Dr. Kristi Siegel

Assistant Professor, English

Mount Mary College

2900 North Menomonee River Parkway

Milwaukee, WI  53222

(414) 258-4810, ext. 461

siegelkr@mtmary.edu

 

 

 

Introduction to Modern Literary Theory

 

       Literary Trends and Influences* 

* Disclaimer: When theories are explained briefly, a necessary reduction in their complexity and richness occurs. The information below is meant merely as a guide or introduction to modern literary theories and trends.

 

 

New Criticism

A literary movement that started in the late 1920s and 1930s and originated in reaction to traditional criticism that new critics saw as largely concerned with matters extraneous to the text, e.g., with the biography or psychology of the author or the work's relationship to literary history. New Criticism proposed that a work of literary art should be regarded as autonomous, and so should not be judged by reference to considerations beyond itself. A poem consists less of a series of referential and verifiable statements about the 'real' world beyond it, than of the presentation and sophisticated organization of a set of complex experiences in a verbal form (Hawkes, pp. 150-151).

Further references: 

  • Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 6. 
  • Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. See chapter 1. 
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A
  • Comparative Introduction. See chapter 3. 
  • See also the works of Robert D. Denham, John Fekete, and William
    J. Kennedy. 

Suggested Websites:

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Archetypal/Myth Criticism

A form of criticism based largely on the works of C.G. Jung and Joseph Campbell (and myth itself). Some of the school's major figures include Robert Graves, Francis Fergusson, Philip Wheelwright, Leslie Fiedler, Northrop Frye, Maud Bodkin, and G. Wilson Knight. These critics view the genres and individual plot patterns of literature, including highly sophisticated and realistic works, as recurrences of certain archetypes and essential mythic formulae. Archetypes, according to Jung, are "primordial images"; the "psychic residue" of repeated types of experience in the lives of very ancient ancestors which are inherited in the "collective unconscious" of the human race and are expressed in myths, religion, dreams, and private fantasies, as well as in the works of literature (Abrams, p. 10, 112).

Further references:

  • Jung, Carl Gustav. Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature and various
    other works 
  • Frazer, J.G. The Golden Bough. 
  • Lentriccia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 1. 
  • Campbell, Joseph. Hero with a Thousand Faces. 
  • Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism and Fables of Identity. 
  • See Also the works of Derek Brewer, Shirley Lowry, June Singer,
    and Laurens Van der Post 

Suggested Websites:

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Psychoanalytic Criticism

The application of modern psychological principles (particularly those of Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan) to the study of literature. Psychoanalytic criticism may focus on the writer's psyche, the study of the creative process, the study of psychological types and principles present within works of literature, or the effects of literature upon its readers. (Wellek and Warren, p. 81)

Further references: 

  • Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits: A Selection. 
  • Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. See chapter 5. 
  • Freud, Sigmund. 
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. See Chapter 5. 
  • Weber, Samuel. The Legend of Freud. 
  • See also the works of Harold Bloom, Shoshona Felman, Juliet Mitchell, Geoffrey Hartman, and Stuart Schniederman. 

Suggested Websites:

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Marxism

A sociological approach to literature that viewed works of literature or art as the products of historical forces that can be analyzed by looking at the material conditions in which they were formed. In Marxist ideology, what we often classify as a world view (such as the Victorian age) is actually the articulations of the dominant class. Marxism generally focuses on the clash between the dominant and repressed classes in any given age and also may encourage art to imitate what is often termed an "objective" reality.  Contemporary Marxism is much broader in its focus, and views art as simultaneously reflective and autonomous to the age in which it was produced. The Frankfort School is also associated with Marxism (Abrams, p. 178, Childers and Hentzi, pp. 175-179).

Further references: 

  • Marx, Karl. 
  • Engels, Friedrich 
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction.See chapter 6. 
  • Bullock, Chris and David Peck. Guide to Marxist Criticism. 
  • See also the works of Walter Benjamin, Tony Bennett, Terry Eagleton, John Frow, Fredric
    Jameson, Georg Lukacs, Pierre Macherey, Michal Ryan, Ronald Taylor, and Raymond
    Williams. 

Suggested Websites:

 

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Postcolonialism

Postcolonialism refers to a historical phase undergone by third-world countries after the decline of colonialism, e.g., the European empires. Although the term, postcolonialism, generally refers to the period after colonialism the distinction is not always made. After the decline of imperialism, countries such as Asia, African, and the Caribbeans were left to rebuild their countries, their culture, government, etc. In the process, many third-world writers focus on both colonialism and the changes created in a postcolonial culture. Among the many challenges facing postcolonial writers are the attempt to both resurrect their culture and to combat the preconceptions about their culture. Edward Said, for example, uses the word Orientalism to describe the discourse about the East constructed by the West.

Further references:

  • Said, Edward. Orientalism. 
  • Soyinka, Wole. Myth, Literature, and the African World. 
  • Guneratne, Anthony R. The Virtual Spaces of Postcoloniality: Rushdie, Ondaatje, Naipaul, Bakhtin and the Others. 
  • See writings of Jamaica Kincaid, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka, R. K. Narayan, Yasunari Kawabata, Anita Desai, Frantz Fanon, Kazuo Ishiguro, Chinea Acheve, J.M. Coetzee, Anthol Fugard, Kamala Das, Tsitsi Dangarembga, etc. 
  • Ashcroft, Bill. Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, eds. The Post-Colonial
    Studies Reader.

Suggested Websites:

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Existentialism/ Phenomenology/Hermeneutics

Existentialism is a philosophy (promoted especially by Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus) that views each person as an isolated being who is cast into an alien universe, and conceives the world as possessing no inherent human truth, value, or meaning. A person's life, then, as it moves from the nothingness from which it came toward the nothingness where it must end, defines an existence which is both anguished and absurd (Guerin). The major figures include Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Martin Buber, Karl Jaspers, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty.

Further references:

  • Sartre, Jean-Paul. Existentialism and Humanism and Being and Nothingness. 
  • Kierkegaard, Soren. Fear and Trembling. 
  • Camus, Albert. 
  • Nietzsche, Fredrich. 
  • Heidegger, Martin. 
  • Barrett, William. Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy. 
  • Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 3.

Suggested Websites:

 

Phenomenology is a philosophical method, first developed by Edmund Husserl, that proposed "phenomenological reduction" so that everything not "immanent" to consciousness must be excluded; all realities must be treated as pure "phenomena" and this is the only absolute data from which we can begin. Husserl viewed consciousness always as intentional and that the act of consciousness, the thinking subject and the object it "intends," are inseparable. Art is not a means of securing pleasure, but a revelation of being. The work is the phenomenon by which we come to know the world (Eagleton, p. 54; Abrams, p. 133, Guerin, p. 263).

Further references:

  • Husserl, Edmund. 
  • Heidegger, Martin. 
  • Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. 
  • Gadamer, Hans Georg. 
  • Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. 
  • Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena, and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of
    Signs. 

Suggested Websites:

Hermeneutics sees interpretation as a circular process whereby valid interpretation can be achieved by a sustained, mutually qualifying interplay between our progressive sense of the whole and our retrospective understanding of its component parts. Two dominant theories that emerged from Wilhelm Dilthey's original premise were that of E. D. Hirsch who, in accord with Dilthey, felt a valid interpretation was possible by uncovering the work's authorial intent (though informed by historical and cultural determinants), and in contrast, that of Martin Heidegger who argued that a reader must experience the "inner life" of a text in order to understand it at all. The reader's "being-in-the-world" or dasein is fraught with difficulties since both the reader and the text exist in a temporal and fluid state. For Heidegger or Hans Georg Gadamer, then, a valid interpretation may become irrecoverable and will always be relative.

Further references:

  • Habermas, Jurgen. Communication and the Evolution of Society. 
  • Halliburton, David. Poetic Thinking: An Approach to Heidegger. 
  • Hirsch, E.D. The Aims of Interpretation. 
  • Magliola, Robert R. Phenomenology and Literature: An Introduction. 
  • Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. 
  • Palmer, Richard. Hermeneutics: Interpretation Theory in Schliermacher. 
  • Ricouer, Paul. The Conflict of Interpretation: Essays in Hermeneutics.

Suggested Websites:

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Russian Formalism/Prague Linguistic Circle/Linguistic Criticism/Dialogic Theory

These linguistic movements began in the 1920s, were suppressed by the Soviets in the 1930s, moved to Czechoslovakia and were continued by members of the Prague Linguistic Circle (including Roman Jakobson, Jan Mukrarovsky, and René Wellek). The Prague Linguistic Circle viewed literature as a special class of language, and rested on the assumption that there is a fundamental opposition between literary (or poetical) language and ordinary language. Formalism views the primary function of ordinary language as communicating a message, or information, by references to the world existing outside of language. In contrast, it views literary language as self-focused: its function is not to make extrinsic references, but to draw attention to its own "formal" features--that is, to interrelationships among the linguistic signs themselves. Literature is held to be subject to critical analysis by the sciences of linguistics but also by a type of linguistics different from that adapted to ordinary discourse, because its laws produce the distinctive features of literariness (Abrams, pp. 165-166). An important contribution made by Victor Schklovsky (of the Leningrad group) was to explain how language--through a period of time--tends to become "smooth, unconscious or transparent." In contrast, the work of literature is to defamiliarize language by a process of "making strange." Dialogism refers to a theory, initiated by Mikhail Bakhtin, arguing that in a dialogic work of literature--such as in the writings of Dostoevsky--there is a "polyphonic interplay of various characters' voices ... where no worldview is given superiority over others; neither is that voice which may be identified with the author's necessarily the most engaging or persuasive of all those in the text" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 81).

Further references:

  • Jakobson, Roman. "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics." Ed. Sebeok, Thomas. Style in Language, pp. 350-377. 
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. See chapters 1 and 2. 
  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays and Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. 
  • Ehrlich, Victor. Russian Formalism: History, Doctrine. 
  • Lemon, Lee T. and Marion J. Reese. Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays. 
  • Medvedev, P.N. and Mikhail Bakhtin. The Formal Method in Literary Scholarship: A Critical Introduction to Sociological Poetics. 
  • Thompson, E.M. Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Criticism. 
  • Wellek, René. The Literary Theory and Aesthetics of the Prague School. 

Suggested Websites:

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Avant-Garde/Surrealism/Dadaism

Avant-Garde literally meant the "most forwardly placed troops." The movement sought to eliminate or at least blur the distinction between art and life often by introducing elements of mass culture. These artists aimed to "make it new" and often represented themselves as alienated from the established order. Avant-garde literature and art challenged societal norms to "shock" the sensibilities of its audience (Childers & Hentzi, p.26 and Abrams, p.110).

Surrealism (also associated with the avant-garde and dadaism) was initiated in particular by André Breton, whose 1924 "Manifesto of Surrealism" defined the movement's "adherence to the imagination, dreams, the fantastic, and the irrational." Dada is a nonsense word and the movement, in many ways similar to the trends of avant-garde and surrealism, "emphasized absurdity, reflected a spirit of nihilism, and celebrated the function of chance" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 69). Major figures include André Breton, Georges Bataille, Tristan Tzara, Jean Arp, Richard Huelsenbeck, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Raoul Hausmann, Max Ernst and Kurt Schwitters. 

Further references:

  • Bürger, Peter. Theory of the Avant-Garde. 
  • Calinescu, Matei. Faces of Modernity: Avant-Garde,
  • Decadence, Kitsch. 
  • Short, Robert. Dada and Surrealism. 
  • Butler, Christopher. After the Wake: An Essay on the
    Contemporary Avant-Garde    . 
  • Matthews, J. H. Toward the Poetics of Surrealism. 

Suggested Websites:

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Structuralism and Semiotics

Structuralism is a way of thinking about the world which is predominantly concerned with the perceptions and description of structures. At its simplest, structuralism claims that the nature of every element in any given situation has no significance by itself, and in fact is determined by all the other elements involved in that situation. The full significance of any entity cannot be perceived unless and until it is integrated into the structure of which it forms a part (Hawkes, p. 11). Structuralists believe that all human activity is constructed, not natural or "essential." Consequently, it is the systems of organization that are important (what we do is always a matter of selection within a given construct). By this formulation, "any activity, from the actions of a narrative to not eating one's peas with a knife, takes place within a system of differences and has meaning only in its relation to other possible activities within that system, not to some meaning that emanates from nature or the divine" (Childers & Hentzi, p. 286.). Major figures include Claude Lévi-Strauss, A. J. Greimas, Roland Barthes, Ferdinand de Saussure, Vladminir Plopp, and Terence Hawkes.

Further References:

  • Caws, Peter. "What is Structuralism?" Partisan Review. Vol. 35, No. 1, Winter 1968, pp. 75-91.
  • Jefferson, Anne and David Robey. Modern Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction. See chapter 4. 
  • Lentricchia, Frank. After the New Criticism. See chapter 4.
  • Barthes, Roland. The Pleasure of the Text, S/Z, and Mythologies. 
  • Culler, Jonathan. Roland Barthes. 
  • Hawkes, Terence. Structuralism and Semiotics. 
  • Scholes, Robert. Structuralism in Literature: An Introduction. 

Suggested Websites:

Semiotics, simply put, is the science of signs. Semiology proposes that a great diversity of our human action and productions--our bodily postures and gestures, the the social rituals we perform, the clothes we wear, the meals we serve, the buildings we inhabit--all convey "shared" meanings to members of a particular culture, and so can be analyzed as signs which function in diverse kinds of signifying systems. Linguistics (the study of verbal signs and structures) is only one branch of semiotics but supplies the basic methods and terms which are used in the study of all other social sign systems (Abrams, p. 170). Major figures include Charles Peirce, Ferdinand de Saussure, Michel Foucault, Umberto Eco, and Roland Barthes.

Further references:

  • Barthes, Roland. Elements of Semiology. 

  • Eco, Umberto. Theory of Semiotics. 

  • Kristeva, Julia. Revolution in Poetic Language and Desire in Language: A Semiotic
    Approach to Literature and Art    . 

  • Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry 

  • Peirce, Charles. Values in a Universe of Chance: Selected Writings of Charles S. Peirce. 

  • Saussure, Ferdinand. Course in General Linguistics. 

  • Silverman, Kaja. The Subject of Semiotics. 

  • Sebeok, Thomas. The Tell-Tale Sign: A Survey of Semiotics. 

Suggested Websites:

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Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction

Post-Structuralism is a reaction to structuralism and works against seeing language as a stable, closed system. It is a shift from seeing the poem or novel as a closed entity, equipped with definite meanings which it is the critic's task to decipher, to seeing literature as irreducibly plural, an endless play of signifiers which can never be finally nailed down to a single center, essence, or meaning . Jacques Derrida's paper on "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (delivered in 1966) proved particularly influential in the creation of post-structuralism. Derrida argued against, in essence, the notion of a knowable center (the Western ideal of logocentrism), a structure that could organize the differential play of language or thought but somehow remain immune to the same "play" it depicts (Abrams, 258-9). Derrida's critique of structuralism also heralded the advent of deconstruction that--like post-structuralism--critiques the notion of "origin" built into structuralism. In negative terms, deconstruction--particularly as articulated by Derrida--has often come to be interpreted as "anything goes" since nothing has any real meaning or truth. More positively, it may posited that Derrida, like Paul de Man and other post-structuralists, really asks for rigor, that is, a type of interpretation that is constantly and ruthlessly self-conscious and on guard. Similarly, Christopher Norris (in What's Wrong with Postmodernism?) launches a cogent argument against simplistic attacks of Derrida's theories:

 

On this question [the tendency of critics to read deconstruction "as a species of all-licensing sophistical 'freeplay'"), as on so many others, the issue has been obscured by a failure to grasp Derrida's point when he identifies those problematic factors in language (catachreses, slippages between 'literal' and 'figural' sense, subliminal metaphors mistaken for determinate concepts) whose effect--as in Husserl--is to complicate the passage from what the text manifestly means to say to what it actually says when read with an eye to its latent or covert signifying structures. This 'free-play' has nothing whatsoever to do with that notion of an out-and-out hermeneutic license which would finally come down to a series of slogans like "all reading is misreading," "all interpretation is misinterpretation," etc. If Derrida's texts have been read that way--most often by literary critics in quest of more adventurous hermeneutic models--this is just one sign of the widespread deformation professionelle that has attended the advent of deconstruction as a new arrival on the US academic scene. (151)

Some commonly used terms in deconstructive theory: 

Aporia - the inherent contradictions found in any text. Derrida, for example, cites the inherent contradictions at work in Jean-Jacques Rousseau's use of the words culture and nature by demonstrating that Rousseau's sense of the self's innocence (in nature) is already corrupted by the concept of culture (and existence) and vice-versa. 

