Literary Theory category: 45240 books

Rhetoric has shaped our understanding of the nature of language and the purpose of literature for over two millennia. It is of crucial importance in understanding the development of literary history as well as elements of philosophy, politics and culture. The nature and practise of rhetoric was central...

Fredric Jameson, in The Political Unconscious, opposes the view that literary creation can take place in isolation from its political context. He asserts the priority of the political interpretation of literary texts, claiming it to be at the center of all reading and understanding, not just a supplement...

A dynamic new study in literary and dramatic influence, Misreading Shakespeare defines and explores the relation between two modern playsEdward Bonds Lear and Tom Stoppards Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Deadand Shakespeares King Lear and Hamlet. While some see the modern plays as derivative, others...

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including...

This unique work of scholarship explores contemporary issues of male spectatorship and the importance of biography for art criticism in the work of Tracy Chevalier, Eunice Lipton, Anna Banti, Kate Braverman, and Susan Vreeland. Drawing upon feminist concepts on the male and female gaze, Dr. Cortney...

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,7, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, language: English, abstract: In the year 1975 the French feminist author Helene Cixous published an essay called 'The Laugh of the Medusa'. In it, she develops...

Kent Puckett's Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction provides an account of a methodology increasingly central to literary studies, film studies, history, psychology and beyond. In addition to introducing readers to some of the field's major figures and their ideas, Puckett situates critical...

This edited collection argues that trauma in literature must be read through a theoretical pluralism that allows for an understanding of trauma's variable representations that include yet move beyond the concept of trauma as pathological and unspeakable.

Reflecting varieties of theory and practice in both verse and prose from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, these essays by many of America's leading literary scholars call for a reinvigorated formalism that can enrich literary studies, open productive routes of commerce with cultural studies,...

The words, phrases, and stories of the New Testament permeate the English language. Indeed, this relatively small group of twenty-seven works, written during the height of the Roman Empire, not only helped create and sustain a vast world religion, but also have been integral to the larger cultural...

In its six case studies, The Dynamics of Gender in Early Modern France works out a model for (early modern) gender, which is articulated in the introduction. The book comprises essays on the construction of women: three in texts by male and three by female writers, including Racine, Fénelon, Poulain...

In this timely book Janet Todd offers an analysis and defence of the feminist literary history practised by Elaine Showalter and other contemporary American literary critics. She argues that this approach rightly links the political concerns of feminist criticism to the uncovering of female voices...

The question may be met with chagrin by traditionalists, but the identity of the Bard is not definitely decided. During the 20th century, Edward de Vere, the most flamboyant of the courtier poets, a man of the theater and literary patron, became the leading candidate for an alternative Shakespeare....

As an anthropology student studying with Franz Boas, Zora Neale Hurston recorded African American folklore in rural central Florida, studied hoodoo in New Orleans and voodoo in Haiti, talked with the last ex-slave to survive the Middle Passage, and collected music from Jamaica. Her ethnographic work...