Critical Terms for Literary Study

by Frank Lentricchia (Editor), Thomas McLaughlin (Editor)

Since its publication in 1990, Critical Terms for Literary Study has become a landmark introduction to the work of literary theory—giving tens of thousands of students an unparalleled encounter with what it means to do theory and criticism. Significantly expanded, this new edition features six new chapters that confront, in different ways, the growing understanding of literary works as cultural practices.

These six new chapters are "Popular Culture," "Diversity," "Imperialism/Nationalism," "Desire," "Ethics," and "Class," by John Fiske, Louis Menand, Seamus Deane, Judith Butler, Geoffrey Galt Harpham, and Daniel T. O'Hara, respectively. Each new essay adopts the approach that has won this book such widespread each provides a concise history of a literary term, critically explores the issues and questions the term raises, and then puts theory into practice by showing the reading strategies the term permits.

Exploring the concepts that shape the way we read, the essays combine to provide an extraordinary introduction to the work of literature and literary study, as the nation's most distinguished scholars put the tools of critical practice vividly to use.

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

486 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not an encyclopedia, but rather a collection of essays on then-current critical concepts. I recall the essays on class and ideology with fondness, and taught the essay on diversity to undergraduates in ENG 101 courses for years.

That latter essay, written by Menand, lays out a nice case that diversity/multiculturalism in the humanities has the aporetic effect, if not necessarily the intention, of reducing actual diversity to a single market culture. It arises from Eisenhower-era planning for cold war education, of which ENG 101 is the flagship course, which was premised on producing talented weapons industry employees to fight off the communism (by providing property incentives, of course, to weapons designers and manufacturers), but without exacerbating class antagonism and thereby make the communism happen anyway (can't pay grave diggers the same wages as the bomb-makers!). The solution is the production of a unifying monoculture via usage of core curricula at school, through which students are shoehorned into the one single tone of seriousness acceptable to late capitalism. Good stuff.

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recognize that highlighting a required text from first year grad theory courses seems kind of, well, *meh*, but there are some great essays in this collection. I'm thinking of Judith Butler's entry on "Desire," and Barbara Johnson's on "Writing," as well as J. Hillis Miller's intro to "Narrative."

[Elliot A · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. In my opinion it had no educational value at all.

The editor claims in his introduction that the purpose of this collection of essays is to offer the reader an application oriented approach to learning the value and use of literary critical terms.

Unfortunately, most essays in this collection wander so far off the actual topic of discussion that neither application nor even a simple definition of the term is ever given. In one instance, the author of an essay succeeded in giving away the ending to five works of fiction that I had not yet read. After that I was reluctant to suffer through any more "essays", yet they were part of my reading list.

I am just glad that I did not have to pay for this book as the cost was already included in tuition, otherwise it would have been the second book in my long list of read textbooks to ever fly straight across the room.

ElliotScribbles

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early one afternoon in 1996, I arrived at a lecture for my stage two Introduction to Critical Theory paper. Our lecturer was beaming with a fanboy glow but doing his best to maintain professional dignity as he introduced a guest speaker for the class: J. Hillis Miller.

How it came to be that a world-renowned American deconstructionist literary critic, who had once been the colleague of Jacques Derrida himself at Yale, was now standing at the lectern in front us in Auckland, New Zealand, I don't know.

But when things got underway, the sign/ificance of his lecture was beyond me - I didn't latch onto a word of it. There was an air of general mystification in the room. Then, part way through, Miller had a funny turn and attempted to carry on, but due to the existing abstract nature of the lecture, it wasn't immediate clear, as his words veered into physical abstraction, that he was in any distress. This lingered perhaps a little too long, until our lecturer stepped in and announced a premature end to the session. Apart from a natural concern for Miller's wellbeing, there was also a sense of relief to be let out early.

I don't intend to demean the great man by this anecdote. Rather, to tell a story of a time I was in the same room as one of the 'greats' - and to tell how I struggled to catch the meaning of things. (I suspect I might have been better placed to appreciate the occasion had I been in that lecture theatre today; and you'll be pleased to know that Miller went on to live a long life, passing away only last year.)

Some of that confusion is carried forth in this book, which was the text for the Introduction to Critical Theory paper (there's J. Hillis Miller, right there on the contents page - essay number 5, on Narrative). On net, the memory of the reading experience is of zoning out. As a generalisation, I suppose this might illustrate a kind of 'failure' of the essays, the discourses, to invite us (or perhaps I should say me) into their worlds. Those academic systems that contain back and forth argument but seem largely to be closed circuits, little self-contained worlds, with their own frameworks of thinking and languaging. This book is a sampler of those frameworks of thinking and languaging - lenses (but more than just 'lenses') for reading texts.

