Subject: Literary Theory recommendations (go Fish)
From: Matt Kozusko (mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu)
Date: Thu Feb 24 2000 - 11:10:02 EST
My favorite intro theory book (out of the 15 or so I've used) is a
newer anthology edited by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan called
_Literary Theory: an Anthology_. Its strong point is its selection of
essays, which is considerably broader than that of most anthologies.
There is a lot of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche to go along with the
usual Foucault, Lacan and Derrida. Plenty of feminist stuff and the
token--but useful--section on new historicism/cultural
poetics/cultural materialism. No Fish, curiously.
Rivkin and Ryan do great, concise introductions to the basic schools
into which they group the essays. They're as good as they can be,
considering their length. It's a big book, but it's nicely portable,
and it keeps on giving.
Jim notes that most of academia is rooted in Marxism. It's certainly
a fair assessment. I think it's more a matter of political/economic
righteousness than a technique for reading literature, but most
theoretical writing is indeed stretched around a framework of idyllic,
Marxist-derived politics. I think this shows up very nicely in the
new historicism/cultural materialism. And it makes me all the more
puzzled by Hillis Miller's 1986 MLA address, mentioned a few posts
back, which seems to want to preserve, in the name of "high theory,"
the ascetic close readings of formalism, to the exclusion of
historical, political, econonimc, etc. contexts. (Skeptics and those
easily irritated, read no further). I am glad of this recent return
to the particulars of material production (though perhaps no longer so
recent), this theory for the working man. If it has to be called
Marxism, so be it, so long as it includes good old *context*.
-- Matt Kozusko mkozusko@parallel.park.uga.edu - * Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message * UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
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