50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know

50 Ideas You Really Need to Know

by John Sutherland

Literature suffers from appearing both deceptively easy and dauntingly difficult. We all like to think we can read a novel and understand what 'genre', 'style' and 'narrative' mean, but do we really understand them fully and how they can enrich our reading experience? How should we approach the works of great writers such as William Shakespeare, T.S. Eliot, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen? And what can we hope to learn from apparently difficult ideas such as 'hermeneutics', 'affective fallacy' and 'bricolage'? 50 Literature Ideas you Really Need to Know is the essential guide to all the important forms, concepts, themes and movements in literature. It provides a clear, opinionated and thorough overview of theories about the nature of language and meaning, and outlines the thinking behind key literary concepts such as postmodernism, semiology, postcolonialism and structuralism. Best-selling author and critic John Sutherland offers a fresh and challenging overview of literary ideas and theories, from the apparently familiar to the decidedly unfamiliar. Packed with insights and examples from both classic and popular works, it is a book that will delight anyone who has ever been mystified by literary jargon and wants to gain a deeper, more thorough enjoyment of reading and writing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Literature, Writing, Books About Books, Literary Criticism, Reference, History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

John Andrew Sutherland is a British academic, newspaper columnist and author. He is Emeritus Lord Northcliffe Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.

Reviews

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Here is a quick summary of the 50 ideas. Aren't I good to you?


literary inundation


The scale of production of new books is frankly terrifying. You all know that. How do we make our way in our little coracles through this tsunami of words? Well, this very site helps a bit. But Sutherland hadn't heard of it, apparently.

We live in interesting times. It's hard to figure out what you should be reading - you know you don't want to read that utter crap your friend (what was she thinking) insisted on lending you - good god, what was it called - The Alchemist? - but The Pale King by DFW looks a bit of a mindmelt; there must be another way, other than to go sleepwalking into the sopophoria of the suffocating classics from the age of the Brontesaurus.

I agree. We are inundated. However. I regard each time we buy a book knowing full well we have too many unread ones already as not an act of a foolhardy spendthrift but as a blow against the darkness, an act of optimism, a gentle turning aside from cynicism. So fill your shelves to bulging and falling on the floor, my brothers and sisters, till the very books themselves push you out of your own house.


ebooks

I don't believe in them, so - next.

fanfic

This is kind of a weird internet thing which I only vaguely heard of, but it seems some fans are so fantastically geeky and disturbed that they can't take life without any more Lord of the Rings to read, so they start writing bits and pieces in the style of. A sub-genre of this sub-genre is slash fiction which is apparently gay fantasies about characters in famous books, e.g. Dracula and Jonathan Harker. It's all a bit mental. But 50 Shades of Grey was a fanfic, so it's not that mental. I guess versions of Moby Dick where Moby tells Ahab "I AM YOUR FATHER" is called finfic. I bet that joke's been done.


ghost writers

This is the way you exploit a brand name in book form. It's a drag if your best-selling author actually dies, but you don't have to stop publishing books by them, you here a team to write in the style of. We have Bonds and Sherlocks and endless V C Andrews, and it's all good fun as far as I can see. Then we have a non-literary brand like a sports person or a celeb or pop star, and you wouldn't expect them to be able to write, so there's nothing wrong with turning on the tape recorder and giving the hours of egomaniac burblings to a ghost writer who then drinks a million whiskies and smokes a million cigs and produces a manuscript in three weeks. Ghosts used to be disreputable but not now.


literary lies

different to plagiarism, these are the other kinds of whoppers you can tell between two covers (of a book) - e.g. Jersy Kosinski (reviewed elsewhere), James Frey and Herman Rosenblat (An Angel at the Fence) - all of whom make up heroic stuff about themselves in memoirs purporting to be true.



permissiveness

we have dealt with this topic before. Sutherland amusingly gives us the loosening of censorship in 1959 in Britain, (Lady Chatterly et al) and then the closing back in of censorship at the end of the 1970s as PC took hold. So, first the censorship came from the right, and then it came from the left. Okay, that's quite funny.


blasphemy

In 1656 James Naylor rode into the English town of Bristol on two donkeys and this was taken to be blasphemous so he was tortured and thrown into prison. In 1977 Gay News, an English periodical, published a frankly blasphemous poem about the dead Christ being used in a most unChristlike manner by a Roman centurian after he was hauled down from the Cross. Gay News was successfully prosecuted for blasphemous libel and fined so heavily it had to close. In 1989 Salman Rushdie published The Satanic Verses and came under a sentence of death. This time the authorities spent a lot of dough protecting the blasphemer. You have to say that's progress, of a sort.


libel

Also fraying at the edges is libel - see the various ad hominen attacks on Tony Blair (The Trial of Tony Blair, The Deal, The Tony Blair Witch Project, etc) and George W Bush, e.g. Nicholson Baker's publicly stated desire to assassinate him in the pages of Checkpoint. So, obscenely defame who you like, people. I'm too busy with my blow-up Vladimir Putin doll to care. He's so cuuute.

obscenity

Pretty much a dead letter if you mean books published and then being prosecuted, but the censorship of books is still alive and well in local communities in the USA. This is something unknown in the Kingdom of Great Britain, where democracy is not practised, as you can clearly see (do we have capital punishment? No! Have we withdrawn from Europe? No! do I actually want democracy in Britain? No!)

Books are challenged in the USA.

A challenge is an attempt to remove or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. Challenges do not simply involve a person expressing a point of view; rather, they are an attempt to remove material from the curriculum or library, thereby restricting the access of others


sexual politics

After Kate Millett and others began to read male authors in the honest light of feminism beginning with KM's brilliant book in 1970 Sexual Politics , all previous literature was shown to be in need of rereading and reinterpratation. In Britain the professional gadfly Germaine Greer investigated The Midsummer Night's Dream and found some vicious things hidden by the gauzy fairy wings.

But does this mean that novels must be issued from 1970 onward with a feminist seal of approval? Maybe there should be a feminist rating system like the movie rating system. (That's my stupid idea, not john Sutherland's).

I spun this off into a review of Kate Millett's original book which profoundly shook me many years ago.

reception theory

Says that meaning does not reside in the text but in the reader. Again, this is reasonably obvious, but it does mark the beginning of a worthwhile enquiry. Consider

a man reads Jane Eyre in 1847
a woman reads Jane Eyre in 1847
a man reads Jane Eyre in 2013
a woman reads Jane Eyre in 2013

You are going to get four different interpretations, some very different. Does the meaning reside in the text?

When Jane says "Reader, I married him" what reader did she or Miss Bronte have in mind?

Are readers free to make of books what they will?


semiology

JS:

The Name of the Rose allegorises the semiotic plight - the search for the "really" signified, which will always fail because we can never get beyond the nominal/signifying universe of understanding that is the human condition.

