9780134435787

By considering how adept readers behave and what assumptions they might make while interacting with literary text, REVEL™ for Texts and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory teaches students the challenging art of writing about literature. The Seventh Edition provides overviews of literature and how to write about it, as well as critical and literary theory with examples throughout. Students will learn versatile strategies in reading, writing, interpreting data, and constructing arguments that can be applied to virtually any field.
REVEL is Pearson’s newest way of delivering our respected content. Fully digital and highly engaging, REVEL gives students everything they need for the course. Informed by extensive research on how people read, think, and learn, REVEL is an interactive learning environment that enables students to read, practice, and study in one continuous experience–for less than the cost of a traditional textbook.

NOTE: REVEL is a fully digital delivery of Pearson content. This ISBN is for the standalone REVEL access card. In addition to this access card, you will need a course invite link, provided by your instructor, to register for and use REVEL.

Steven Lynn is dean of the South Carolina Honors College at the University of South Carolina and Louise Fry Scudder Professor. His interests include eighteenth-century literature (especially Samuel Johnson), composition and rhetoric (especially its history), and science fiction.

BRIEF CONTENTS

1. An Introduction, Theoretically

2. Critical Words: A Selective Tour

3. Unifying the Work: New Criticism

4. Creating the Text: Reader-Response Criticism

5. Opening Up the Text: Structuralism and Deconstruction

6. Connecting the Text: Historical and New Historical Criticism

7. Minding the Work: Psychological Criticism

8. Gendering the Text: Feminist Criticism, Post-feminism, and Queer Theory

COMPREHENSIVE CONTENTS

PREFACE

1. An Introduction, Theoretically

Textual Tours

Checking Some Baggage

“Is There One Correct Interpretation of a Literary Work?”

“So, Are All Opinions About Literature Equally Valid?”

Anything to Declare?

Theory Enables Practice

You Already Have a Theoretical Stance

This is an Introduction

Here’s the Plan

Works Cited and Recommended Further Reading

2. Critical Worlds: A Selective Tour

Brendan Gill, from Here at “The New Yorker”

New Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism

Structuralist and Deconstructive Criticism

Historical, Postcolonial, and Cultural Studies

Psychological Criticism

Political Criticism

Other Approaches

Works Cited and Recommended Further Reading

3. Unifying the Work: New Criticism

The Purpose of New Criticism

Basic Principles Reflected

Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica”

Radicals in Tweed Jackets

How to Do New Criticism

Film and Other Genres

The Writing Process: A Sample Essay

Gwendolyn Brooks, “The Mother”

Preparing to Write

Shaping

Drafting

Practicing New Criticism

Stephen Shu-ning Liu, “My Father’s Martial Art”

Questions

Ben Jonson, “On My First Son”

Questions

The Parable of the Prodigal Son

Questions

Useful Terms for New Criticism

Checklist for New Criticism

Works Cited

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REVEL for Texts and Contexts Writing About Literature with Critical Theory -- Access Card

REVEL for Texts and Contexts Writing About Literature with Critical Theory -- Access Card

0134435788

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials