ENGL 2999: Approaches to English Studies (Mabee)

an accessible overview of major figures and movements in literary theory and criticism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It is designed for students at the undergraduate level or for others needing a broad synthesis of the long history of literary theory.

The most comprehensive anthology of theory and criticism, now up-to-date and global. New selections from non-western theory and a thoroughly updated twentieth century selection make the book even more diverse and authoritative.

Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory offers an insightful look at the development of feminist theory through a literary lens. Stressing the significance of feminism's origins in the European Enlightenment, this book traces the literary careers of feminism's major thinkers in order to elucidate the connection of feminist theoretical production to literary work. In addition to considering such well-known authors as Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Simone de Beauvoir and Hlne Cixous, this book also reflects on the lasting influence of postcolonialism, liberalism, and specific genres such as science fiction and modernist poetry. Written by leading scholars and focusing on the literary trajectories of feminism's noted contributors, Literature and the Development of Feminist Theory ultimately provides a new perspective on feminism's theoretical context, bringing into view the effects of literary form on the growth of feminist thought.

Alltoo often, the history of poetry criticism in the 20th Century is told as atale of two sides. While 'Lit crit' pored over the author's every line,'Theory' stood on the shoulder of texts to gaze into the metaphysical mists. Drawingon the key insights of both Lit crit and Theory, On Modern Poetry tries to get beyond the oppositionbetween them, proposing instead a 'total criticism' that draws on all resourcesavailable.It combines 'analytic irony' with 'imaginative empathy' in orderto generate fresh insights. The themes discussed in the firstpart of the book include tradition, voice, rhyme, rhetoric, and objects,bringing in critics such as Eliot, Heidegger, Empson, Blackmur, and De Man. Thesecond part examines texts by Tennyson, Symons, Hopkins, Larkin and Prynne. Anoriginal exploration of poetry and its criticism, On Modern Poetry is an essential guide for readersand students at all levels.

By "literary criticism" we usually mean a self-conscious act involving the technical and aesthetic appraisal, by individuals, of autonomous works of art. Aristotle and Plato come to mind. The word "social" does not. Yet, as this book shows, it should--if, that is, we wish to understand where literary criticism as we think of it today came from. Andrew Ford offers a new understanding of the development of criticism, demonstrating that its roots stretch back long before the sophists to public commentary on the performance of songs and poems in the preliterary era of ancient Greece. He pinpoints when and how, later in the Greek tradition than is usually assumed, poetry was studied as a discipline with its own principles and methods. The Origins of Criticism complements the usual, history-of-ideas approach to the topic precisely by treating criticism as a social as well as a theoretical activity. With unprecedented and penetrating detail, Ford considers varying scholarly interpretations of the key texts discussed. Examining Greek discussions of poetry from the late sixth century B.C. through the rise of poetics in the late fourth, he asks when we first can recognize anything like the modern notions of literature as imaginative writing and of literary criticism as a special knowledge of such writing. Serving as a monumental preface to Aristotle's Poetics, this book allows readers to discern the emergence, within the manifold activities that might be called criticism, of the historically specific discourse on poetry that has shaped subsequent Western approaches to literature.

With incisive analysis, he elucidates the nature of intellectual craftsmanship, defends art's undeniable moral component, and, faced with an academic world shattered by theory, laments how extra-literary politics have grown increasingly dominant, now attempting to eliminate the very category of literature. Whether commenting on Foucault, Pulp Fiction, Georgia O'Keeffe, V.S. Naipaul, or the survival of a core tradition in the humanities, Shattuck presents a stirring synthesis of the principles and values by which we can live together as a nation finally at peace with its diversity. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a TLS Notable Book of 1999.