Différance - a combination of the meanings in word différance. The concept means différer or to differ, différance which means to delay or postpone (defer), and the idea of difference itself. To oversimplify, words are always at a distance from what they signify and, to make matters worse, must be described by using other words.

Erasure (sous rature) - to highlight suspect ideologies, notions linked to the metaphysics of presence, Derrida put them under "erasure," metaphorically pointing out the absence of any definitive meaning. By using erasure, however, Derrida realized that a "trace" will always remain but that these traces do not indicate the marks themselves but rather the absence of the marks (which emphasize the absence of "univocal meaning, truth, or origin"). In contrast, when Heidegger similarly "crossed out" words, he assumed that meaning would be (eventually) recoverable.

Further references:

  • Atkins, C. Douglas. Reading Deconstruction/Deconstructive Reading. 

  • Bloom, Harold, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and J. Hillis Miller.
    Deconstruction and Criticism. 

  • Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. 

  • Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference. 

  • De Man, Paul. Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust and Blindness and Insight. 

  • Heidegger, Martin. Basic Writings. 

  • Norris, Christopher. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. 

  • Young, Robert, ed. Untying the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader. 

  • Kamuf, Peggy, ed. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. 

Suggested Websites:

 

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Postmodernism

Though often used interchangeably with post-structuralism, postmodernism is a much broader term and encompasses theories of art, literature, culture, architecture, and so forth. In relation to literary study, the term postmodernism has been articulately defined by Ihab Hassan. In Hassan's formulation postmodernism differs from modernism in several ways:

 

Modernism Postmodernism
Purpose Play
Design Chance
Hierarchy Anarchy
Hypotactic Paratactic
Totalization Deconstruction
Presence Absence
Root/Depth Rhizome/Surface
Synthesis Antithesis
Urbanism Anarchy and fragmentation
Elitism Anti-authoritarianism

 

In its simplest terms, postmodernism consists of the period following high modernism and includes the many theories that date from that time, e.g., structuralism, semiotics, post-structuralism, deconstruction, and so forth. For Jean Baudrillard, postmodernism marks a culture composed "of disparate fragmentary experiences and images that constantly bombard the individual in music, video, television, advertising and other forms of electronic media. The speed and ease of reproduction of these images mean that they exist only as image, devoid of depth, coherence, or originality" (Childers and Hentzi 235). 

Further references:

  • Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations and Reflections. 
  • Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation and Cool Memories. 
  • Doherty, Thomas, ed. Postmodernism: A Reader.
  • Foster, Hal. The Anti-Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture 
  • Hassan, Ihab. The Dismemberment of Orpheus: Toward a Postmodern Literature, Paracriticisms: Seven Speculations of the Time, The Right Promethean Fire: Imagination, Science, and Cultural Change 
  • Hutcheon, Linda. A Poetics of Postmodernism. 
  • Huyssen, Andreas. After the Great Divide: Modernism, Mass Culture, Postmodernism. 
  • Jameson, Fredric. Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism.
  • Lyotard, Jean-François. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. 
  • McHale, Brian. Postmodern Fiction. 

Suggested Websites:

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Reception and Reader-Response Theory

Reader-response theory may be traced initially to theorists such as I. A. Richards (The Principles of Literary Criticism, Practical Criticism and How to Read a Page) or Louise Rosenblatt (Literature as Exploration or The Reader, the Text, the Poem). For Rosenblatt and Richards the idea of a "correct" reading--though difficult to attain--was always the goal of the "educated" reader (armed, of course, with appropriate aesthetic apparatus).  For Stanley Fish (Is There a Text in this Class?, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in "Paradise Lost" and Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of the Seventeenth-Century Reader), the reader's ability to understand a text is also subject a reader's particular "interpretive community." To simplify, a reader brings certain assumptions to a text based on the interpretive strategies he/she has learned in a particular interpretive community. For Fish, the interpretive community serves somewhat to "police" readings and thus prohibit outlandish interpretations. In contrast Wolfgang Iser argued that the reading process is always subjective. In The Implied Reader, Iser sees reading as a dialectical process between the reader and text. For Hans Robert Jauss, however (Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, and Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics), a reader's aesthetic experience is always bound by time and historical determinants. 

