Literary and Cultural Theory: From Basic Principles to Advanced Applications - Softcover

Note: Each chapter begins with an Overview, Key Principles, and a Bibliography. An Application includes Reading Prompts, the reading (listed below), and an Analysis of Application. Introduction: From Aesthetics to Cultural Studies: The Many Productive Forms of Critical Analysis 1. The New Criticism and Formalist Analysis Wordsworth and the Paradox of the Imagination, by Cleanth Brooks 2. Reader-Response Analysis Perception, Temporality, and Action as Modes of Subjectivity; W. Faulkner: "The Sound and the Fury," by Wolfgang Iser 3. Marxist and Materialist Analysis Radical Jane and the Other Emma, by Edward Ahearn 4. Psychoanalytic Analysis The Absent Mother in King Lear, by Coppelia Kahn 5. Structuralism and Semiotic Analysis Masters of Desire: The Culture of American Advertising, by Jack Solomon 6. Deconstruction and Post-Structuralist Analysis Melville's Fist: The Execution of Billy Budd, by Barbara Johnson 7. Feminist Analysis Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Mary Vermillion 8. Gay/Lesbian/Queer Analysis Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the Canonization of Heterosexuality, by Joseph A. Porter 9. Race, Ethnicity, and Post-Colonial Analysis The Figurative Web of Native Son, Joyce A. Joyce 10. New Historicism and Pluralistic Cultural Analysis Great Expectations and Harsh Realities, by Donald E. Hall

This clear, succinct primer for literary theory provides students with a useful guide to contemporary theory and methodologies. Theoretical overviews summarize each literary approach for clarification and Application Essays by well-known scholars, on works by authors such as Shakespeare, Austen, Melville, Faulkner, and Angelou, represent the stated principles. The text helps students generate consistent, well-focused analyses based on any of ten critical methodologies, including New Criticism, Psychoanalytic Analysis, Deconstruction, Feminist Analysis, and New Historicism.