Yes!

How many lightbulbs does it take to change a semiotician?


Post-colonialism

in which chicken tikka masala becomes Britain's favourite restaurant meal, and Salman Rushdie wins the Booker of Bookers.

Over half of the Bookers have been won by persons from the ex-colonies.

This idea is really old, now. Really - let's wave post-colonialism bye bye. We don't live in a post-colonial world or a late-capitalist world. We live in a better-get-used-to-the-chaos-cause-nobody's-in-charge world.

New Historicism

Are you falling asleep? Yes, i am, a little bit.

School of lit crit which seizes on details in a text and deduces stuff about the society therefrom which then offers an interpretation of the text; apparently there's a famous essay about a cock fight in Bali by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in which he sees all of Balinese culture encoded within the cock fight and you can do the same if you contemplate the fine details of Elizabeth Bennett's arse.

(No that bit isn't in the book.)

heteroglossia

File under bricolage - a fancy word for the blindingly obvious.

Post-modernism

Oh dear! It's come to this!



Well, Modernism was from Les Fleurs du Mal in 1857 to circa 1930 (it is said). It was a movement of radicals who were disgusted with the repressive authoritarian culture of the time and wished to throw hand grenades at it, which they did, cultural ones like les Demoiselles d'Avignon or Un Chien Andalou or anything by Mondrian or Brancusi. They all believed (it is said) in progress. They wanted things to get better. Make it new! (Ezra pound's slogan).

So eventually all this brash shocking loud stuff like Ulysses and The Waste Land and so forth ceases to shock, it gets to be taught in school, it's old hat.

When you look at the whole kit and caboodle of Modernism, it's still dead white males, and very occasionally , a little tiny dead white woman like V Woolf sneaks in there.

What came after Modernism has the problem : how to rebel against what was in itself a protracted rebellion?

The post-mods did this by disputing the notion of progress - No! things are not getting better! Ulysses isn't "better" than "Middlemarch" - there's no such thing as progress - your values are utter rubbish!

And also attacking who was doing the talking, i.e. the voice of authority - wresting the big dildo of literature away from the grasping white male middleclass fist, and empowering (that word was used) a whole bunch of ne'er-do-wells and urchins. Third world types, queers, women. You know, that crowd.

It was appalling. A free for all. But, we can see that the white males were quick to become pomos too, so all was not lost in the general melee.

Double Bind

An idea imported from psychology. this is where two sets of instructions clash and cause paralysis. Whereas the resulting dilemma focusses on the individual's response, the double bind itself concerns the larger forces operating on the individual. The proverbial definition of this is "damned if you do, damned if you don't". It's a central feature of 1984 and the solution in that novel is "doublethink". Catch-22 is entirely about double-bind.

Textuality

Text is to literature as cadaver is to anatomy. This section either wittingly or unwittingly reveals modern criticism for the narcissistic obscurantism it so often is. The difference between calling The waste Land, for instance, a text and not a work of literature is :

One appreciates a work of literature. One is free to analyse a text.

But, of course, when you appreciate you think about, you argue with, you puzzle over, you investigate - yes, you analyse. Has any reader of The waste Land ever read the last lines, sighed Hmmm deeply, put it back on the shelf, and picked up the next book?

Actually, to be fair, the textualists (critics) wish to apply a lot more rigour in their analysis of a work than your regular reader would ever do. So the question (not addressed here) is :

what is the relationship between the general reader (us) and the critic? is there one at all?

****

In most ways this is just a crap list book - each idea, either a tiny one or a very big one, is given four fairly smirky pages. Any of the better reviewers here on GR could do the same and with probably more wit and insight. The four pages on

structuralism

are stupid, they don't even offer a definition, just some projectile Barthing. Onwards with a shudder to

Deconstruction

where at least we can read this :

any encounter with literature involves arbitrarily constructing meaning, then promptly erasing that meaning, only to go through the process again with the reassembled text. There is no finality, every literary text is inherently indeterminate.... Why, if the journey is so pointless, go on? ...Because the making of meanings, however arbitrary, is the only lifeline we shall ever have across the abyss of unmeaningness.

He quotes a poem Deconstruction by Peter Mullen :

D'you wanna know the creeda
Jacques Derrida?
Dere ain't no reader
Dere ain't no wrider eider.

Critical theories like this are magnets for cheap comic sallies - I confess I've done it

Now what? Oh no. It's...

Metafiction

which is what happens when authors stop pretending they're writing down a version of reality; or, maybe, when they stop writing naively, as it were, and write as if reader and writer are aware they're both engaged in a serious (or not) and elaborate game. The term was invented in the 60s but authors have been creating metafiction from the beginning of the novel - Shamela was a parody of Pamela, and Tristram Shandy is the fount of all things meta - as JS reminded me, there's a bit where Tristram, trying to write down his entire life story, gets totally stuck when he realises that he'll never be able to do that because by the time he's caught up with now, now has moved on - "his life is accumulating faster than he can write it down", and his mania for digressions ties him in rhetorical knots - the book is the comedy produced by this conundrum (it's an acquired taste). More recent metafictional flowerings include The French Lieutenant's Woman where the author keeps jumping up and discussing the characters with the reader, and the short crazy stories of Donald Bathelme, and the entire oeuvre of Paul Auster, mashup nonsense like Pride & Prejudice with Zombies, and more interestingly, the great "modern Victorian" genre of The Crimson petal and the White, Fingersmith and The Quincunx.


From metafiction's insistence that fiction is MADE UP and imaginary and a bizarre problematic pursuit, we reverse ourselves into :

Solidity of Specification

Never heard of that term? Well, nor me neither. It's a little phrase used once aand once only by Henry James in one of his esoteric essays on novel writing. So Mr Sutherland is having a bit of a laugh here. What it means is, really, the telling realistic detail - e.g. this from Robinson Crusoe, musing about his lost shipmates:

I never saw them afterwards, or any sign of them except three of their hats, one cap, and two shoes that were not fellows.

So, it's these particular specific details which make the whole imaginary world come alive. JS draws a distinction between "motivated" and "unmotivated" details. The former are used because they will later the plot points, and the latter because they build a realer world. Trollope criticised Wilkie Collins for cramming his novels with nothing but motivated detail :

The author seems always to be warning me to remember that something happened at exactly two o'clock on Tuesday morning; or that a woman disappered from a road just fifteen yards beyond the fourth mile-stone.

Some authors cram in every detail they can, especially in some historical novels - Lawrence Norfolk does this, The Crimson Petal and the White does this - others just spray a few bits and pieces into the room occasionally, to remind the reader where and when she is. JS points out that Jane Austin never describes any of her characters. Which I hadn't noticed. And Shakespeare, well... we never do get told how old Hamlet is.

