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Recommended Reading List of Literary Theory & Criticism

 

Study Guide

The field of literary theory and criticism is vast and encompasses many different classical and modern literary traditions  across the world. Our course, however, focuses primarily on contemporary Western theory and criticism. This reading list is therefore intended to provide a broad understanding of the major models of contemporary theory and criticism through a selection of representative authors/texts. By way of providing a historical background and context to these contemporary theories, the reading list includes a small selection of foundational texts/authors from the Classical and Romantic periods.

Required

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all readings are provided as excerpts in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (3rd ed.).

2. Lois Tyson’s Critical Theory Today: a User-Friendly Guide (4th ed.): This critical reader provides a definition of each theoretical model and then demonstrates how to apply each theoretical model to a literary text.

 

 

1. Classical

PLATO (ca. 427–ca. 347 B.C.E.)

From Phaedrus, Ion, & Book VII & X of The Republic

 

ARISTOTLE (384–322 B.C.E.)

From Poetics

 

2. Romantic

JOANNA BAILLIE (1762-1851)

“Introductory Discourse” to Plays on the Passions

 

ANNA BARBAULD (1743-1825)

“On the Pleasure Derived from Objects of Terror”

 

EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797)

A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

From Part I. Sections I-VIII

From Part III. Section XXVII

 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE(1772-1834)

From Biographia Literaria

Vol. 1 - From Chps. 1, 4, 13

Vol. 2 - From Chp. 14

 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH (1770–1850)

Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems (1802)

 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY (1792-1822)

From A Defence of Poetry

 

3. Contemporary

3.1. Formalism & New Criticism

T. S. ELIOT (New Criticism)

“Tradition and the Individual Talent”

 

MINDA RAE AMIRAN (New Criticism)

“Some Paradoxes of New Criticism” (2013) in The New Criticism: Formalist Literary Theory in America, Cambridge (3-26)

 

CLEANTH BROOKS (Formalism)

The Well Wrought Urn: Chapter 11. “The Heresy of Paraphrase”

 

MARY ANN CAIN (Formalism)

“Problematizing Formalism: A Double-Cross of Genre Boundaries.”

College Composition and Communication Vol. 51, No. 1 (Sep., 1999), pp. 89-95.

 

JACQUELINE WERNIMONT & COREY MCELANEY (Formalism)

McEleney C., Wernimont J. (2013) “Re-Reading for Forms in Sir Philip Sidney’s Defence of Poesy.” In: Theile V., Tredennick L. (eds) New Formalisms and Literary Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, London

 

3.2. Structuralism & Semiotics

FERDINAND DE SAUSSURE (Semiotics)

From Course in General Linguistics

Introduction - From Chapter III. “The Object of Linguistic”

Part One. General Principles - Chapter I. “Nature of the Linguistic Sign”

Part Two. “Synchronic Linguistics”

 

BARBARA JOHNSON (Semiotics)

“Writing” in Critical Terms for Literary Study (Eds. Lentricchia & McLaughlin) U Chicago P (1995)

 

ROLAND BARTHES (Transition between Structuralism & Post-Structuralism)

From “Work to Text”

From “Mythologies”

 

3.3. Deconstruction

JACQUES DERRIDA

From Of Grammatology:

Translator ’s Preface

Part I: “Writing before the Letter”

Exergue

“The Signifier and Truth”

“The Written Being/The Being Written”

 

PAUL DE MAN

Allegories of Reading: Chapter 1: “Semiology and Rhetoric”

 

J. HILLIS MILLER

“Two Forms of Repetition” (Chapter 1) from Fiction and Repetition:Seven English Novels. Harvard U P (1982)

“The Ethical Turn in Literary Theory” (Introduction) from The Ethics of Reading. Columbia U P (1987)

“Marcel Proust” (Chapter 5) from Speech Acts in Literature. Stanford U P (2001)

“Individual and Community in The Return of the  Native” from Communities in Fiction. Fordham U P (2014)

“The Critic as Host” Critical Inquiry Vol. 3, No.3 (1977), pp. 439-447

“Presidential Address 1986. The Triumph of Theory, the Resistance to Reading, and the Question of the Material Base” PMLA Vol. 102, No. 3 (May, 1987), pp. 281-291

 

BARBARA JOHNSON

“Melville’s Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd ” Studies in Romanticism Vol. 18, No. 4, “The Rhetoric of Romanticism” (Winter, 1979), pp. 567-599

 

3.4. Psychoanalysis

SIGMUND FREUD

The Interpretation of Dreams

From Chapter V. “The Material and Sources of Dreams”

From Chapter VI. “The Dream-Work”

From “The Uncanny”

 

JACQUES LACAN

“The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I”

“The Signification of the Phallus”

 

CARL JUNG

“On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry” The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature. 4th ed. Princeton U P. (1978)

 

LAURA MULVEY

“Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”

 

3.5. Marxism

KARL MARX (1818-1883) and FRIEDRICH ENGELS

From The Communist Manifesto

From Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy Capital, Volume 1

From Chapter 1. “Commodities”

From Chapter 10. “The Working-Day”

 

LOUIS ALTHUSSER

From Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses

 

RAYMOND WILLIAMS

“Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory”

BENITA PARRY

“Edward Said and Third World Marxism” College Literature, vol. 40 no. 4, 2013, p. 105-126.

