Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction - Second Edition (Paperback, 2)

Chapter 1: Introduction

• Theory vs. Criticism
• Close Reading and Literary Studies
• Criticism through the Ages
  • Literary Studies Comes to the University
  • The “Theory” Revolution
• Theory and Criticism Today
• Literary Form
• Literary Characters
• The Importance of Context
• The Identity of the Author
• The Role of the Reader
• Reading as Education, Reading as Entertainment
• Diversity
• The Uses of Theory and Criticism
• Getting Started

• Plato: The First Literary Theorist
  • Plato’s Republic
  • Plato’s Theory of Forms
  • The Allegory of the Cave
  • Speech vs. Writing
• Aristotle
  • Classification
  • Narrative Form
  • Mimesis
  • Rhetoric
• Horace’s Poetic Art
• Quintilian’s Figures of Speech
• Longinus’s Sublime Aesthetics

• Religion and Biblical Interpretation
• Establishing a Canon
• Medieval Scholasticism
  • The Four Levels of Interpretation
• Maimonides and the Jewish Tradition
• The Secularization of Interpretation
• Boccaccio’s Mythological Studies
• Humanism
  • The Printing Press
  • Protestantism
  • The Growth of the Vernacular
  • New Forms
  • New Rules for Writing

• Print Culture
• Addison and Steele and the Birth of Modern Reviewing
• Johnson and His Dictionary
• The French Encyclopedia
• Skepticism
• Political Revolutions
• Abolitionism
• Early Feminism
• Aesthetic Innovations
• Idealism
  • Kant’s Idealist Philosophy
  • Hegel’s Ideas of History

• Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Poetry
• Realism, Nationalism, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
  • Varieties of Realism
• Arnold, Taine, and Literary Studies
• Karl Marx
• Decadent Aesthetics
  • Poe’s Philosophy of Composition
  • Art for Art’s Sake
• Nietzsche’s Radical Philosophy
• Fin-de-siècle Fictions

• The Philological Tradition
• Saussure and Structuralist Linguistics
• Russian Formalism
• Anglo-American Formalisms
  • Practical and New Criticisms
  • Neo-Aristotelianism
• Lévi-Strauss and Structuralist Anthropology
• Barthes and Structuralist Semiotics
• Narratology
• Derrida and Deconstruction
  • Deconstruction in America
• Formalism Today

• Historicist Criticism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
• Historicism to the 1970s
• The “New Historicism”
  • New Approaches to History and Culture
  • Foucault and Discourse
  • Greenblatt and the New Historicism
• Bourdieu and the Sociology of Culture
• From Bibliography to Book History
• Digital Humanities

• Early Marxist Theory and Criticism
  • The Frankfurt School
  • French Marxism
  • British Cultural Studies
• Later Marxist Theory and Criticism
• Postcolonial and Ethnic Studies
  • Said and Orientalism
  • Later Postcolonial Theory
  • Gates and the African American Tradition
  • Critical Race Theory
  • The Diversity of Literary Traditions
• Feminist Theory and Criticism
  • Founding Figures
  • Later Feminist Theorists
• Sexuality and Queer Theory
  • Sedgwick and Butler
• Disability Studies
• Environmental Studies

• Freud and Freudian Criticism
• Jungian Criticism
• Jacques Lacan
  • Julia Kristeva
  • Heirs to Lacan
• Phenomenology
• Hermeneutics
• Reader-Response Criticism
• Cognitive Approaches
• Affect Theory

• The Example of Hamlet
  • Hamlet’s Organic Unity
  • Hamlet’s Theatricality
  • Hamlet in Literary History
  • Hamlet and Class
  • Hamlet and Gender
  • Hamlet’s Melancholy
• The Example of Frankenstein
  • Frankenstein and Narratology
  • Frankenstein and History
  • Frankenstein and Orientalism
  • Frankenstein and Homosociality
  • The Sublime, the Abject, the Uncanny
• Moving Forward