Bricolage

= "work that is put together from whatever materials come to hand"

this is a fancy pants way of saying that authors are limited to what they know, and make up their work from the ideas of their time, so that seems... self-evident... to put it kindly...and unworthy of such a euphonious term.

**

I actually had to blow a layer of dust off this book just now.

So let's skip past the entries which i am assuming you already know quite enough about..

Imagery

Allusion

and take up

Defamiliarisation

Two opposing ideas here - by presenting something familiar in a strange way, the author can allow us to look at it afresh - the stones are thus made stony, and the glass more breakable. Okay, poetry does this all the time, as does science fiction.

It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.

As does some young adult fiction.

The Brechtian version was to try and prevent the suspension of disbelief which naturalistic literature with its stony stones was trying to and succeeding in conning you willingly into. Brecht wanted audiences to think and be critical of what they were offered.

High priest of defamiliatisation : James Joyce. I mean, wow.


Irony

Like we really need this guy to write four pages about irony. Oh, wait a moment, was that sarcasm?

**

notes on the previous 26 ideas are now here

http://www.goodreads.com/story/show/2...

[Antigone · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not really how literature works at all - instead fifty terms addressed in ways that rarely make them any clearer. Mimesis, Hermeneutics, Bricolage, Heteroglossia, Semiology, etc., etc. And it's a funny thing, how it's all sliced up in bite-sized pieces with hodgepodge quotage and almanac fonts, pretending to be wildly accessible while still holding the knowledge at such a (cleverly) distinct remove. Here's how you pack pretention so that it survives the journey from one generation to the next.

Because whatever would we do without something to feel smug about? I just don't know.

[Scribble Orca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hamburg, Thalia Buecherei

Er: Guck was ich gerade gefunden habe. Ich dachte Du wuerdest...

Ich: Ja, hab's gesehen. Aber der Wal (I still haven't finished Moby Dick)....und dann noch Fuenfzig Ideen - muesste Alles jetzt immer mit Fuenfzig verbunden sein? Bin aber nicht sicher ob ich das Buch wirklich kaufen moechte.

Er: Es dauert eine Weile bevor wir hier fertig sind. Und die Warteschlange ist sehr lang. Lies einfach ein biss'l.

Ich: Naja....gut. Kann nichts schaden.

(Seated on a one of those cube couch things, around me hundreds of people in this massive, multi-level store mingle and gossip and complete their last minute present shopping, I gallop through fifty literature ideas and am glad I hadn't read this little gem before ploughing through the fumes of A Postmodern Belch since I can now reminisce perspicaciously about the author's use of each one of those fifty ideas he must have imbibed during the long years of apprenticeship at a literary institution and which I have now absorbed in an hour.

But that is, perhaps, giving a false impression of the usefulness of 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know or the audience for whom it is intended. I was recently listening to Michael Silverblatt interviewing Rikki Ducornet on youtube, compliments of Pumiceous (that name rings a bell, you know, I'm sure I've seen this personage somewhere before) in which Ms Ducornet interrupts Mr Silverblatt at one point with the words "Oh, you are a marvelous reader!" after he has made a particularly sagacious comment with respect to her novel Gazelle.

While 50 Literature Ideas You Really Need to Know won't catapult you into the rarefied stratosphere of literary critics the likes of Michael Foucault etc, it is enough to codify and explicate the basics for understanding why we, as readers, like certain aspects of some books and not others, and it is one means to broaden the scope of what we read and potentially earn us the undying gratitude of a writer when we casually nod in the direction of his/her brilliant use of a literary conceit or other such device.)

Er: Wir sind fertig. Wollen wir los?

Ich: Ja.

Er: Kaufst Du es?

Ich: Nah. Hab's schon durch. Aber ich wuensche mir, dass alle es lesen wuerden.

[Kathrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not a comprehensive reference for students of literary criticism. It is lit-crit hard candy -- enjoyable to suck on for a while, but may give you a stomachache if you take on too much at once. You will quickly gather that Sutherland is old, white, Anglo-centric, male, and elitist, but he very much enjoys accusing others of their elitism. He is convinced he is quite witty, and now and then, he is. Now and then he says brilliant things, and now and then he says hideously obvious or simplistic (or sometimes just wrong) things, or even somewhat offensive things, and hopes very hard that you may not notice. Each concept is merrily summed up with a "condensed idea". His condensed idea for 'sexual politics'? "There is a 'female' literature." I am not convinced that this is helpful.
And -- my god this man is enraptured with The Da Vinci Code. The index cites it three times, but he finds a way to mention it more than any other novel in this purported comprehensive history of English-language literary concepts .
And -- Editor, stop f-ing around and edit. What the hell happened on page 144? New Historicism is kind of ridiculous, but it is not that opaque. Where is the entry on proofreading?
And -- e-books are not "devices for receiving and transmitting texts." You mean an e-reader. You should probably just stick with writing what you know...

[Ivan Velisavljević · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nedovoljno ozbiljna za stručnjake, nedovoljno razumljiva i jasna za laike, sa humorom koji mora biti neprijatno neduhovit i jednima i drugima.

Knjiga Džona Saderlenda, inače stručnjaka za viktorijanski period, u kojoj ima nameru da popularizuje teoriju književnosti, u skladu sa konceptom američke bestseler-edicije izdavačke kuće Quercus "50 ideja koje bi stvarno trebalo da znate", težak je promašaj. Saderlend se nije proslavio konceptom, izborom ideja i objašnjenjima, a i prevod na srpski na momente ispusti po koji bitan detalj, tako da se kompetentni čitaoci, poput mene, dodatno iznerviraju. Kako su stranice odmicale, tako sam bivao sve manje tolerantan i na kraju ostao sa utiskom da je ovo zapravo knjiga koja širi neznanje i koju čitaoci zainteresovani za ključne ideje u književnosti treba svesno da zaobiđu. Ima puno boljih uvoda, priručnika i pregleda, koji možda nisu tako kratki i pristupačni, ali svakako nisu putić sa oznakom "Prečica" koji u stvari vodi stranputicom.