“Problems in Current Theories of Colonial Discourse” Oxford Literary Review Vol. 9, No. 1/2, (1987), pp. 27-58

 

3.6. New Historicism

MICHEL FOUCAULT

“Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison” The History of Sexuality Volume 1, An Introduction Part 4 of Ch 2 on Method

 

MIKHAIL M. BAKHTIN

From Discourse in the Novel

 

STEPHEN J. GREENBLATT

From “Resonance and Wonder”

 

CATHERINE GALLAGHER

“Marxism and the New Historicism” in The New Historicism . Ed. Veeser. Taylor & Francis, 1989.

 

3.7. Race Criticism

W. E. B. DU BOIS

The Souls of Black Folk

From Chapter 1. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings Criteria of Negro Art”

 

TONI MORRISON

From “Unspeakable Things Unspoken: The Afro-American Presence in American Literature”

 

GLORIA ANZALDÚA

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

Chapter 7. “La conciencia de la mestiza: Towards a New Consciousness”

 

HENRY LOUIS GATES JR.

“Talking Black: Critical Signs of the Times”

 

3.8. Postcolonialism

FRANTZ FANON

Black Skin, White Masks

From “The Fact of Blackness”

The Wretched of the Earth

From “On National Culture”

 

EDWARD W. SAID

Orientalism, Introduction

Culture and Imperialism, Chapter 2, Section 2. “Jane Austen and Empire”

 

GAYATRI CHAKRAVORTY SPIVAK

A Critique of Postcolonial Reason

From Chapter 3. History

“Three Women’s Texts and a Critique of Imperialism” Critical Inquiry, Vol. 12, No. 1, “Race,” Writing, and Difference (Autumn, 1985), pp. 243-261

 

HOMI BHABHA

“The Commitment to Theory.” new formations No. 5 Summer (1988)

 

REVATHI KRISHHNASWAMY

Effeminism: The Economy Of Colonial Desire - Introduction

“World Literary Knowledges: Theory In The Age Of Globalization” Comparative Literature Vol. 62, No. 4 (Fall 2010), pp. 399-419

 

3.9. Feminism

MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman

From Chapter II. “The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed”

 

SANDRA M. GILBERT and SUSAN GUBAR

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth- Century Literary Imagination

From Chapter 2. “Infection in the Sentence: The Woman Writer and the Anxiety of Authorship”

 

HÉLÈNE CIXOUS

“The Laugh of the Medusa”

 

JULIA KRISTEVA

Revolution in Poetic Language

From Part 1. “The Semiotic and the Symbolic”

 

3.10. Postmodernism

JEAN-FRANÇOIS LYOTARD

“Defining the Postmodern”

 

FREDRIC JAMESON

“Postmodernism and Consumer Society”

 

BELL HOOKS

“Postmodern Blackness”

 

3.11. Reader Response

WOLFGANG ISER

“Interaction between Text and Reader ”

 

LOUISE ROSENBLATT

“Evoking a Poem” in The Reader, the Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of Literary Work. Southern Illinois U P, 1994. 48-70

 

JANE TOMPKINS

“The Reader in History” in Reader-response Criticism: From Formalism To Post-structuralism. Johns Hopkins U P, 1980. 201-232.

 

STANLEY FISH

Is there a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities

Chapter 14. “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One”

 

3.12. Queer Theory

JUDITH BUTLER

Gender Trouble

From Preface

From Chapter 2. “Subversive Bodily Acts”

 

JUDITH (JACK) HALBERTSTAM

Female Masculinity

From Chapter 1. “An Introduction to Female Masculinity: Masculinity without Men”

 

EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK

Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire

From Introduction

 

BONNIE ZIMMERMAN

“What Has Never Been: An Overview of Lesbian Feminist Literary Criticism” Feminist Studies Vol. 7, No. 3 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 451-475

 

3.13. Disability Studies

LENNARD J. DAVIS

Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body

From Chapter 6. “Visualizing the Disabled Body: The Classical Nude and the Fragmented Torso”

 

3.14. Digital Humanities

Definition of “Digital Humanities ” in Wikipedia

 

MATTHEW K. GOLD

“Introduction ” Debates in the Digital Humanities (2012)

 

MATTHEW KIRSCHENBAUM

“What is Digital Humanities” Debates in Digital Humanities (2012)

 

KATHLEEN FITZPATRICK

 “The Humanities Done Digitally” Debates in Digital Humanities (2012)

 

LAUREN F. KLEIN & MATTHEW K. GOLD

“Introduction ” Debates in Digital Humanities (2019)

 

3.15. Ecocriticism

ROB NIXON

Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor

From Introduction

“The Anthropocene: The Promise and Pitfalls of an Epochal Idea”

 

WILLIAM CRONIN

“The Trouble With Wilderness: Or Getting Back to the Wrong Nature” in William Cronon, ed., Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1995, 69-90.

 

STACEY ALAIMO

“Introduction: Bodily Natures” from Bodily Natures: Science, Environment, and the Material Self. Indiana U P, 2010.