Modern Criticism & Theory A Reader

'in our era, criticism is not merely a library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in its own right'

David Lodge

This new edition of David Lodge's Modern Criticism and Theory is fully revised and expanded to take account of the developments in theoretical contemporary literary criticism since the publication of the first edition in 1988. Building on the strengths of the first edition, this volume is designed to introduce the reader to the guiding concepts of present literary and cultural debate by presenting substantial extracts from the most seminal thinkers. As with the original edition there is a selection of the most important and representative work from the major schools in contemporary criticism.

Concise introductions with updated suggestions for further reading give a context for each essay and the editors have provided footnotes that help explain the most difficult references. Both students and general readers are encouraged to identify for themselves links between essays, as the selection is ordered both historically and thematically.

'In our era, criticism is not merely a library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in its own right.' (David Lodge)

This new edition of David Lodge's Modern Criticism and Theory is fully revised and expanded to take account of the developments of theoretical and general interest in contemporary literary criticism since publication of the first edition in 1988.

Building on the strengths of the first edition, the volume is designed to introduce the reader to the guiding concepts of present literary and cultural debate by presenting substantial extracts from the period's most seminal thinkers.

David Lodge is Honorary Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987, when he became a full-time writer. He is well-known as a novelist, and has also written screenplays and stageplays. He edited 2oth Century Literary Criticism (Longman, 1972) which has become a companion volume to Modern Criticism and Theory.

Nigel Wood is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at De Montfort University.

A. Contents arranged historically 1. Ferdinand de Saussure The object of study 2. Walter Benjamin The storyteller 3. Roman Jakobson Linguistics & poetics The metaphoric & metonymic poles 4. Jacques Lacan The insistence of the letter in the unconscious 5. Jacques Derrida Structure, sign & play in the discourse of the human sciences 6.Mikhail Bakhtin From the prehistory of novelistic discourse 7. Tzvetan Todorov The typology of detective form 8. Roland Barthes The death of the author Textual analysis: Poe's 'Valdemar' 9. Michel Foucault What is an author? 10. Wolfgang Iser The reading process: a phenomenological approach 11. Julia Kristeva The ethics of linguistics 12. Harold Bloom Poetic origins & final phases 13. E D Hirsch Jr. Faulty perspectives 14. M H Abrams The deconstructive angel 15. J Hillis Miller The critics as host 16. Helene Cixous Sorties 17. Edward Said Crisis (in orientalism) 18. Stanley Fish Interpreting the Variorum 19. Elaine Showalter Feminist criticism in the wilderness 20. Paul de Man The resistance to theory 21. Fredric Jameson The politics of theory: Ideological positions in the postmodernism debate 22. Terry Eagleton Capitalism, modernism & postmodernism 23. Geoffrey Hartman The interpreter's Freud 24. Juliet Mitchell Femininity, narrative & psychoanalysis 25. Umberto Eco Casablanca: Cult movies & intertextual collage 26. Jean Baudrillard Simulacra & simulations 27. Luce Irigaray The bodily encounter with the mother 28. Patrocinio P Schweickart Reading ourselves: towards a feminist theory of reading 29. Eve Kosovsky Sedgwick The beast in the closet 30. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Feminism & critical theory 31. Stephen Greenblatt The circulation of social energy 32. Jerome McGann The textual condition Index B. Contents arranged thematically I. Formalist, structuralist & post-structuralist poetics, linguistics & narratology II. Deconstruction III. Psychoanalysis IV. Politics, ideology, cultural history V. Feminism VI. Hermeneutics, reception theory, reader-response VII. Cognitive literary scholarship