Umesto da ponudi jednostavno napisanu, preglednu, i ako baš mora: naftalinski duhovitu, ali informativnu i edukativnu knjigu sa ključnim idejama teorije književnosti koje bi svaki obrazovan čovek trebalo da zna, Saderlend je napravio jedan drnč od konfuznih i digresivnih pasusa, čas smrtno stručnih, u kojima se podrazumeva da čitaoci sve znaju, čas uvredljivo pojednostavljenih, u kojima se čitaoci tretiraju kao budale. U poglavlju "Strukturalizam", recimo, jednom od najgore napisanih, dve od četiri strane posvećene su bezveznom naklapanju na temu "kako to da čitamo slova na papiru a govorimo o obliku i strukturi", da bi se objašnjenje nastavilo jednom prilično slabom analogijom Džonatana Kalera o Dejvidu Bekamu i fudbalu, prepričavanjem eseja Rolana Barta o bifteku i pomfritu, i završilo razmatranjem problema strukturalizma koji ne slede ni iz čega navedenog pre toga. Posle poglavlja "Brikolaž" apsolutno je nemoguće da vam išta bude jasno o tom pojmu i zašto je baš ideja brikolaža jedna od 50 koje bi trebalo da znate a da su iz književnosti. I kada u taj drnč, na primer, u poglavlju "Aluzija", iz oskudice i nužnosti dodate bajate sastojke - čuveni i do danas popularan, ali krut, nerimovan, i pogrešno slobodan Danojlićev prepev stihova iz pesme "Drugi dolazak" V. B. Jejtsa (kod Jejtsa se sve 'raspada' a kod Danojlića se iz nekog razloga 'razliva', i tako dalje) - ugođaj je savršen, tako da vas spopadnu muka i bes ako književnost i nauku o književnosti shvatate iole ozbiljno. A začin koji svemu daje onu specifičnu gadariju, tako tipičnu za prevode popularne publicistike sa engleskog, jeste prekomeran fokus na anglo-američki kontekst. Mnoge od ovih ideja naprosto su nastale izvan tog konteksta i pokušaj da se prilagode američkom ukusu pozivanjem na neprikladne primere ili pogrešne paralele iz istorije anglo-američke književnosti jednostavno daje odvratan rezultat.

Zato je ovo knjiga o 50 književnih ideja o kojima stvarno ne bi trebalo da učite iz nje.

[Ralph Palm · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't really need an introduction to literary criticism, but I thought it would be a quick read that might refresh me on some terms I haven't used since school. It wasn't.

I should explain that I don't expect much from an introductory text. Writing one of these, you can't explain every little detail. Abstraction is the purpose in writing such an introduction in the first place, and quibbling over details misses the point entirely. Simplification, however, does not excuse the number and type of errors in this book.

There are three sorts of mistakes here:
1) QUIBBLING: e.g. the author calls Francis Fukuyama a historian, and refers to Aristotle's 'love' of contradiction. At this level, there are details that I happen to know via philosophy that I might have phrased differently or corrected slightly. This is the sort of mistake that is not relevant in an introductory text. Differences in how best to simplify something are not really a problem related to content at all.
2) LAUGHABLE: To cite one example, the author repeated confuses 'ebooks' with 'ebook readers' ("ebooks, on which material could be downloaded...", pg198). Now, the author is an older man, and normally this sort of mistake isn't that funny--an older person not being familiar with some new(er) thing is usually more pitiable. Unlike the typical old man on the street, however, the author is writing a book where he purports to explain something with which he clearly has at best only a passing familiarity. This posturing, plus the sheer sloppiness of every editor, agent, copy-editor etc. involved with the production of this book, is what makes it funny.
3) BAFFLING: The mistake that I left me dumbfounded, and lead me to read the rest of the work with morbid curiosity was this "At it's simplest, irony is saying one thing and meaning another." The problem with this definition is that it leaves out any reference to 'opposition'. Defining irony as saying one thing and meaning 'another' (instead 'the opposite') overgeneralizes the definition to any figurative use of language whatsoever. This goes well beyond quibbling, to 'how can an experienced, well-respected literature professor not be able to explain WHAT IRONY MEANS?!' It's the sort of mistake that calls into question every other claim the author makes. The reason it's so baffling is not that it's such a stupid mistake, but that the author is clearly not a stupid person.
It's again just sloppy.

These are of course just a few examples. But they're representative of the attention to detail throughout, at least on those topics with which I happened to already have had prior knowledge. As far as I can tell, this book seems to have been written for the paycheck alone, with an absolute minimal level of thought being put into it by all concerned--a 'Michael Bay movie' of popular literary criticism.

That's not a compliment.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lo más valioso que aprendí en mi paso por la Facultad de Humanidades de nuestra máxima casa de estudios local, mientras cursaba la licenciatura en letras latinoamericanas, es que no necesitas instruirte en crítica literaria para amar los libros. En sobradas ocasiones, resultaba más engorroso diseccionar un texto e intentar desentrañar todos y cada uno de sus vericuetos que simplemente dejarse llevar por lo melodioso de un verso o lo revelador de un aforismo.
No obstante, nunca está de más allegarse algunos conceptos que nos permitirán valorar de mejor forma el documento que tenemos entre las manos, llámese novela, poema, cuento, drama, etc. Por eso leí el libro “50 cosas que hay que saber sobre literatura”, de John Sutherland. Cincuenta mini textos, con citas breves y cuadros sinópticos, para conocer elementos del mundo literario como la mimesis o la hermenéutica, la alegoría o la metaficción, la obscenidad o la blasfemia.
Sutherland ha dedicado su vida a la literatura (es profesor emérito de literatura inglesa contemporánea y miembro de la Royal Society of Literature) y se nota que hizo su mejor esfuerzo en tratar de explicar, en apenas cuatro páginas, conceptos tan ambiguos y etéreos como “la falacia afectiva” o el “doble vínculo”; no sale tan bien librado en casos como el estructuralismo o la semiología, pero bueno, ¿quién esperaría comprender semejantes gatuperios leyendo tres o cuatro párrafos?
La realidad es que este libro resulta una embarradita de erudición; amena y esforzada, sí, pero sólo una embarrada. Aunque, para aquellos que no queremos trepanar los poemas y las novelas, sino simplemente dejarnos llevar, está bastante aceptable.

[عمرو العروسي · Rating 4 out of 5]

