Literary theory?

Yay, Petrarch's Love!
I'm glad you brought this thread back to life, especially because I found your essay and your recommendations very informative. I'll now be looking for Norton Critical Editions and for Richter's The Critical Tradition, both new to me. It does, however, turn out that I have Jonathan Culler's Literary theory - A Short Introduction and have found it very useful. It is at least a book I can read and somewhat understand. It stands bracketed midway in difficulty between two other books that I have also have:

Introducing Critical Theory - Sim and van Loon - much much simpler and more highly readable because it is in graphic format (perhaps you say argh? :) ) but it mentions just about every name I have ever heard of, and then a few; and

How to do Theory - Wolfgang Iser - much deeper and more technical than I can easily digest, but nevertheless informative when one has a topic in mind and a serious reason for delving, as I did with Edward Said and Post-Colonial Discourse.

So, for the moment, those three are my arsenal down here at my level of understanding. Any and all comments or suggestions are very welcome.

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Originally Posted by Tuesday

Thanks for your time, Walter. I've had an eye on that Penguin dictionary for quite some time now and just ordered it via Amazon. The price is really low compared to most other books of that sort, especially the ones published by Norton, Oxford and Cambridge.

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Oh Tuesday,
I am so sorry to be slow in responding. I don't get here very often and I must have missed a notice that you had replied. I do really hope you enjoy the Penguin dictionary. The longer entries are interesting reads in themselves and it is definitely a bargain compared to the big ones you mention. :)

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Originally Posted by Walter

Yay, Petrarch's Love!
I'm glad you brought this thread back to life, especially because I found your essay and your recommendations very informative. I'll now be looking for Norton Critical Editions and for Richter's The Critical Tradition, both new to me. It does, however, turn out that I have Jonathan Culler's Literary theory - A Short Introduction and have found it very useful. It is at least a book I can read and somewhat understand. It stands bracketed midway in difficulty between two other books that I have also have:

Introducing Critical Theory - Sim and van Loon - much much simpler and more highly readable because it is in graphic format (perhaps you say argh? :) ) but it mentions just about every name I have ever heard of, and then a few; and

How to do Theory - Wolfgang Iser - much deeper and more technical than I can easily digest, but nevertheless informative when one has a topic in mind and a serious reason for delving, as I did with Edward Said and Post-Colonial Discourse.

So, for the moment, those three are my arsenal down here at my level of understanding. Any and all comments or suggestions are very welcome.

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Hi Walter--So glad my post could be helpful to someone, and thank you for the recommendations of the other intro to theory books. I checked out the Iser when I first got to grad. school and seem to recall it being fairly helpful. I haven't looked into the Sim and Van Loon one, but graphics sound amazing. I'm all for people learning theory from a comic book if it'll get the concepts across. Definitely have to check it out. As someone going into university teaching soon, I always appreciate hearing about things that might be potentially helpful for future inquisitive students (or, in this case, if I'm ever somehow compelled to teach intro to theory or something :eek:). Could always use some more resources for my own knowledge too, since the whole point of literary theory seems to be that one perpetually does not understand. :lol:

Petrarch's Love,
If any of my thoughts might help someone ever, that would be fantastic! For the present though, from the clarity of your post, it looks like you should have no trouble at all teaching lit. theory or anything else to anybody, and I wish you very well in that. I have also taken a look at the description of Richter's Critical Tradition. What a tome! Just a tad much for me right now, but still very glad to know about it. Who knows it might end up on my shelf anyway, just to be there, in case.

Thanks for kind comments and the encouraging words. Yes, the Richter is quite an impressive collection. It's a nice volume to have around for reference, to read around in, or to read through slowly and methodically. It's probably what I would teach out of if I did teach a course on lit. crit and theory.

By the way, I realized I hadn't give you a proper welcome to the forums. Hope to see you around more. :)

Petrarch's Love

Wow, what a reply. Thanks a lot :)

I think the Penguin Dictionary is really wonderful. So comprehensive and well written, I could spend hours just browsing through it, going from one cross-reference to the next. For example, I never knew that there are actually several different kinds of metaphors. And the entry on epics has really sparked my interest to tackle some of the classics like the Iliad or the Bhagavad Gita.

I have to agree with you that critical editions are a good way to learn more about theory. For example, I think that the works of Joseph Conrad published by Everyman and edited by Cedric Watts really give the best possible information in such a concise form. I especially love the introductions where Watts gives this great overview of historical context, impact on the literary world and -- of course -- Conrad's quite unique use of language. The Enriched Classics series by Simon & Schuster is also quite useful in that respect. I'll definately give Norton a try next time, you've got me quite interested in them now.

Also, thank you very much for your further recommendations. I already added them on my "to read" list. As a matter of fact, just last week I held the "Very short introduction to Literary Theory" in my hands. I read the first two pages or so and found it to be quite good, especially since the author really "begins at the beginning"...explaining the differences between hypothesis and theory, for example. I just found it to be a bit expensive for its 150 pages...but that seems to be a general problem with scholarly works.