Further References:

  • Austin, J.L. How to Do Things with Words. 1962 

  • Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. 1978 

  • Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. 1982 

  • Holland, Norman. The Dynamics of Literary Response. 1968, 5 Readers Reading. 1975 

  • Bleich, David. Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism. 1978 

  • Bloom, Harold. A Map of Misreading. 1975 

  • Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader. 1979. 

  • Riffaterre, Michael. Semiotics of Poetry. 1978. 

  • Culler, Jonathan. The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction. 1981. 

Suggested Websites:

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Feminism

To speak of "Feminism" as a theory is already a reduction. However, in terms of its theory (rather than as its reality as a historical movement in effect for some centuries) feminism might be categorized into three general groups:

  1. theories having an essentialist focus (including psychoanalytic and French feminism);

  2. theories aimed at defining or establishing a feminist literary canon or theories seeking to re-interpret and re-vision literature (and culture and history and so forth) from a less patriarchal slant (including gynocriticism, liberal feminism); and

  3. theories focusing on sexual difference and sexual politics (including gender studies, lesbian studies, cultural feminism, radical feminism, and socialist/materialist feminism).

Further, women (and men) needed to consider what it meant to be a woman, to consider how much of what society has often deemed inherently female traits, are culturally and socially constructed. Simone de Beauvoir's study, The Second Sex, though perhaps flawed by Beauvoir's own body politics, nevertheless served as a groundbreaking book of feminism, that questioned the "othering" of women by western philosophy. Early projects in feminist theory included resurrecting women's literature that in many cases had never been considered seriously or had been erased over time (e.g., Charlotte Perkins Gilman was quite prominent in the early 20th century but was virtually unknown until her work was "re-discovered" later in the century). Since the 1960s the writings of many women have been rediscovered, reconsidered, and collected in large anthologies such as The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women. However, merely unearthing women's literature did not ensure its prominence; in order to assess women's writings the amount of preconceptions inherent in a literary canon dominated by male beliefs and male writers needed to be re-evaluated. Betty Friedan's The Feminist Mystique (1963), Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1970), Teresa de Lauretis's Alice Doesn't: Feminism, Semiotics, Cinema (1984), Annette Kolodny's The Lay of the Land (1975), Judith Fetterly's The Resisting Reader (1978), Elaine Showalter's A Literature of Their Own (1977), or Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar's The Madwoman in the Attic (1979) are just a handful of the many critiques that questioned cultural, sexual, intellectual, and/or psychological stereotypes about women. 

Further References on Psychoanalytic and French Feminism:

  • Cixous, Helene. "The Laugh of the Medusa" or "Sorties: Out & Out: Attacks/Ways Out/Forays." 
  • Flax, Jane. Thinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism and Postmodernism in the
    Contemporary West    , 1990. 
  • Gallop, Jane. The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis, 1982. 
  • Grosz, E. A. (Elizabeth A.) Sexual Subversions :Three French Feminists. Boston : Allen & Unwin, 1989. 
  • Irigaray, Luce. Speculum of the Other Woman. Ithaca, N.Y. : Cornell University Press, 1985. HQ1154 .I7413 1985 
  • Kristeva, Julia. The Kristeva Reader. Ed. Toril Moi, 1986. 
  • Moi, Toril. Sexual/textual Politics : Feminist Literary Theory. London ; New York : Methuen, 1985.PN98.W64 M65 1985 
  • Stanton, Domna. "Difference on Trial: A Critique of the Maternal Metaphor in Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva." in The Poetics of Gender. Ed. Nancy K. Miller, 1986. 

Further References on Gynocriticism and Liberal Feminism:

  • Eisenstein, Zillah R. The Radical Future of Liberal Feminism, 1981. 
  • Gilbert and Gubar (see paragraph above) 
  • Showalter, Elaine. "Feminist Criticism in the Wilderness." 1985. 
  • Wollstonecraft, Mary A. A Vindication of the Rights of Women. 