لمحاكاة: ويقصد بها التقليد، فالأديب عادة ما يعمد لتقليد الواقع، وقد رفض أفلاطون المحاكاة عامة، لأن التقليد لا يكون كالأصل، لذا رفض أفلاطون وجود الشعراء في جمهوريته "كتاب الجمهورية"، أما أرسطو فقد قبل بالمحاكاة، وقال أن المُحاكاة تعكس الواقع وتشير إليه بعمق، فعندما نرى شحاذ في الشارع في حياتنا العادية عادة ما لا نتعاطف معه، لكن إن تم تجسيده في فيلم سينمائي فسوف يتعاطف معه الملايين كما تعاطف الجمهور مع "جاك" في فيلم تيتانيك، وخلاصة الفكرة أن المحاكاة قد لا تكون حقيقية لكنها صحيحة.
الغموض: الألفاظ المستخدمة في الأدب قد يكون لها أكثر من دلالة، وقد يقوم الأديب باستخدام تلك الألفاظ ذات المعاني المتنوعة للتورية أو كنوع من أنواع الاستخدام العالي للغة، واللغة الإنجليزية من أكثر اللغات التي تتسم كلمتها بالغموض، أما اللغة الفرنسية فهي واضحة لا لبس فيها بطبيعتها كما أنها أقل عرضة للتورية، لذا قيل أن اللغة الفرنسية هي اللغة المفضلة في الدبلوماسية، فتخيل معي شخص يبرز رأسه من شباك القطار، فيقال له بالإنجليزية Look out، فمن الجائز أن يقوم هذا الشخص بالنظر حوله وتطير رقبته، أما إن قيل له attention monsieur فسوف ينتبه ويدخل برأسه داخل الشباك ويتم إنقاذه.
التأويل: عادة ما يقصد الكاتب معنى معين من عمله الأدبي،فهل القارئ مُلزم أن يفهم العمل الأدبي من خلال ما يقصده الكاتب، أم أنه حر أن يستنتج منه أو يفهم منه ما يريد؟؟ بالطبع يكون للقارئ أن يفهم ما يريد من العمل الأدبي، وهنا يثور سؤال آخر... هل تقدم الزمن يجعلنا أكثر دراية أم أقل دراية؟ فلو رجعنا بالزمن وشاهدنا مسرحية هاملت لشكسبير وقت عرضها هل سنفهمها بشكلٍ أفضل، أم أن الفهم الأفضل سوف يتحقق إن سافرنا إلى المستقبل فتكن الأمور أوضح؟ بالنسبة لي أرى أن الرجوع بالزمن هنا أسلم لفهم العمل بشكلٍ أفضل.
الكلاسيكية: يوجد في كل مجال أدبي أعمال معينة تعد أعمال كلاسيكية، ولكن ليس كل ما يتألق يعتبر كلاسيكياً، وعندما سئل فرانك كيرمود عن الكلاسيكية؟ قال هي الكتب القديمة التي لازال الناس يقرأونها، أما مارك توين فقال عنها، هي الشئ الذي يود الجميع لو أنهم أتموا قراءتها من قبل ولا يوجد من يريد أن يقرأها.
الغرض: قد يكون للعمل الأدبي غرض معين من مثل حض المجتمع على الوحدة أو تعميق الفهم الديني أو غير ذلك، فهل يجوز لنا أن نقرأ العمل الأدبي فلا نهتم بالغرض منه ونستمتع منه بجوانب أخرى فيه، بالطبع يكون من حق القارئ ذلك، فهو السيد الذي لا يضام.
المُغالطة العاطفية: العمل الأدبي يمر بمراحل كثيرة متعاقبة، فالكاتب يكتب وينقح ويقوّم المُدقق اللغوي المحتوى، ثم يقوم الفنان بتصميم الغلاف ثم يقوم الناشر بتوزيع الكتاب على المكتبات وفي النهاية يحصل عليه المستهلك فيقرأه كوجبة أدبية ثقافية في ساعات ثم يتجشأ ويقول رأيه بعاطفية مطلقة بغير التعمق في كل التفاصيل السابقة فيقول على العمل "ممل" أو "أعجبني" أو "صعب"، والحقيقة المرة أن من حق القارئ أو المستهلك أن يفعل ذلك بكل أريحية.
السرد/ القصة: يختلف السرد عن القصة، فالقصة هو ذكر ما حدث بغير إضافة بهارات تجعل الحكي لذيذاً، أما السرد فهو القصة مضاف إليها تلك البهارات التي تجعل ما يقال ممتعاً، فالنكتة البذيئة قد يقولها أحدهم فتكون سخيفة منه، ويقولها آخر فتكون ممتعة مضحكة إلى أبعد حد، فالقصة واحدة لكن السرد الثاني كان أفضل بالطبع من السرد الأول.
الملحمة: الملاحم الأدبية تعد بمثابة ديناصورات الأدب، والملحمة الأدبية عادة ما تكون طويلة تعتمد على الإطراء الممتد أو الرثاء على الأبطال، يجب أن يتصف الأبطال في الملحمة بالبسالة والشرف، وقد اختفت الملحمة في عصرنا الحالي، والسبب في ذلك أن العصر الحديث لا يطيق الأعمال الأدبية الطويلة، وكذا أن الجانب الأحادي للشخوص في الأعمال الأدبية من أنهم يتمتعون بالبسالة والشرف .... الخ تجعل الجمهور يشعر بعدم الارتياح، فما يسعدهم أكثر هو أشياء مضادة للبطولة أو أن تحمل الشخصية متناقضات، وتحتاج الملاحم إلى عمق وطني وثقافي لكي يظهر، لذا يصعب على دولة شابة مثل الولايات المتحدة أن يكون لها ملحمة خاصة بها.
ما وراء الرواية: قد تقوم الكثير من الأعمال الأدبية عن قصدٍ ووعي على أعمال أدبية أخرى، فتكملها أو تبين جوانب أخرى فيها لم تكن واضحة أو تقدم رؤية مختلفة، فقد كتبت "أليف شفاق" قواعد العشق الأربعون عن علاقة شمس التبريزي بجلال الدين الرومي، فقام الكثيرون بالكتابة عن جلال الدين الرومي "حارس العشق الآلهي" وغيرها من الأعمال، ومن ذلك أيضاً ما أجراه دونالد بارثليم من تحوير في قصة سنوايت من وصف لشامات جسمها وقد جعلها تسلك سلوكاً منحرفاً مع الأقزام في الحمام بصورة مخزية.
الواقعية: كثير من الكتاب يقومون بوصف أدق التفاصيل في المشاهد الروائية الخاصة بهم وذلك بهدف أن يكون المشهد واقعياً، لكن الكثير من التفاصيل في وصف الأبطال والبيئة المحيطة قد يؤدي إلى الملل، وكما يقول فولتير (فن الملل أو الضجر هو أن تقول كل شئ)، لذا يكون من اللائق سلوك مسلك محايد جهة التفاصيل في المشاهد وذلك بعدم الإكثار منها أو إهمالها، عندما يتعلق الأمر بالتفاصيل فالقليل منها يكفي ويزيد.
النص/الأدب: عندما تمسك رواية أو شعر بين يديك فهل من الصحيح أن تطلق عليه أنه نص أم أنه أدب؟؟؟ في الحقيقة الأسمين صحيحتين، لكن كلمة النص يغلب استخدامها بواسطة النقاد، أما كلمة الأدب فيغلب استخدامها بواسطة الجمهور المتذوق، لذا ينفر الأدباء والكُتاب دائماً من كلمة النص ويحبون أن تصف أعمالهم بأنها أعمال أدبية.
القيد المزدوج: كثير من الحبكات تعتمد على وضع بطل الرواية بين خيارين كلاهُما صعب فيما يسمى بالقيد المزدوج، كأن يبقى مع زوجته التي نضب إحساسه نحوها أو أن يتزوج من حبيبته، وفي بعض الأحيان يتم استخدام القيود المزدوجة في اتجاه واحد لتوضيح صراع نفسي لدى البطل أو لإبراز فكرة معينة، ففي رواية 1984 كان البطل مُلزم بالمهنية بوصفه صحفي في مجلة التايمز، لكنه مجبر على الكذب لصالح الحزب الذي ينتمي إليه، وفي نفس الرواية كان الجلاد يعذب البطل ليقنعه أن 2+2= 5 وفي بعض الأحيان يساوي الناتج 4.
السياسة الجنسية: يقصد بها التمتع ببعض الحرية في عرض المشاعر والمشاهد الجنسية في الروايات أو الأعمال الأدبية، والأمر في بداياته لم ينظر إليه أنه تحرر من الاتجاه المحافظ في المجتمع... لكنه تحرر من النظام الأبوي أو نظام اضطهاد الإناث، فالسياسة الجنسية لم يقصد بها الإشارة إلى اعتبارات بيولوجية ... كأنها كانت تحارب السلطة المتجنية على الإناث.
الفُحش: يختلف الفحش عن الإباحية، فالإباحية قد تتناول مجتمع البغايا وبعض التوصيفات الجنسية المُتفرقة، أما الفحش فهو يمثل جريمة جنائية في كثير من التشريعات وقد يزج بكاتبها إلى السجن، لكن المفاهيم الآن قد تغيرت فما كان يعتبره الأولون فُحشاً لم يعد كذلك الآن، فروايات مثل لوليتا "نابوكوف"ويوليسيس "جيمس جويس" وعاشق السيدة تشاترلي "لورانس" توجد الآن على أرفف الكثير من المكتبات.

