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Critical Terms for Literary Study, Second Edition

Second Edition

Since its publication in 1990, Critical Terms for Literary Study has become a landmark introduction to the work of literary theory—giving tens of thousands of students an unparalleled encounter with what it means to do theory and criticism. Significantly expanded, this new edition features six new chapters that confront, in different ways, the growing understanding of literary works as cultural practices.

These six new chapters are "Popular Culture," "Diversity," "Imperialism/Nationalism," "Desire," "Ethics," and "Class," by John Fiske, Louis Menand, Seamus Deane, Judith Butler, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, and Daniel T. O’Hara, respectively. Each new essay adopts the approach that has won this book such widespread acclaim: each provides a concise history of a literary term, critically explores the issues and questions the term raises, and then puts theory into practice by showing the reading strategies the term permits.

Exploring the concepts that shape the way we read, the essays combine to provide an extraordinary introduction to the work of literature and literary study, as the nation’s most distinguished scholars put the tools of critical practice vividly to use.

496 pages | 6-3/4 x 9-1/4 | © 1995

Critical Terms

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory

Reference and Bibliography

Rhetoric and Communication

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition
Introduction/Thomas McLaughlin
I: Literature as Writing
1: Representation/W. J. T. Mitchell
2: Structure/John Carlos Rowe
3: Writing/Barbara Johnson
4: Discourse/Paul A. Bove
5: Narrative/J. Hillis Miller
6: Figurative Language/Thomas McLaughlin
7: Performance/Henry Sayre
8: Author/Donald E. Pease
II: Interpretation
9: Interpretation/Steven Mailloux
10: Intention/Annabel Patterson
11: Unconscious/Francoise Meltzer
12: Determinacy/Indeterminacy/Gerald Graff
13: Value/Evaluation/Barbara Herrnstein Smith
14: Influence/Louis A. Renza
15: Rhetoric/Stanley Fish
III: Literature, Culture, Politics
16: Culture/Stephen Greenblatt
17: Canon/John Guillory
18: Literary History/Lee Patterson
19: Gender/Myra Jehlen
20: Race/Kwame Anthony Appiah
21: Ethnicity/Werner Sollors
22: Ideology/James H. Kavanagh
23: Popular Culture/John Fiske
24: Diversity/Louis Menand
25: Imperialism/Nationalism/Seamus Deane
26: Desire/Judith Butler
27: Ethics/Geoffrey Galt Harpham
28: Class/Daniel T. O’Hara
In Place of an Afterword—Someone Reading/Frank Lentricchia
References
List of Contributors
Index

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