Modern Literary Criticism and Theory

Written in concise and clear language, this book offers an historical overview of literary criticism and theory throughout the twentieth century along with a close analysis of some of the most important and commonly taught texts from the period.

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• Provides an accessible introduction to modern literary theory and criticism
  
• Places various modes of criticism within their historical and intellectual contexts
  
• Offers close readings of some of the major critical texts of the period
  
• Explores the works of a diverse group of 20th-century writers, including Babbitt, Woolf, Bakhtin, Heidegger, Lacan, Derrida, Judith Butler, Zizek, Nussbaum, Negri and Hardt
  
• Covers formalism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, reader-response criticism, historicism, gender studies, cultural studies, and film theory

Acknowledgments.

Introduction:.

Formative Moments in the History of Literary Criticism.

Historical Backgrounds of Modern Criticism and Theory.

The Scope of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism.

1. The First Decades: From Liberal Humanism to Formalism.

The New Humanists, Neo-Romantics, and Precursors of Formalism.

The Background of Modernism.

The Poetics of Modernism: W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot.

Formalism:.

Russian Formalism:.

Boris Eichenbaum (1886–1959).

Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895–1975).

Roman Jakobson (1896–1982).

The New Criticism:.

John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974).

William K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907–1975) and Monroe C. Beardsley (1915–1985).

2. Socially Conscious Criticism of the Earlier Twentieth Century.

F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) and Scrutiny.

Marxist and Left-Wing Criticism:.

Socialist Criticism in Britain.

The Fundamental Principles of Marxism.

Marxist Literary Criticism: A Historical Overview.

Early Feminist Criticism: Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir:.

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986).

3. Criticism and Theory After the Second World War.

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Phenomenology.

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Existentialism.

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) and Heterology.

Structuralism:.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913).

Roland Barthes (1915–1980).

4. The Era of Poststructuralism (I): Later Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction.

Later Marxist Criticism:.

Terry Eagleton (b. 1943).

Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan:.

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981).

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and Deconstruction.

5. The Era of Poststructuralism (II): Postmodernism, Modern Feminism, Gender Studies.

Postmodernism:.

Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929).

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998).

bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins; b. 1952).

Modern Feminism:.

French Feminism.

American Feminism.

British Feminism.

Julia Kristeva (b. 1941).

Hélène Cixous (b. 1937).

Gender Studies:.

Gayle Rubin (b. 1949).

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (b. 1950).

Judith Butler (b. 1956).

6. The Later Twentieth Century: New Historicism, Reader-Response Theory, and Postcolonial Criticism.

New Historicism:.

Michel Foucault (1926–1984).

Reader-Response and Reception Theory:.

Wolfgang Iser (b. 1926).

Stanley Fish (b. 1938).

Postcolonial Criticism:.

Edward Said (1935–2004).

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (b. 1942).

Homi K. Bhabha (b. 1949).

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950).

7. Cultural Studies and Film Theory.

Cultural Studies:.

Raymond Williams (1921–1988).

Stuart Hall (b. 1932).

Dick Hebdige (b. 1951).

John Fiske.

Susan Bordo (b. 1947).

Film Theory:.

Andrew Sarris (b. 1928) and Auteur Theory.

Jim Kitses: The Study of Genre.

Christian Metz (1931–1993): A Psychoanalytic Perspective.

Laura Mulvey (b. 1941): Feminist Film Theory.

8. Contemporary Directions: The Return of the Public Intellectual.

The New Liberalism: Martha Nussbaum, Elaine Scarry, John Carey:.

Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947).

Elaine Scarry (b. 1946).

John Carey (b. 1934).

The New Aestheticism.

The New Theorists of Revolution: Žižek, Hardt, Negri.

Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949).

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: The Concept of Empire.

Epilogue: The Myth of Liberal Humanism.

Index

“Lucid, wide-ranging, erudite and packed with insights, Rafey Habib’s survey of modern criticism and theory has something for both the tenderfoot and the old-timer. Students everywhere will find it indispensable.”
Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester

"Those who want to know where literary critics may be going should have this." Times Higher Education Supplement

M.A.R. Habib is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. He received his D.Phil. in English from Oxford University, and is the author of five books, including A History of Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to the Present (Blackwell, 2005). Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History is the most comprehensive account of modern criticism and theory available in the English language. It provides a historical survey of the various modes of literary criticism developed in the twentieth century. It is distinguished from other texts in the field not only by providing the larger historical contexts of modern critical works, but also by engaging in close readings of some of the major and commonly taught texts, offering clear, detailed, and philosophically informed explanations of difficult works.

This broadly chronological narrative explores the works of a diverse group of twentieth-century writers – from Irving Babbitt and T. S. Eliot through Simone de Beauvoir and Martin Heidegger to Jacques Derrida, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek, and Elaine Scarry. It stresses the continuity and connections between the various critical approaches of formalism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, gender studies, reader-response and reception theory, historicism, cultural studies, and film theory, as well as the new emphases on aestheticism and liberalism. An invaluable resource for students and teachers at all levels, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in modern literature and culture.