Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction provides 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. An introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism; further chapters survey theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century. For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches.
The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Comments
“A skillful balancing of erudition and accessibility, Anne Stevens’s Literary Theory and Criticism is a welcome and much-needed addition to the small number of books that introduce theories of literature in the classroom. Stevens deftly paints the myriad political, historical, and cultural contexts of major theoretical movements—including nascent fields such as the digital humanities—while keeping the discussion grounded and pragmatic. Moreover, Stevens not only explains methodology, but also offers method for young critics in search of a primer on literary study. Literary Theory and Criticism deserves a slot on the bookshelves of students, scholars, and teachers of literature everywhere.” — David Roh, University of Utah
“Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction is an excellent resource that will help students understand what literary critics do, how they came to do it, and, equally important, why they do it. Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, this book provides an overview of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Enlightenment, before tracing the birth of literary criticism as a profession in the nineteenth century and outlining the major movements it gave rise to in the twentieth and twenty-first. In providing this historical overview and highlighting the key terms and figures that shape scholarly conversations, Anne Stevens demonstrates the centrality to the field of criticism of such approaches as postcolonial theory, feminist theory, queer theory, and ecocriticism and describes in unfailingly clear prose how each shapes our understanding of literature.” — Cristobal Silva, Columbia University
“An extremely lucid and wide-ranging guide to literary theory for undergraduates. I especially appreciated its situating of theory in relation to the development of Anglo-American literature departments over the course of the twentieth century, and its coverage of recent material, in addition to the poststructuralist canon of the seventies and eighties.” — Hina Nazar, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
List of Tables and Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Introduction
- Theory vs. Criticism
Close Reading and Literary Studies
Criticism through the Ages
- Literary Studies Comes to the University
The “Theory” Revolution
- Theory and Criticism Today
Literary Form
Literary Characters
The Importance of Context
The Identity of the Author
The Role of the Reader
Reading as Education, Reading as Entertainment
Diversity
The Uses of Theory and Criticism
Getting Started
Chapter 2: The Ancient World
- Plato: The First Literary Theorist
- Plato’s Republic
- Plato’s Theory of Forms
The Allegory of the Cave
- Speech vs. Writing
- Aristotle
- Classification
Narrative Form
Mimesis
Rhetoric
- Horace’s Poetic Art
Quintilian’s Figures of Speech
Longinus’s Sublime Aesthetics
Chapter 3: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
- Religion and Biblical Interpretation
Establishing a Canon
Medieval Scholasticism
- The Four Levels of Interpretation
- Maimonides and the Jewish Tradition
The Secularization of Interpretation
Boccaccio’s Mythological Studies
Humanism
- The Printing Press
Protestantism
The Growth of the Vernacular
New Forms
New Rules for Writing
Chapter 4: The Enlightenment
- Print Culture
Addison and Steele and the Birth of Modern Reviewing
Johnson and His Dictionary
The French Encyclopedia
Skepticism
Political Revolutions
Abolitionism
Early Feminism
Aesthetic Innovations
Idealism
- Kant’s Idealist Philosophy
Hegel’s Ideas of History
Chapter 5: The Nineteenth Century
- Romanticism and Nineteenth-Century Poetry
Realism, Nationalism, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
- Arnold, Taine, and Literary Studies
Decadent Aesthetics
- Poe’s Philosophy of Composition
Art for Art’s Sake
- Nietzsche’s Radical Philosophy
Fin-de-siècle Fictions
Chapter 6: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Formalist Approaches
- The Philological Tradition
Saussure and Structuralist Linguistics
Russian Formalism
Anglo-American Formalisms
- Practical and New Criticisms
Neo-Aristotelianism
- Lévi-Strauss and Structuralist Anthropology
Barthes and Structuralist Semiotics
Narratology
Derrida and Deconstruction
- Deconstruction in America
- Formalism Today
Chapter 7: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Historicist Approaches
- Historicist Criticism in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Historicism to the 1970s
The “New Historicism”
- New Approaches to History and Culture
Foucault and Discourse
Greenblatt and the New Historicism
- Bourdieu and the Sociology of Culture
From Bibliography to Book History
Digital Humanities
Chapter 8: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Political Approaches
- Karl Marx
Early Marxist Theory and Criticism
- The Frankfurt School
French Marxism
British Cultural Studies
- Later Marxist Theory and Criticism
Postcolonial and Ethnic Studies
- Said and Orientalism
Later Postcolonial Theory
Gates and the African-American Tradition
The Diversity of Literary Traditions
- Feminist Theory and Criticism
- Founding Figures
Later Feminist Theorists
- Sexuality and Queer Theory
- Disability and Environmental Studies
Chapter 9: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Psychoanalytic Approaches
- Freud and Freudian Criticism
Jungian Criticism
Jacques Lacan
- Julia Kristeva
Heirs to Lacan
- Phenomenology
Hermeneutics
Reader-Response Criticism
Cognitive Approaches
Chapter 10: From Theory to Practice
- The Example of Hamlet
- Hamlet’s Organic Unity
Hamlet’s Theatricality
Hamlet in Literary History
Hamlet and Class
Hamlet and Gender
Hamlet’s Melancholy
- The Example of Frankenstein
- Frankenstein and Narratology
Frankenstein and History
Frankenstein and Orientalism
Frankenstein and Homosociality
The Sublime, the Abject, the Uncanny
- Moving Forward
Glossary
Index
Anne H. Stevens is Associate Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
For a sample from Literary Theory and Criticism, click here. (Opens as a PDF.)
— Straightforward, concise language
— Well suited to students completely unfamiliar with theory
— Final chapter models close reading and applies theoretical lenses to analyses of Frankenstein and Hamlet
