Contemporary Literary Theory Made Easy
Contents: Preface. I. New criticism and formalism: 1. The function of criticism/T.S. Eliot. 2. The two uses of language/I.A. Richards. 3. The intentional fallacy/W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Beardsley. 4. The affective fallacy/W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Beardsley. 5. Art as technique/Viktor Shklovsky. II. Speech act theory and reader response: 6. Performative utterances/J.L. Austin. 7. Is there a text in this class?/Stanley Fish. 8. From work to text/Roland Barthes. 9. The death of the author/Roland Barthes. 10. From mythologies--soap-powders and detergents/Ronald Barthes. III. Modernism and postmodernism: 11. Modernity--an incomplete project/Jurgen Habermas. 12. Defining the postmodern/Jean Francois Lyotard. 13. The precession of simulacra/Jean Baudrillard. 14. Capitalism, modernism and postmodernism/Terry Eagleton. IV. Structuralism and poststructuralism: 15. Nature of the linguistic sign/Ferdinand de Saussure. 16. Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences/Jacques Derrida. 17. Semiology and rhetoric/{Paul De Man. 18. What is an author?/Michel Foucault. 19. the critic as host/J. Hills Miller. 20. The deconstructive angel/M.H. Abrams. 21. The insistence of the letter in the unconscious/Jacques Lacan. V. Phenomenology and hermeneutics: 22. The reading process--a phenomenological approach/Wolfgang Iser. 23. Phenomenology of reading/George Poulet. 24. Three dimensions of hermeneutics/E.D. Hirsch Jr. VI. Marxism: 25. Alignment and commitment/Raymond Williams. 26. Base and superstructure in Marxist cultural theory/Raymond Williams. 27. Literature/Raymond Williams. 28. Marxism and literature/Edmund Wilson. 29. Discourse in life and discourse in art (concerning sociological poetics)/Mikhail Bakhtin and V.N. Volosinov. VII. Feminism: 30. A room of one\'s own/Virginia Woolf. 31. Literary paternity/Sandra Gilbert. 32. Feminist criticism in the wilderness/Elaine Showalter. 33. Breton or poetry/Simone De Beauvoir. 34. Women\'s writing in India/Susie Tharu and Lalitha. Bibliography. Index.
"The book would be of immense help to postgraduate and research students as it presents major theories in a simplified manner. It covers seven major schools of criticism from new criticism to deconstruction and analyses 34 representative essays in a detailed manner. A brief introduction to each section provides a clear picture of the salient features of each school. The book familiarises the reader not only to the various schools of criticism but also the major theorists who have argued out their views in their own way. While applying these theories to research, the student out to know them in a detailed manner. " (jacket)
"The book would be of immense help to postgraduate and research students as it presents major theories in a simplified manner. It covers seven major schools of criticism from new criticism to deconstruction and analyses 34 representative essays in a detailed manner. A brief introduction to each section provides a clear picture of the salient features of each school. The book familiarises the reader not only to the various schools of criticism but also the major theorists who have argued out their views in their own way. While applying these theories to research, the student out to know them in a detailed manner. " (jacket)