Further References on Gender Studies, G/L Studies, Cultural, Radical, and 
Socialist/Materialist Feminism:

  • Showalter, Elaine, ed. Speaking of Gender, 1989. 
  • Spector, Judith, ed. Gender Studies: New Directions in Feminist Criticism, 1986. 
  • Heller, Dana, ed. Cross-Purposes : Lesbian Studies, Feminist Studies, and the
    Limits of Alliance    , 1997. 
  • Vicinus Martha, ed. Lesbian Subjects : A Feminist Studies Reader, 1996. 
  • Brooks, Ann. Postfeminisms : Feminism, Cultural Theory, and Cultural Forms, 1997 
  • Butler, Judith. Bodies That Matter : On the Discursive Limits of "Sex." 1993 . 
  • Crow, Barbara A., ed. Radical Feminism : An Historical Reader, 1999 
  • Daly, Mary. Quintessence ... Realizing the Archaic Future: A Radical Elemental Feminist Manifesto, 1999. 
  • hooks, bell. Outlaw Culture : Resisting Representations, 1994. 
  • James, Joy. SHADOWBOXING : Representations of Black Feminist Politics, 1999 . 

Suggested Websites:

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Genre Criticism

Study of different forms or types of literature. Genre studies often focus on the characteristics, structures, and conventions attributed to different forms of literature, e.g., the novel, short story, poem, drama, film, etc. More recent inquiry in genre criticism centers on the bias often inherent in genre criticism such as its latent (or overt) racism and sexism. Note: The references below are under construction and will be updated.

Further Resources - Fiction:

  • Cohn, Dorit, Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1978. (discussion of first and third person narratology) PN 3448 P8 C6
  • Echer, Michael J.C., The Conditioned Imagination from Shakespeare to Conrad, New York: Holmes and Meier, 1977 ((argues that in approaching a work of literature that involves an “exo—cultural” character or theme we must take into account the “culturally conditioned imagination” on the creation of a work of art) PR 408 .S64 E25
  • Fowler, Alistair, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes, Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1982 - (on the nature of literary genres and how they are formed) PN 45 .5 F6
  • Hutcheon, Linda, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, Waterloo: Wilfred Lauren UP, 1980 (PN 3503 .H8)
  • Heiserman, Arthur, The Novel Before the Novel: Essays and Discussions About the Beginning of Prose Fiction in the West, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1977 ( traces beginnings of prose fiction to about the fourth century, A.D. ) - PA 3040 .H38 
  • Keilman, Stephen B., The Self-Begetting Novel, New York: Columbia UP, 1980 - (a study of the narrative method in specific texts) PN 3503 .K4
  • Rimmon-Kenan, Shloinith, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London and New York: Methuen, 1983 - excellent brief book providing overview on narratology (PN 212 .R55) 
  • Smith, Barbara Hernstein, On the Margins of Discourse: The Relation of Literature to Language, Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979 - argues that novels are usually imitations of nonfictive writing acts, such as the production of histories or biographies (PN 54 .SE)
  • Spilka, Mark, Towards a Poetics of Fiction: Essays from Novel: A Forum on Fiction, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1977 - collection of essays on various modern views and approaches to fictional critical theory (PN 3331 .T65) 
  • Suleiman, Susan R., Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre, New York: Columbia UP, 1983 - constructs a viable model of the roman a these as a genre (PQ 671 .S94) 
  • Torgovnick, Marianna, Closure in the Novel, Princeton: Princeton UP, 1981 — categorizes endings or closure in novels into three types: circular, parallel and incomplete (PN 3378 .T6) 
  • Watson, George, The Story of the Novel, London: Macmillan, 1979 — discusses the elements that make a novel memorable; treats three types of English novels: memoir novel, letter— novel and the novel in the third person (PN 3491. .W3)
  • Stowe, William W. , Balzac, James, and the Realistic Novel. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983 - uses three novels by James and three by Balzac to construct a basis of “systematic realism” in the novel (PN 3499 .578) 

Further Resources - Poetry:

