Full Description
This clear, succinct primer for literary theory provides students with a useful guide to contemporary theory and methodologies. Theoretical overviews summarize each literary approach for clarification and Application Essays by well-known scholars, on works by authors such as Shakespeare, Austen, Melville, Faulkner, and Angelou, represent the stated principles. The text helps students generate consistent, well-focused analyses based on any of ten critical methodologies, including New Criticism, Psychoanalytic Analysis, Deconstruction, Feminist Analysis, and New Historicism.
Contents
NoteBibliography. An Application includes Reading Prompts, the reading (listed below), and an Analysis of Application.Introduction: From Aesthetics to Cultural Studies: The Many Productive Forms of Critical Analysis1. The New Criticism and Formalist AnalysisWordsworth and the Paradox of the Imagination, by Cleanth Brooks2. Reader-Response AnalysisPerception, Temporality, and Action as Modes of Subjectivity; W. Faulkner: The Sound and the Fury," by Wolfgang Iser3. Marxist and Materialist AnalysisRadical Jane and the Other Emma, by Edward Ahearn4. Psychoanalytic AnalysisThe Absent Mother in King Lear, by Coppelia Kahn5. Structuralism and Semiotic AnalysisMasters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, by Jack Solomon6. Deconstruction and Post-Structuralist AnalysisMelville's Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd, by Barbara Johnson7. Feminist AnalysisReembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Mary Vermillion8. Gay/Lesbian/Queer AnalysisMarlowe, Shakespeare, and the Canonization of Heterosexuality, by Joseph A. Porter9. Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial AnalysisThe Figurative Web of Native Son, Joyce A. Joyce10. New Historicism and Pluralistic Cultural AnalysisGreat Expectations and Harsh Realities, by Donald E. Hall"