But anyway...how important is Literary Theory nowadays? Honestly, for most of my life I always thought that expressions like "postmodern" were just intellectual buzzwords. Just out of curiosity: What are some of those schools of thought that you think can be "safely ignored"?


Walter

As I mentioned above, I'm really happy with the Penguin Dictionary and I think I will expand my catalogue by adding the Penguin Dictionary of Synonyms & Antonyms in the near future. Seems to be a great source help, especially if one is not a native speaker.

Tuesday, So glad to see that you came back! And that you are a dictionary reader like myself. Now I'm going to have to check the different kinds of metaphor. :)

Petrarch's Love, Many thanks for your welcome to the Lit Net Forums; I am glad to meet you also. The Forums are on my Favorites list, but now this particular discussion gets a Favorite listing all its own.

I hope to see you all, here and elsewhere around. :)

"A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature" by Wilfred Guerin, etc. is excellent.

Another book to try..."Modern Criticism and Theory" eds. Lodge and Wood...filled with articles from major strands of lit. theory: structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, Feminism (American and French), Queer Theory, Post Colonial, hermeneutics, reader response and more...
I loved my theory class...despite the challenges, it opens up a whole new range of discussion for literature...it guides interpretation instead of confine it, making new thought possible.

Hello!

I've just realized that there was a "teaching" section of this forum, and I'm already glad that I have found it. I have another resourseful guide to add to your list:

Text and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory by Steven Lynn

I've only used the first few sections of the book personally, but it's great. I got it for one of my classes this semester and have been far too busy to pick it up outside of class assignments. Once finals are over (next week! Can you believe it?) I'm excited to check out what the rest of the book has to offer.

Literary theory drives me crazy sometimes (currently writing a New Criticism of Dracula and have been for months), but it's too facinating to dismiss.

And also - how do you italicize in a post? I'm not particularly computer literate...

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Originally Posted by Skipping Record

Hello!

I've just realized that there was a "teaching" section of this forum, and I'm already glad that I have found it. I have another resourseful guide to add to your list:

Text and Contexts: Writing About Literature with Critical Theory by Steven Lynn

I've only used the first few sections of the book personally, but it's great. I got it for one of my classes this semester and have been far too busy to pick it up outside of class assignments. Once finals are over (next week! Can you believe it?) I'm excited to check out what the rest of the book has to offer.

Literary theory drives me crazy sometimes (currently writing a New Criticism of Dracula and have been for months), but it's too facinating to dismiss.

And also - how do you italicize in a post? I'm not particularly computer literate...

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Dracula, from what I remember of the book, lends itself more to a Marxist criticism (Dracula being the pure consumer who produces nothing but more consumers like himself) or even feminist theory (the concept of gaze fairly prevalent in the novel).

I went with Feminist Theory, entitling it "The threat of the 'New' or: How I Learned to Stop Asserting Myself and Love My Role"

I just finished it about an hour ago, and frankly, I never want to think about Dracula again. Does anyone else have this outcome to doing critical theory?

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Originally Posted by Skipping Record

I went with Feminist Theory, entitling it "The threat of the 'New' or: How I Learned to Stop Asserting Myself and Love My Role"

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Yeah, Dracula lends itself pretty easily to a Feminist/Gender reading.

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Originally Posted by Skipping Record

I just finished it about an hour ago, and frankly, I never want to think about Dracula again. Does anyone else have this outcome to doing critical theory?

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It all depends, really. My two term papers this semester were a feminist/gender reading of basically everything Sylvia Plath ever wrote and an analysis of Pinter's The Dumb Waiter in light of the principles of the theatre of the absurd. It'll probably be awhile before I read another Plath poem, but I found the absurdist criticism quite easy and natural and fascinating. For one of the essays on my English final, I did a bit of mythological criticism of Frankenstein, basically arguing that Shelley takes the Prometheus myth and has her main characters take turns playing Prometheus, the Fire and the Eagle. I find myth criticism to be both enormously entertaining and entirely useless in terms of coming to a better understanding of the story.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Skipping Record

I went with Feminist Theory, entitling it "The threat of the 'New' or: How I Learned to Stop Asserting Myself and Love My Role"

I just finished it about an hour ago, and frankly, I never want to think about Dracula again. Does anyone else have this outcome to doing critical theory?

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Nah, I love theory. I did a psychoanalytic deconstruction of Aphra Behn's The Rover for a literature class I'm taking and had tons of fun with it.

Wow, nice to see the thread is still of interest for other people :)

Does anyone have any experience with archetypical/mythological literary theory? I recently discovered this mythological approach and found it quite interesting, to say the least. Especially all the connections between anthropology and psychology. I just bought James Frazer's "The Golden Bough", which not only seems to be a very important work in this specific field of theory but also influenced some important writers of 20th century literature. I'm really looking forward to start reading it in the next days.