T hese are bad times for literary studies. The catastrophically constricted job market for English Ph.D.s conveys the culture’s contempt for professional literary scholarship in the clearest terms.

After the so-called “end of the great narratives” – according to someone synonymous with the sunset of modernity – the theoretical frameworks founded on the concept of totality have given way to a ...

“Criticism,” according to Northrop Frye, “is badly in need of an organizing principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as ...

Anyone who has taught a college literature course has likely heard a student say, “Can’t I just enjoy the book?” This frustration with literary theory is common. Many undergraduates feel that theory ...

University of Oklahoma English professor Leitch (American Literary Criticism Since the 1930s, 2nd edition) offers a spirited defense of literary theory. Defying those who feel criticism is in a ...

For all the debates that have roiled literature departments over the past 60 years, the history of the discipline itself is a source of surprising consensus. According to the standard narrative, ...

Here for the first time in one volume is the best of what has been thought and said by women writers and scholars about writing itself. Ranging over six centuries, from Christine de Pizan to Gayatri ...

The status of literature - its meaning, structure, truth value, and social function - has proven, throughout history, to be surprisingly controversial, and has generated endless commentary. This class ...

‘GESTALT’ is a German word which literally means ‘form’ or ‘shape’ and in psychology it is used to denote “an organised whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts”, says the Concise ...

For at least a half-century, scholars have been adopting literary approaches to the New Testament inspired by certain branches of literary criticism and theory. In this book, Michal Beth Dinkler uses ...