  • Baker, Carlos, The Echoing Green: Romanticism, Modernism and the
    Phenomenon of Transference in Poetry    , Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984 - elegantly
    written discussion of Wordsworth, Coleridge Byron, Shelley and Keats and then
    Yeats, Frost, Pound, Eliot, Stevens and Auden (PS 310 .R66 B34)
  • Berg, Viola Jacobsen, Pathways for the Poet: Poetry Forms Explained and
    Illustrated    , Millford: Mott Media, 1977 - dictionary of poetic forms (PM 1042 .B47)
  • Forrest-Thomson, Veronica, Poetic Edifice: A Theory of 20th Century Poetry,
    Manchester UP, 1978 - argues that poetry “is resolutely artificial, even when it tries
    to imitate the diction and cadences of ordinary speech” 
  • Fussell, Paul, Poetic Meter and Poetic Form, New York: Random House, 1979 (this
    is the revised edition--a description, history and review of theory on poetic meter and form
    (PH 1505 .F79 — first edition 1965) 
  • Hill, Archibald, Constituent and Pattern in Poetry, Austin: University of Texas P.
    1977 - discussion of linguistic patterns in poetry (PN 1042 .H46)
  • Haublein, Ernst, The Stanza, London: Methuen (Critical Idiom Series) — historical
    description of stanzaic tradition (PM 1059 .S83)
  • Hartman, Charles 0., Free Verse: An Essay on Prosody, Princeton: Princeton UP,
    1980 — essay on the prosody of free verse (PH 1531 .F73 H37) - surveys critical 
    positions and emphasizes re-definitions of the term (PN 56 .P3 P37x)
  • Nemerov, Howard, Figures of Thought: Speculations on the Meaning of poetry
    and other Essays    , Boston: David R. Godine, - lively collection of essays. on poetry;
    what poetry is, the language of poetry, etc. (PN 1031 .N44)
  • Perkins, David, History of Modern Poetry: from the 1890’s to the High Modernist
    Mode    , Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1976 - discussion of poetic traditions from 1890 to
    1930 (PR 610 .P4)
  • Thompson, Denys, The Uses of Poetry, Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978 - aims
    at describing part played by poetry from the earliest times to present day (PN 1111
    .T5)
  • Welsh, Andrew, Roots of Lyric: Primitive Poetry and Modern Poetics, Princeton:
    Princeton UP, 1977 traces modern lyrical poetry back to its origins in primitive and
    folk rhythmical patterns (PN 1126 .W45

Further References - Drama:

  • Brockett, Oscar G., The Theatre: An Introduction, 4th ed. New York: Holt, Rinhart,
    and Winston, 1979 - useful reference work (PN 2101 .B7) 
  • Caputi, Anthony, Buffo: The Genius of Vulgar Comedy, Detroit: Wayne State UP,
    1978 - on the history of low comedy and farce, from the Greeks to the present (PN
    1922 .C3) 
  • Howarth, W. D., ed., Comic Drama: The European Heritage, London: Methuen,
    1977 — series of papers that trace the development of comic drama from its beginnings in
    ancient Greece to the 20th Century (PN ;928 .E8 C6)
  • Salgado, Gamini, English Drama: A Critical Introduction, London: Edward Arnold,
    1980 - an account of drama in England from its medieval beginnings to the early
    1970’s; excellent (PR 625 .S2) 
  • Schleuter, June, Metafictional Characters in Modern Drama, New York: Columbia
    UP, 1979 discusses Pirandello, Genet, Beckett, Weiss, Albee, Stoppard, Handke
    (PN 1861 .S3) 
  • Seidel, Michael and Edward Mendelson, Homer to Beckett: The European Epic
    and Dramatic Tradition    , New Haven: Yale UP, 1977 - sixteen essays on the study
    of European epic and dramatic traditions (PN 56 .E65 H6) 
  • Sinfield, Alan, Dramatic Monologue, London: Methuen, 1977 

Further References - Short Story:

  • Allen, Waiter, The Short Story in English, New York: Oxford UP, — mostly traces “English” language short story (PR829 .A47) 
  • May, Charles E., ed., Short Story Theories, Athens: Ohio UP, 1976 - collection of essays by short story writers and critics approaching short story as a genre form; good annotated bibliography (PN 3373 .S39)

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