[Melora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun. Nice short pieces on a wide variety of literature-related topics. There were quite a few terms -- "reception theory," "textuality," etc. -- which I was unfamiliar with, either because I never learned them or I've forgotten them, and Sutherland explained them nicely. And I particularly enjoyed the book's last sentence, a quotation from Arthur Schopenhauer, in the section on "Literary Inundation," : "Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in." So true!

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 4 out of 5]

About 40 of the ideas are very useful for critical readers. Definitions are clear and accessible, as are cited sources.

[Ramon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Libro que nos da 50 elementos que conocer sobre la literatura.

Un libro de consultas con muchas referencias a situaciones muy dispares y variopintas sobre el mundo de la literatura.

La calidad del libro es algo pobre se me desmontó con la lectura.
Y de estos libros que voy leyendo a ratos puntuales y que pasan a formar parte de la Estantería de acceso rápido de consulta y formación.
El libro se estructura en 6 bloques:
1.- Cuestiones básicas.
2.- Maquinaria: Cómo funciona.
3.- Recursos literarios.
4.- Nuevas ideas.
5.- Crímenes universales.
6.- Futuros literarios.

Algunas notas :

Platón: "la literatura era una mera sombra de la realidad"

La literatura es un arte nos conmueve, una de las razones fundamentales de su existencia

La catarsis considera que la mejor literatura es la que más nos conmueve.

La literatura es la ambigüedad. Es polivalente por naturaleza.

Una primera lectura de un libro nos da un código hermenéutico recopilamos datos, de forma imparcial, sin estar seguros de lo que resultará importante. Una segunda lectura respondemos de forma más situacional, prestaremos más atención al código simbólico.

Clásico es una categoría que define lo que consideramos culturalmente importante; lo que debe preservarse cuando todo lo demás se está resquebrajando. El concepto de clásico aísla tres elementos : imperialismo, civilización y antigüedad.

Un clásico sobrevive al autor, todavía se leen y constituyen el arquetipo por el que juzgar a otras obras del mismo género.
La esencia de un clásico está en su propia flexibilidad. Se acomoda allí donde esté. Lo que define un clásico como una pluralidad infinita es su habilidad para ser a la vez antiguo y, sin embargo, moderno.

La obra literaria no pertenece al autor sino a los lectores.

La intención de una obra es un hecho interpretativo. La intención no se queda fuera del sistema textual y es tan susceptible de análisis como el propio texto. El significado de una obra literaria no es siempre lo que el autor quiere que signifique.

Historia y narrativa. Historia dirige nuestra atención hacia lo que se cuenta, mientras que el término narrativa lleva nuestra atención hacia cómo se cuenta, hacia la técnica y no hacia el tema.

Literatura épica: Es larga, heroica, nacionalista y en su forma más pura, poética.

La traducción se pierde. El aspecto semántico no es lo único que se va a traducir.

Cada año se publican 150.000 libros entre los dos mercados de habla Inglesa. Solo un 10% se considera literatura.

La irrupción de un MacGuffin, un elemento de suspense que cautiva al espectador.

No podemos resolver problemas usando el mismo tipo de pensamiento que usamos cuando los creamos.

La autoría de la literatura es más escurridiza que un pez.

Alegoría. El truco más inteligente de la literatura es decir algo por medio de algo completamente diferente.
La alegoría nos indica que hay palabras que tienen más de un significado. La alegoría extiende ese doble significado a textos enteros. Si deseamos una verdad única, desnuda y sin ornamentos no debemos entrar en la literatura.

La ironía consiste en decir algo para expresar lo contrario. Suele ir acompañada: sarcasmo, sátira, subversión y escepticismo.
La ironía menoscaba el idealismo, el optimismo y la fe.

La literatura miente siempre pero lo hace de forma inteligente.

Henry James : El aire de realidad me parece la virtud suprema de una novela. El mérito del que dependen de modo inevitable y sumiso todos los demás méritos.

Teoría de la recepción. Existe un único contexto para el autor pero existen infinidad de contextos del lector.
Tres áreas sobre la recepción:
1) El medio de comunicación por el cual la literatura llegaba al lector.
2) El lector implícito o textualizado en oposición al lector real.
3) La relación entre el lector individual y el público lector.
Existe el lector ideal a los que el autor aspira de forma optimista.
Tres maneras de responder al mensaje del autor:
1) Someterse a la típica instrucción dominante del autor.
2) Oponerse y luchar contra el texto.
3) Es aplicar una forma de compromiso o pacto de lectura.

McLuhan: El medio es el mensaje. Los medios crean la literatura.

En un año se publican tres veces más libros que los que se publicaron en la década de 1960. Nos encontramos con la paradoja de que nuestra ignorancia (por libros pendientes de leer) crece más rápido que nuestro conocimiento.

