalism (extract). Orientalism as a Western discourse used for dominating the Orient.
3. Spivak’s deconstruction of the colonizer/colonized polarity. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (extract).
4. Homi Bhabha's use of hybridity to evade the binary of colonizer/colonized: "The Commitment to Theory."
Ashcroft, Bill. Post-Colonial Transformation. London: Routledge, 2001.
Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. 2nd ed. London, New York: Routledge, 2002.
--- eds. The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. New York: Routledge, 1995.
---. Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Ashcroft, Bill, and Pal Ahluwalia. Edward Said. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2001.
Ahmad, Aijaz. In Theory: Nations, Classes, Literatures. London: Verso, 1994.
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
Eagleton, Terry, Fredric Jameson, and Edward W. Said. Nationalism, Colonialism, and Literature. Minneapolis: UP of Minnesota, 1990.
Fanon, Frantz. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove, 1968.
Fraser, Roberft. Lifting the Sentence: A Poetics of Postcolonial Fiction. Manchester, England: Manchester UP, 2000.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Critical Fanonism.” Critical Inquiry. 17 (1991): 457-470.
---, ed. “Race,” Writing and Difference. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1986.
Guha, Ranajit, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds. Selected Subaltern Studies. New York: Oxford UP, 1988.
JanMohamed, Abdul R. Manichean Aesthetics: The Politics of Literature in Colonial Africa. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1983.
Lazarus, Neil. The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Literary Studies. New York: Cambridge UP, 2004.
Loomba, Ania. Colonialism/Postcolonialism. London and New York: Routledge, 1998.
Morton, Stephen. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Ray, Sageeta, and Henry Schwartz, eds. A Companion to Postcolonial Studies: A Historical Introduction. Oxford, UK, Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004.
Ray, Sangeeta. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: An Introduction. Oxford, UK, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2004.
Said, Edward. Culture and Imperialism. New York: Knopf, 1993.
---. Orientalism. London: Routledge, 1978.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. The Post-Colonial Critic: Interview, Strategies, Dialogues. Ed. Sarah Harasym. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Talib, Ismail S. The Language of Postcolonial Literatures: An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Williams, Patrick, and Laura Chrisman, eds. Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. New York: Columbia UP, 1994.
Young, Robert. Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999.
Cultural Studies
1. Origins: Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy and F. R. Leavis’s Mass Civilization and Minority Culture.
2. The democratization of culture after World War Two: Raymond Williams’ Culture and Society.
3. Cultural hegemony: culture as an area of exchange between the culture and ideology of the dominant and the subordinate classes in society. “Cultural Studies and Its Theoretical Legacies.”
4. The semiotic analysis of culture. Subculture: The Meaning of Style (extract).
Arnold, Matthew. Culture and Anarchy. 1869. Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge UP, 1960.
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill, 1972.
Belsey, Catherine. Critical Practice. 2nd ed. London and New York: Routledge, 2002.
Bennett, Tony, ed. Culture, Ideology and Social Process: A Reader. London: Batsford, 1981.
Bratlinger, Patrick. Crusoe’s Footprint: Cultural Studies in Britain and America. New York: Routledge, 1990.
During, Simon. Cultural Studies: A Critical Introduction. London, New York: Routledge, 2005.
Fuery, Patrick, and Nick Mansfield. Cultural Studies and Critical Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford, UK, New York: Oxford UP, 2000
Grossberg, Lawrence, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds. Cultural Studies. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Hall, Stuart. Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-1979. Birmingham: Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, U of Birmingham, 1980.
---. ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage/Open U, 1997.
Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. New York: Routledge, 1979.
Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literarcy: Changing Patterns in English Mass Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1971.
Leavis, F. R.Mass Civilisation and Minority Culture. 1930.Norwood, PA: Norwood, 1977.
Lovell, Terry. Feminist Cultural Studies. Brookfield, VT.: Elgar, 1995.
McRobbie, Angela. The Uses of Cultural Studies: A Textbook. London: Sage, 2005.
Morley, David, and Kuan-Hsing Chen, eds. Stuart Hall. Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London and New York: Routledge,, 1996.
Mulhern, Francis. Culture/Metaculture. London, New York: Routledge, 2000.
Richards, I. A. Principles of Literary Criticism. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1928.
Turner, Graeme. British Cultural Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. London, New York: Routledge, 2003.
Tylor, Edward B. Primitive Culture. 1871. New York: Harper, 1958.
Williams, Raymond. Culture and Society: 1780-1950. New York: Columbia UP, 1958.
---. Keywords. Rev. ed. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.
---. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford UP, 1977.