I turned up to take the course and first attempt to engage with this book at age 19. What hospitality did these essays, these critical terms, these academic constructs, offer me then? Offer me now, age 45?

And yet, it's a known thing that critical theories do leak out in society and make a change. Perhaps not via the study of a poem per se, but related questions about such things as power and identity go on to make their mark on society. I've done little so far to make social change my raison d'etre, but I did find a way in at a different level.

My university years (five) instilled a kind of fascination and hunger, a desire to swim in texts at certain depths, to think, to ask questions of culture and of knowledge. To tilt my head to one side with determined attention, like my dog does when I'm saying something to him he wants to understand. So for that I say thank you, J. Hillis Miller, and all the others. I often had no idea what you were talking about but the mode itself was fascinating. There are certain essays in this book that I've marked with a tick... a mark to note some sort of connection for me with the text, come about I suppose by some mixture of the writer's art and my (the reader's) own matrix of interests and ideas - 'Writing' by Barbara Johnson, 'Performance' by Henry Sayre, 'Class' by Daniel T. O'Hara; along with other sundry margin notations - I see 'Rhetoric' by Stanley Fish came in for a fair amount of that treatment. I said 'zoning out' earlier, but it's amazing how often the word 'interesting' turns up in the very brief notes I made after reading each essay.

I suppose that's something. The offering up of a range of ideas, often written from deep inside an obscure framework, that nonetheless come forth and exist as texts that contain the possibility of further investigation. That might not sound very exciting, but possibility and its close friend enquiry go a long way in life.

I'd always wanted to read this book properly, and I got there in the end, working my way through it over the course of four years, between other books, to make it feasible. I don't regret it, but I'm glad it's done. And something of that mysterious world now lies (or tells some kinds of truths), I think, in my subconscious, feeding the instinct to enquire.

[Tom · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essay: Intention Annabel Patterson

[Noah Goodman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I know it’s just a textbook but so useful/insightful (at least for an illiterate sophomore English major)

[Christina]

Read this in my Literary Criticism course in college.

[Devin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for my college Foundations of Literary Analysis class alongside the Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. Honestly, I wouldn't recommend this book. If you are an English professor, there are plenty of other books and resources better than this book to help teach students the vocabulary and concepts of literary critique and analysis. It is a collection of essays that essentially take ten to twenty pages to define one vocabulary word and tries to make the length of the essays justified by piling example after example that are all essentially the same application of that word. Instead of spending your money on a book like this, it would be more valuable to look up the terms in the Oxford dictionary and then read a couple sentences of examples. There are free resources on the internet that allow you to do just that. While a couple of the essays had a couple of interesting things to say (but not very memorable seeing as I don't even recall which specific essays they were) many of them are long-winded and in my personal opinion state the obvious in an overly descriptive manner. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative was in a textbook format rather than an essay anthology and explained literary analysis and the theories of narrative all the way through clearly and concisely and the vocabulary words were briefly but informatively defined in their respective contexts. Basically everything in Critical Terms for Literary Study were defined in the Cambridge textbook and in a more engaging manner. Therefore this book in my mind is mostly a waste of time to read. That being said, I put two stars instead of one because I'm sure there are die-hard literature scholars that would probably like something like this, even if it's just for their own leisure. It's basically a book for those who want in-depth further reading on single narrow concepts.

[Ryan Brady]

Essays Read:

W.J.T. Mitchell - "Representation"
Barbara Johnson - "Writing"
Thomas McLaughlin - "Figurative Language"
Henry Sayre - "Performance"
Steven Mailloux - "Interpretation"
Francoise Meltzer - "Unconscious"
Myra Jehlen - "Gender"
Kwame Anthony Appiah - "Race"
Gerald Graff - "Determinacy/Indeterminacy"
Barbara Herrnstein Smith - "Value/Evaluation"
Stanley Fish - "Rhetoric"
John Fiske - "Popular Culture"

Read for Dr. Mary Rigsby's Intro to Literary Studies course - UMW - Fall 2015

[Cory Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

Solid introduction to literature theory, especially for someone who studied engineering in college, like myself. I highly recommend this or an update to this version, if one exists, for novice readers of lit. criticism. It is a bit dated now, but I imagine if I had taken lit. in college, then this may have been the text we would have studied.

[Ben · Rating 2 out of 5]

Chapters Read:
01 - Representation
03 - Writing
04 - Discourse
05 - Narrative
06 - Figurative Language
08 - Author
09 - Interpretation
10 - Intention
16 - Culture
20 - Race
22 - Ideology
28 - Class

[Trent Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great compendium of literary-theoretical keywords. I read the first edition, which at this point will be at least somewhat dated, but as an overview of litcrit best practices ca. the 1990s, it's good.

[April]

"Issues in Criticism" -University of Saint Thomas, for further reading. Master's in English.

[ػᶈᶏϾӗ]

ugh theory