Literature and Its Theorists

Literature and Its Theorists PDF Author: Tzvetan Todorov
Publisher: Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Originally published in French under the title Critique de la critique. This is a paperbound reprint of the 1987 translated edition, which includes an appendix written in response to American reactions to the French edition. It is the final volume in a trilogy devoted to the theory and tradition of literary criticism (its two predecessors are: Theories of the symbol and Symbolism and interpretation, both Cornell UP). Coverage here is of the Russian, German, French, and Anglo-American traditions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Literature and Its Theorists

Literature and Its Theorists PDF Author: Tzvetan Todorov
Publisher: Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Originally published in French under the title Critique de la critique. This is a paperbound reprint of the 1987 translated edition, which includes an appendix written in response to American reactions to the French edition. It is the final volume in a trilogy devoted to the theory and tradition of literary criticism (its two predecessors are: Theories of the symbol and Symbolism and interpretation, both Cornell UP). Coverage here is of the Russian, German, French, and Anglo-American traditions. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Fifty Key Literary Theorists

Fifty Key Literary Theorists PDF Author: Richard J. Lane
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134303556
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
Covering over a century's worth of debate, thinking and writing about literature, this is a unique guide to the lives and works of fifty theorists who have left an indelible mark on literary studies. Featuring theorists such as Judith Butler, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud and Edward Said, this accessible guide includes: a glossary of terms full cross-referencing for maximum ease of use authoritative guides to further reading on and by each theorist. An essential resource for all students of literature, Fifty Key Literary Theorists explores the gamut of critical debate, from the New Critics to the Deconstructionists, and from post-colonialism to post-Marxism and more.

Speech Acts in Literature

Speech Acts in Literature PDF Author: Joseph Hillis Miller
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804742162
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
This book demonstrates the presence of literature within speech act theory and the utility of speech act theory in reading literary works. Though the founding text of speech act theory, J. L. Austin's How to Do Things with Words, repeatedly expels literature from the domain of felicitous speech acts, literature is an indispensable presence within Austin's book. It contains many literary references but also uses as essential tools literary devices of its own: imaginary stories that serve as examples and imaginary dialogues that forestall potential objections. How to Do Things with Words is not the triumphant establishment of a fully elaborated theory of speech acts, but the story of a failure to do that, the story of what Austin calls a "bogging down." After an introductory chapter that explores Austin's book in detail, the two following chapters show how Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man in different ways challenge Austin's speech act theory generally and his expulsion of literature specifically. Derrida shows that literature cannot be expelled from speech acts—rather that what he calls "iterability" means that any speech act may be literature. De Man asserts that speech act theory involves a radical dissociation between the cognitive and positing dimensions of language, what Austin calls language's "constative" and "performative" aspects. Both Derrida and de Man elaborate new speech act theories that form the basis of new notions of responsible and effective politico-ethical decision and action. The fourth chapter explores the role of strong emotion in effective speech acts through a discussion of passages in Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Austin. The final chapter demonstrates, through close readings of three passages in Proust, the way speech act theory can be employed in an illuminating way in the accurate reading of literary works.

Theory of Literature

Theory of Literature PDF Author: Rene Wellek
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
ISBN: 9781628972832
Category : Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Theory of Literature was born from the collaboration of Ren Wellek, a Vienna-born student of Prague School linguistics, and Austin Warren, an independently minded "old New Critic." Unlike many other textbooks of its era, however, this classic kowtows to no dogma and toes no party line. Wellek and Warren looked at literature as both a social product--influenced by politics, economics, etc.--as well as a self-contained system of formal structures. Incorporating examples from Aristotle to Coleridge, written in clear, uncondescending prose, Theory of Literature is a work which, especially in its suspicion of simplistic explanations and its distrust of received wisdom, remains extremely relevant to the study of literature today.

A History of Literary Criticism

A History of Literary Criticism PDF Author: M. A. R. Habib
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1405148845
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 848

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Book Description
This comprehensive guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day provides an authoritative overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, as well as surveying their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. Supplies the cultural, historical and philosophical background to the literary criticism of each era Enables students to see the development of literary criticism in context Organised chronologically, from classical literary criticism through to deconstruction Considers a wide range of thinkers and events from the French Revolution to Freud’s views on civilization Can be used alongside any anthology of literary criticism or as a coherent stand-alone introduction

Theory of Literature

Theory of Literature PDF Author: Paul H. Fry
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300183364
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Bringing his perennially popular course to the page, Yale University Professor Paul H. Fry offers in this welcome book a guided tour of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. At the core of the book's discussion is a series of underlying questions: What is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose? Fry engages with the major themes and strands in twentieth-century literary theory, among them the hermeneutic circle, New Criticism, structuralism, linguistics and literature, Freud and fiction, Jacques Lacan's theories, the postmodern psyche, the political unconscious, New Historicism, the classical feminist tradition, African American criticism, queer theory, and gender performativity. By incorporating philosophical and social perspectives to connect these many trends, the author offers readers a coherent overall context for a deeper and richer reading of literature.

Literature, Theory, and Common Sense

Literature, Theory, and Common Sense PDF Author: Antoine Compagnon
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691070423
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
Publisher Description

African American Literary Theory

African American Literary Theory PDF Author: Winston Napier
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814758096
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 745

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Book Description
Fifty-one essays by writers such as Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, as well as critics and academics such as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. examine the central texts and arguments in African American literary theory from the 1920s through the present. Contributions are organized chronologically beginning with the rise of a black aesthetic criticism, through the Black Arts Movement, feminism, structuralism and poststructuralism, queer theory, and cultural studies. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

Theories of Literary Realism

Theories of Literary Realism PDF Author: Dario Villanueva
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791433270
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Explores the possibilities and limits of a concept of realism that seeks a point of equilibrium between the principle of autonomy of the literary work vis-a-vis reality and the relations that the work clearly establishes with this reality. Argues that by concentrating on the study of the literary work as a verbal construction, the traditional of formalism and New Criticism has neglected the mimetic aspect of the literary problematic, dissociating literature from life. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Social Formalism

Social Formalism PDF Author: Dorothy J. Hale
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804733562
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
In recent decades, literary critics have praised novel theory for abandoning its formalist roots and defining the novel as a vehicle of social discourse. The old school of novel theory has long been associated with Henry James; the new school allies itself with the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin. In this book, the author argues that actually it was the compatibility of Bakhtin with James that prompted Anglo-American theorists to embrace Bakhtin with such enthusiasm. Far from rejecting James, in other words, recent novel theorists have only refined James’s foundational recharacterization of the novel as the genre that does not simply represent identity through its content but actually instantiates it through its form. Social Formalismdemonstrates the persistence of James’s theoretical assumptions from his writings and those of his disciple Percy Lubbock through the critique of Jamesian theory by Roland Barthes, Wayne Booth, and Gérard Genette to the current Anglo-American assimilation of Bakhtin. It also traces the expansion of James’s influence, as mediated by Bakhtin, into cultural and literary theory. Jamesian social formalism is shown to help determine the widely influential theories of minority identity expounded by such important cultural critics as Barbara Johnson and Henry Louis Gates. Social Formalismthus explains why a tradition that began by defining novelistic value as the formal instantiation of identity ends by defining minority political empowerment as aestheticized self-representation.