9780130333971

The fourth edition of the bestselling Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice showcases various schools of 20th century criticism in historical and philosophical contexts. New features include: - A new chapter on queer theory. - Every chapter has been revised with new introductions with appropriate new critical vocabulary, critical terms, further readings sections, and web sites. - New student essays - Structuralism and Deconstruction have been combined into one section to make the material clearer and more streamlined. - The addition of Plotinus, Giovanni Boccaccio, Joseph Addison, Percy Pysshe Shelley, and Mikhail Bakhtin. Pick a Penguin Program* We offer select Penguin Putnam titles at a substantial discount to your students when you request a special package of one or more Penguin titles with this text. Please contact your local Prentice Hall Sales Representative for more information.

Foreword

ix

To the Reader

xii

Defining Criticism, Theory, and Literature

1

(15)

Eavesdropping on a Literature Classroom

1

(2)

Can a Text Have More Than One Interpretation?

3

(1)

How to Become a Literary Critic

3

(1)

What Is Literary Criticism?

4

(2)

What Is Literary Theory?

6

(1)

Making Meaning from Text

7

(1)

The Reading Process and Literary Theory

8

(2)

What Is Literature?

10

(2)

Literary Theory and the Definition of Literature

12

(1)

The Function of Literature and Literary Theory

13

(1)

Beginning the Formal Study of Literary Theory

14

(1)

Further Reading

15

(1)

A Historical Survey of Literary Criticism

16

(21)

Introduction

16

(1)

Plato (ca. 427-347 B.C.)

16

(2)

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

18

(3)

Horace (65-8 B.C.)

21

(1)

Longinus (First Century A.D.)

22

(1)

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

23

(1)

Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586)

24

(1)

John Dryden (1631-1700)

24

(1)

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

25

(1)

William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

26

(3)

Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (1828-1893)

29

(1)

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

30

(2)

Henry James (1843-1916)

32

(2)

Modern Literary Criticism

34

(1)

Further Reading

35

(2)

New Criticism

37

(18)

Introduction

37

(2)

Historical Development

39

(3)

Assumptions

42

(3)

Methodology

45

(3)

Questions for Analysis

48

(1)

Sample Essay

48

(1)

Further Reading

49

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

49

(1)

Student Essay: Dale Schuurman, Keats's ``To Autumn'': Verses of Praise for a Malicious Season?

50

(5)

Reader-Response Criticism

55

(20)

Introduction

55

(2)

Historical Development

57

(4)

Assumptions

61

(2)

Methodology

63

(6)

Questions for Analysis

69

(1)

Sample Essay

70

(1)

Further Reading

70

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

71

(1)

Student Essay: Jennifer Douglas, ``Ethan Brand's'' Challenge to Me

72

(3)

Structuralism

75

(19)

Introduction

75

(1)

Historical Development

76

(6)

Assumptions

82

(2)

Methodologies

84

(5)

Questions for Analysis

89

(1)

Sample Essay

89

(1)

Further Reading

90

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

90

(1)

Student Essay: Conie Krause, Will the Real Walter Mitty Please Wake Up: A Structuralist's View of ``The Secret Life of Walter Mitty''

91

(3)

Deconstruction

94

(25)

Structuralism and Poststructuralism: Two Views of the World

94

(2)

Modernity

96

(2)

Poststructuralism or Postmodernism

98

(2)

Historical Development

100

(4)

Assumptions

104

(3)

Methodology

107

(6)

American Deconstructors

113

(1)

Questions for Analysis

114

(1)

Sample Essay

114

(1)

Further Reading

115

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

115

(1)

Student Essay: Jennifer Douglas, Deconstructing a ``Real'' House

116

(3)

Psychoanalytic Criticism

119

(23)

Introduction

119

(2)

Historical Development

121

(11)

Assumptions

132

(1)

Methodologies

133

(2)

Questions for Analysis

135

(1)

Sample Essay

136

(1)

Further Reading

136

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

137

(1)

Student Essay: David Johnson, A Psychoanalytic Approach to Poe's ``The City in the Sea''

137

(5)

Feminism

142

(19)

Introduction

142

(2)

Historical Development

144

(9)

Assumptions

153

(1)

Methodology

154

(2)

Questions for Analysis

156

(1)

Sample Essay

156

(1)

Further Reading

157

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

157

(1)

Student Essay: Lori Huth, Throwing Off the Yoke: ``Rip Van Winkle'' and Women

158

(3)

Marxism

161

(18)

Introduction

161

(1)

Historical Development

162

(8)

Assumptions

170

(2)

Methodology

172

(1)

Questions for Analysis

173

(1)

Sample Essay

174

(1)

Further Reading

174

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

175

(1)

Student Essay: Juanita Wolfe, Baking Bread for the Bourgeoisie

175

(4)