John Naisbitt: Nos ahogamos en información pero nos morimos de ser de conocimiento.
Opciones :
1) Encuentre una zona cómoda y acampe allí.
2) ¡Discrimine!
3) El long tail. Cartografiar nuevos océanos.

Arthur Schopenhauer: Sería bueno comprar libros, si se pudiera comprar a la vez el tiempo para leerlos.

[Isabel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book explains essential literary concepts in the simplest way. I bought it around four years ago, when I was still an English lit student, and I still come back to it nowadays, whenever I need any doubts clarified. An essential for any student!

[نورا ناجي · Rating 5 out of 5]

كتاب عظيم

[Atrapando Libros PTY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un libro lleno de buenos conceptos para entender un poco el campo literario. Me gustó los ejemplos usados y la forma de presentar la información.

[Alicia · Rating 3 out of 5]

A handy reference tool.

[Al Bità · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not so much literature ideas as ideas about literature, this is a fascinating and easily engaged 'de-briefing' that saves one from the otherwise odious task of learning about them 'the hard way'. Each of the 50 ideas are encapsulated in four pages (no more), and the author presents them all in an easy-to-read style with, I suspect, a little tongue-in-cheek. They range from the basics (Mimesis; Hermeneutics; etc.) through the ways literature works (Culture, Genre, Paradigm Shift, etc.), its devices (Allegory, Irony, Bricolage, Metafiction, etc.), through New Ideas (Structuralism, Postmodernism, Heteroglossia, Reception Theory, etc.), word crimes (Plagiariasm, Blasphemy, etc.) through to the 'future' (Fanfic, e-books, etc.).

If some of these headings fill you with terror, then this is the book to familiarise yourself relatively easily with the ideas they represent: besides, there is nothing to say you MUST accept them; but at least it will make you aware when others might be using one of these ideas. Remember that an idea is only an idea. If any one of these presented herein this book were to be presented as the ONLY idea about literature, then one is, of course, in trouble, since that would imply the other 49 ideas can be used to demonstrate the Death of Literature... It's not as simple as all that! And this book will help one mount a counterattack... All grist to the mill. Whether one 'really needs to know' these ideas is a moot point, but either way, I must say that I enjoyed reading this book immensely: interesting and stimulating at the same time!

The only white whale in literature that I know of is Moby Dick. The cover of this book includes a rather lovely illustration of a white whale. I have no idea why.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

Why did I pick up this book? Because of too many book club discussions that went like this:

Person A: Did you like the book?
Rest of the Group: Yeah.

End of discussion. Now, please don't get me wrong. The book club I was in did often have some interesting discussions on the books we read, but, especially since I'm no longer active with the group, I've often felt that I don't have a good framework for my own personal reading. My critical reading muscles have gone soft over the last twenty-one years since graduating college.

Unfortunately, this book didn't really meet that purpose. It's really more of a reference, a quick Cliffs' Notes summary of literary criticism concepts. It's an interesting book for what it is, but it's not what I really wanted.

It did help me come to a certain point of acceptance about what purpose my reading serves for me. I am a recreational reader. I love reading, both fiction and nonfiction, but haven't really pushed myself past the "did I like it" kind of response to books lately. And while I do want to stretch myself more, I found myself thinking how dull some of this stuff really was, especially if you try to engage with a text on your own. It's a lonesome exercise. I would love to find a book group that can cover that range of reading experiences (enjoyment, analysis, critical thinking) but that lands more often in a place of intelligent enjoyment. I miss talking about a work with others. But I'm not really interested in returning to a classroom level of discussion again either.

[Bruna Lobato · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sutherland explains literary terms in a very simplistic way that doesn't always strike me as accurate. I imagine this book would be more appropriate for someone who hasn't studied a lot of literature and would like to learn more about literary criticism. If you've taken a high school-level lit class, I would not bother reading it. And I find this book problematic--

The author writes, "In general, [postcolonial writers] use English -- with whatever dialect variation (Hindi words in Rushdie, for example) the largely white readership they have can take on board" (Sutherland 151). As a Latin Americanist, I couldn't help but feel offended by this statement. Postcolonial literature goes way beyond the British Empire, and the chair of judges for the Man-Booker prize should be aware of that, right?

Or maybe not. There are other alarming things that Sutherland seems to miss. For example, he writes in the chapter on structuralism that "Literature is linear -- lines. Lines on a page, in script; or pixelated, left to right, on a screen; or heard over two hours in a theater" (120). Literature is written left to right? Is it really? Isn't there a more inclusive way of phrasing this? The author seems to forget that there's a world outside of the English-speaking countries, and that their literature is (often older and) as worthy as his. It's such a disappointment that Oxford University Press has published this narrow-minded, prejudiced work of criticism. Or, perhaps, this is just one more symptom of a much larger problem.

[Luis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este título de la colección '50 cosas' es un compendio de términos muy útiles al critico literario, así como a los interesados en literatura. Se analizan conceptos como hermenéutica, canon o posmodernismo, a la par que se desglosan corrientes y formas de literatura. Como viene siendo habitual, la tónica de la colección se conserva, durando cada capítulo unas 4 páginas.

Una lástima es que mayoritariamente se analizan obras inglesas y norteamericanas, dejando más desnudas otras literaturas muy importantes (sin embargo, los autores suelen ser anglosajones y cometen este pecado, también reflejado en 50 ideas sobre política). Se nos repiten hasta la saciedad las obras de Dickens y de Byron, textos como Hamlet, Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre está en casi todos los capítulos)... que parecen ser de especial gusto del autor.

Este libro presenta un tono elevado que es de difícil comprensión para el ojo inexperto en varios capítulos, y muchas veces presupone que el lector ya se ha leído todas las obras de las que aquí se hacen referencia, con algún que otro destripe. En mi opinión, una lástima porque creía que el libro se centraría más en una visión histórica o de agrupación de estilos en vez de perderse por tecnicismos que escapan hasta al entender de los bibliotecarios.

Me esperaba más de este libro, pero es cierto que esta colección reúne títulos muy variables y sólo se da uno cuenta de ello cuando los lee uno a uno.

[Aseel · Rating 4 out of 5]

You honestly need to have a lot of background information to be able to fully grasp these ideas. Rarely, however, does a literature major find a book that teaches them something new.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ever wonder what the heck mimesis was? Or why you should ever use "hermeneutics" in a sentence? This is the book for you. I found parts of it to be very useful indeed, and other portions to be extremely ho-hum. I don't think that, really, it lives up to its rather grandiose title. It does at least try to accomplish an over view of important literary concepts. Where it really falls down, imo, is that the organization of the book did not, to me, make logical sense and some of the sections decided to prefer the quip over clarity. But still, but for this book, I wouldn't have a clue as to what mimesis was, or why it mattered.

