Literature in the modern world : critical essays and documents

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Literature in the modern world : critical essays and documents

edited by Dennis Walder at the Open University

Oxford University Press in association with Open University, 1990

  • pbk.

Available at  / 32 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references and indexes

Description and Table of Contents

Volume

pbk. ISBN 9780198710370

Description

Literature in the Modern World offers a unique combination of English, European, feminist and `new writing', or `Commonwealth', perspectives on literary studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is designed to enable students to gain an understanding of the main theoretical issues involved in the study of modern literary texts. The texts upon which the critical essays here focus are - chiefly, but not exclusively, in English. The book includes the view of leading critics and theorists such as Marilyn Butler, Frank Kermode, H 'el `ene Cixous, and Edward Said, as well as the originating voices of Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and Virginia Woolf, and focuses on major critical topics including genre, interpretation, history and criticism, gender, race, and the notion of `Englishness'. This approach derives from a perceived change in what constitutes `English literature' in a period of British imperial decline and takes account of the rise of a radical, questioning critical and literary practice at home and abroad. The more abstract and abstruse contemporary critics are eschewed in favour of extracts of sufficient length, force, and clarity to offer relative newcomers the opportunity of engaging with a wide range of current issues. The book covers the Open University course A319. This book is intended for all Open University third-level course A319 students; teachers, graduate and undergraduate students of twentieth-century literature - English, European, Commonwealth - and of women's studies.

Table of Contents

CONTRIBUTORS/AUTHORS: Marilyn Butler, Frank Kermode, Terry Eagleton, Sandra M. Gilbert, Edward Said, Lionel Trilling, E. D. Hirsch, Stanley Fish, Robert Scholes, Hans Robert Jauss, Virginia Woolf, Jean-Paul Sartre, Theodor Adorno, Italo Calvino, Seymour Chatman, Umberto Eco, Martin Esslin, John Barrell, Paul Valery, Gerard Genette, Georg Lukacs, Raymond Williams, Neville Cardus, E. M. Forster, W. H. Auden, George Orwell, Asa Briggs, Pierre Macherey, Etienne Balibar, Roland Barthes, Sara Suleri, Seamus Heaney, John McGrath, Frantz Fanon, Chinua Achebe, Elaine Fido, Wole Soyinka, Simone de Beauvoir, Cora Kaplan, Helene Cixous, Toni Morrison, Laurence Lerner, Hayden White, George Steiner, Joseph Brodsky, Czeslaw Milosz, Walter Benjamin.
Volume

ISBN 9780198711148

Description

This book offers a unique combination of English, European, feminist and "new writing" or "Commonwealth" perspectives upon literary studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is designed to enable students to gain an understanding of the main theoretical issues involved in the study of modern literary texts - chiefly but not exclusively in English. It includes the views of leading critics and theorists such as Marilyn Butler, Frank Kermode, Helene Cixous and Edward Said, as well as the originating voices of Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney and Virginia Woolf, and focuses on major critical topics including genre, interpretation, history and criticism, gender, race and the notion of "Englishness". This approach derives from a perceived change in what constitutes "English Literature" in a period of British imperial decline and the rise of a radical, questioning/critical and literary practice at home and abroad. The more abstract and abstruse/contemporary critics are eschewed in favour of extracts of sufficient length, force and clarity to offer relative newcomers the opportunity of engaging with a wide range of current issues. The book provides both an informed critical awareness of the debates likely to dominate discussions of literature in the 1990s as well as a major contribution to these debates.

Table of Contents

  • Part 1 Questioning the "Canon": repossesing the past - the case for an open literary history, M.Butler
  • canon and period, F.Kermode
  • literature and the rise of the English, T.Eagleton
  • women poets, S.M.Gilbert and S.Gubar
  • Yeats and decolonization, E.Said. Part 2 Interpretation: Freud and literature, L.Trilling
  • the babel of interpretations, E.D.Hirsch, Jr
  • interpreting the "Variorum", S.Fish
  • who cares about the text?, R.Scholes
  • literary history as a challenge to literary theory, H.R.Jauss. Part 3 Literature and commitment: to Cambridge women, V.Woolf
  • writing, reading, and the public, J.P.Sartre
  • commitment, T.Adorno
  • right and wrong political uses of literature, I.Calvino. Part 4 Form and genre: story and narrative, S.Chatman
  • semiotics of theatrical performance, U.Eco
  • the signs of drama, M.Esslin
  • close reading, J.Barrell. Part 5 Modernism: remarks on poetry, P.Valery
  • order in narrative, G.Genette
  • towards a semiotics of literature, R.Scholes
  • the ideology of modernism, G.Lukacs
  • metropolitan perceptions and the emergence of modernism, R.Williams. Part 6 Englishness: good days, N.Cardus
  • notes on the English character, E.M.Forster
  • memorable speech, W.H.Auden
  • the lion and the Unicorn, G.Orwell
  • the English - custom and character, A.Briggs
  • woman and nationalism, V.Woolf. Part 7 Literature and ideology: situation of the writer in 1947, J.P.Sartre
  • Marxist criticism, T.Eagleton
  • the text says what it does not say, P.Macherey
  • on literature as an ideological form, E.Balibar and P.Macherey
  • the death of the author, R.Barthes. Part 8 End of empire: the discourse of the orient, E.Said
  • the geography of "A Passage to India", S.Suleri
  • Englands of the mind, S.Heaney
  • behind the cliches of contemporary theatre, J.McGrath. Part 9 New writings in English: on national culture, F.Fanon
  • colonialist criticism, C.Achebe
  • decolonizing African literature, Chinweizu/Jemie/Madubuike
  • value judgements on art and the question of macho attitudes - the case of D.Walcott, E.Fido
  • drama and the African world-view, W.Soyinka
  • post-colonial reconstructions - literature, meaning, value, Ashcroft/ Griffiths/Tiffin. Part 10 Language and gender: woman and the other, S.de Beauvoir
  • language and gender, C.Kaplan
  • the laugh of the Medusa, H.Cixous
  • rootedness - the ancestor as foundation, T.Morrison.

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top