Cultural Poetics or New Historicism

179

(18)

Introduction

179

(2)

Historical Development

181

(4)

Assumptions

185

(3)

Methodology

188

(2)

Questions for Textual Analysis

190

(1)

Questions for Analysis

191

(1)

Sample Essay

191

(1)

Further Reading

191

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

192

(1)

Student Essay: Krista Adlhock, Hawthorne's Understanding of History in ``The Maypole of Merry Mount''

193

(4)

Cultural Studies

197

(17)

Introduction

197

(2)

Postcolonialism: ``The Empire Writes Back''

199

(1)

Historical Development of Postcolonialism

200

(2)

Assumptions of Postcolonialist Theory

202

(2)

Methodology

204

(1)

Questions for Analysis

205

(1)

Postcolonialism and African American Criticism

205

(3)

Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminism

208

(1)

Sample Essay

209

(1)

Further Reading

209

(1)

Web Sites for Exploration

210

(1)

Student Essay: Wendy Rader, ``The Gentlemen of the Jungle'': Or Are They Beasts?

211

(3)

Literary Selections

214

(46)

``To Autumn''

214

(1)

John Keats

``Ethan Brand''

215

(13)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

``The Secret Life of Walter Mitty''

228

(4)

James Thurber

``The House on Mango Street''

232

(1)

Sandra Cisneros

``The City in the Sea''

233

(2)

Edgar Allan Poe

``Rip Van Winkle''

235

(13)

Washington Irving

``Marked with D.''

248

(1)

Tony Harrison

``The Maypole of Merry Mount''

248

(8)

Nathaniel Hawthorne

``The Gentlemen of the Jungle''

256

(4)

Jomo Kenyatta

Glossary

260

(29)

References

289

(23)

Credits

312

(2)

Index

314

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

To the Reader Like the first two editions, this new edition ofLiterary Criticismis designed as a supplemental text for introductory courses in both literature and literary criticism. In all three editions, the purpose of this text has always remained the same: to enable students to approach literature from a variety of practical and theoretical perspectives and to equip them with a theoretical and a practical understanding of how critics develop their interpretations. Its overall aim is to take the mystery out of working with and interpreting texts. Like the first and second editions, the third edition holds to several key premises. First, I assume that there is no such thing as an "innocent" reading of a text. Whether our responses to a text are emotional and spontaneous or well reasoned and highly structured, all of our interpretations are based on underlying factors that cause us to respond in a particular way. What elicits these responses, and how a reader makes sense out of a text, is what really matters. It is the domain of literary theory to question our initial and all our further responses, our beliefs, our values, our feelings, and our eventual, overall interpretation. To understand why we respond to a text in a certain way, we must first understand literary theory and criticism. Second, since our responses to any text have theoretical bases, I presume that all readers have a literary theory. Consciously or unconsciously, as readers we have developed a mind-set that fits or encompasses our expectations when reading any text. Somehow we all seem able to make sense of a text. The methods we use to frame our personal and public interpretations directly involve us in the process of literary criticism and theory and automatically make us practicing literary critics, whether we know it or not! My third assumption rests on the observation that each reader's literary theory and accompanying methodology is either conscious or unconscious, complete or incomplete, informed or ill-informed, eclectic or unified. Since an unconscious, incomplete, ill-informed, and eclectic literary theory more frequently than not leads to illogical, unsound, and haphazard interpretations, I believe that a well-defined, logical, and clearly articulated theory will enable readers to develop their own methods of interpretation, permitting readers, in fact, to order, clarify, and justify their appraisals of a text in a consistent and rational manner. Unfortunately, many readers cannot articulate their own literary theory and have little knowledge of the history and development of the ever-evolving principles of literary criticism. It is the goal of this book to introduce such students to literary theory and criticism, its historical development, and the various theoretical positions or schools of criticism that will enable them as readers to make conscious, informed, and intelligent choices about their own methods of interpretation. Like the first two editions, this new edition introduces students to the basic concerns of literary theory in Chapter 1, which now includes a more expansive definition ofliteratureitself. Chapter 2 places literary theory and criticism in historical perspective, starting with Plato and ending with modern-day theorists. Chapters 3 to 11 have all been revised, adding new terminology where appropriate. These chapters present the eleven major schools of criticism that have been developed in the twentieth century: New Criticism, Reader-Response Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Feminism, Marxism, Cultural Poetics or New Historicism, and Cultural Studies, with an expanded discussion of Postcolonialism, including African American and Gender Studies. To maintain consistency and for ease of study, each of these chapters is identically organized. We begin with a briefIntroductionfollowed by theHistorical Developmentof each school of

Amazon no longer offers textbook rentals. We do!

Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice

Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice

0130333972

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

Excerpts