[Margery Bayne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read enough to know that finishing it is not going to be worth my time. Maybe I shouldn't expect that much from a coffee table book I got from free, bit I thought this might be a good primer/reminder of literature concepts. While the first few entries were honestly helpful, explaining old Greek ideas, the tone and information quality in later entries became... just not good. Like, I don't think the entries would've helped me understand the concepts if I didn't already know what they were. It was written like it was trying to fill pages and it probably was.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reasonable essays on the elements of fiction, although a poor cousin to David Lodge's "The Art of Fiction." Suffers from attrocious book design, which is presumably no fault of Sutherland's, but he is complicit in allowing a million little sidebars and inset quotes to be strewn all over the place in a collection of three-page essays. This has the same effect as would including two parenthetical comments in every paragraph.

[Nisah Haron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I had found this book while writing my thesis last year. This book explains a lot if literary concepts.

[Elizabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, I found this book to be pretentious. Snobbish might be a more accurate word. I pushed myself to finish it in part because I was still holding out hope that it would get better (it kind of did?) and partly because I just wanted to finish a book (reading challenges and all).

I'm really confused about who the target audience of this book is meant to be. I wouldn't recommend it for people new to literary criticism because of the technical language that is never fully explained. Many different literary works are mentioned, which makes sense for a book about literature. But it got to the point where it felt like name-dropping. The works were often not mentioned in enough detail for someone who is not familiar with the work to understand the point being made. Sometimes there were even inside jokes for those who had read the text. I rationalise that most people who have read the required texts in order to understand this book would already be familiar with the ideas it's trying to convey. Such people most likely being English majors. Maybe the book is for the small subset of people who have read the English literature 'canon' but still need an explanation on what canon means.

One of the main reasons I call this book snobbish is how it looks down upon 'genre' fiction. The author even acknowledges how the literary community does this when commenting on the awkwardness of Stephen King (a mere genre writer *gasp*) receiving a prestigious literary award. While this dismissive attitude to genre fiction is recognised, I found the author perpetuated it throughout the book. There was the underlying assumption that only books of 'literary merit' are worth reading and studying. As someone who is a lover of the SFF genre and as someone who loves reading books recreationally, I strongly disagree with this assumption. It's possible to learn something and think critically about all books, even badly written ones.

For me, the most disappointing thing about this book is that I no longer interested in literary criticism. I know more about the topic now than when I started but I don't want to learn anymore.

[Camilo González · Rating 2 out of 5]

Realizaría un cambio en el título: 50 cosas que debes saber sobre la literatura anglosajona. Sé que el señor Sutherland es un hombre dedicado a la literatura inglesa, pero bien pudo ampliar su visión literaria en este libro que promete ser ambicioso y abarcador. Por lo demás, el libro me parece un buen 'repaso' por varias de las cuestiones esenciales sobre el estudio de la literatura: no es un libro lleno de datos curiosos literarios ni trivias sobre autores, fechas y conocimientos generales. Destaco su manejo de fuentes: cada nuevo ítem, cada una de esas 'cosas que hay que saber sobre literatura', viene acompañada de los títulos fundacionales, de las fuentes primarias y de los nombres de los autores que hay que visitar para ampliar esas cuestiones. Aquí algunos de los nombres que recordé: Saussure, Paul de Man, Levi-Strauss, Said, a mis amigos formalistas rusos, Auerbach, Bajtín, etc. Para terminar, preocupante la estrecha visión del autor, y sépase que es un libro del 2010, sobre literatura latinoamericana, africana, asiática, escrita por mujeres, entre otras. En el libro nos reímos de T.S. Eliot y su canon blanco, católico y heteronormado; pero el libro en sí es una ratificación y perpetuación del mismo canon blanco, anglosajón y heterosexual.

[Ivonne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Muchos libros intentan explicar conceptos relacionados con la literatura y la crítica literaria y fallan en el intento: o son mamotretos que no se pueden leer o simplemente se dedican a uno o dos de esos conceptos, dejando al lector corto y falto de conocimiento en otras áreas. Afortunadamente, este libro no es así.
Concebido a manera de diccionario, en este ibro todo amante de la literatura, estudiante o crítico podrá encontrar y comprender de manera didáctica y sin mucho lenguaje rimbombante muchos conceptos que otros se han encargado de hacer ininteligibles: Hermeneutica, Cultura, Canon, Fanfic, Semiología, entre otros, reciben una explicación corta pero loable con una línea de tiempo que ayuda a entender de dónde viene todo eso.
¿Suficiente para una tesis? No, mucho menos para llamarse crítico literario, pero es un buen primer paso para entender a lo que se enfrenta el lector que quiere dejar de ser simplemente eso.

[HereticQueen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good summary of some of the main literary ideas - nothing more, nothing less. I see this book as an entrance into more serious reading about the theory of literature (“for dummies” kinda content).

Each idea is pretty condensed, hence, you should look at this text mainly as guidelines for further research. Many of the ideas can be understood (only at their basic level of course) without the additional sources, but some will require a few google searches just in order to understand the substance of the topic.

One small detail I didn’t like was the fact that some writers / poets were referenced in almost each and every article / idea. Without the intention of diminishing the significance of such authors, I just wanted to express the opinion that such practice can lead to an impression of lazy research, lazy writing. There sure must by many other references, otherwise these ideas wouldn’t be that relevant for the literary world.

[Chris Seltzer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book doesn't know what it wants to be. It has an implicit focus on literary theory but with other topics like fanfic and the e-book just sort of jammed on at the end (I'm assuming when the author ran out of ideas and needed to 'round up' to 50 ideas).

Famous authors and their works aren't covered, in spite of what the books description and cover say. Literary periods and movements are left out.

While there is mention of 'lyric/prosody' and 'epic' poetry and drama are largely ignored in spite of being important and distinctive genres.

Children's literature is also not touched on though it's an important part of the literary world. Likewise this book is heavily focused on the English-speaking world when world literature contains its own important concepts. Also society and the impact of literature isn't particularly discussed.

Finally this book does nothing to cover basic storytelling or anything an author would care about.

[Leah Markum · Rating 1 out of 5]

I bypassed taking literature courses in college, so I thought this book would bump up my analytical ability for my independent classic literature challenge. Instead, I gave up after a few entries. The entries reminded me of why I hated literature in my secondary schooling--it's classical high-brow writing. I'm not impressed by the author's attempt to sound like an elite literature intellectual. A primer defining technical words shouldn't be vague. It shouldn't have a convoluted sentence structure, rarely used vocabulary, and opinion. I'm sure I can look up online to get concise explanations. After 36 pages I realized the book was too watered down to learn anything, and I stopped.

I have one bonus point: I can use the entry terms to systematically Google the "literature ideas [I] really need to know" for analytical fun.