Literature in the Modern World

by Dennis Walder

Literature in the Modern World offers a unique combination of English, European, feminist and `new writing', or `Commonwealth', perspectives on literary studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is designed to enable students to gain an understanding of the main theoretical issues involved in the study of modern literary texts. The texts upon which the critical essays here focus are - chiefly, but not exclusively, in English. The book includes the view of leading critics and theorists such as Marilyn Butler, Frank Kermode, Helene Cixous, and Edward Said, as well as the originating voices of Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and Virginia Woolf, and focuses on major critical topics including genre, interpretation, history and criticism, gender, race, and the notion of `Englishness'. This approach derives from a perceived change in what constitutes `English literature' in a period of British imperial decline and takes account of the rise of a radical, questioning critical and literary practice at home and abroad. The more abstract and abstruse contemporary critics are eschewed in favour of extracts of sufficient length, force, and clarity to offer relative newcomers the opportunity of engaging with a wide range of current issues. The book covers the Open University course A319.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, Reference, Criticism, Literature

Paperback

First published January 17, 1991

Reviews

[David Galloway · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great collection of literary criticism essays arranged by each critical school. This was required for my L4 Critical Theory course at Uni. Here are the essays from which I was greatly impacted in one way or another:

Terry Eagleton - Literature and the Rise of English
Stanley Fish - Interpreting the Variorum
Robert Scholes - Who Cares About the Text (a rebuke of Fish)
Geoffrey Hartman - The Interpreter's Freud
Seymour Chatman - Story and Narrative
Umberto Eco - Semiotics of Theatrical Performance
Terry Eagleton - Marxist Criticism
Pierre Macherey - The Text Says What it Does Not Say
Roland Barthes - The Death of the Author (one of the most controversial essays in the humanities)
Simone de Beauvoir - Woman and the Other
Helene Cixous - The Laugh of the Medusa
Edward Said - The Discourse of the Orient
Seamus Heaney - Englands of the Mind
T.S. Eliot - What is a Classic?

Along with Rifkin & Ryan's 'Literary Theory: An Anthology' the budding theorist would have the bulk of a decent library with two volumes.