Communities of Cultural Value

Philip Goldstein is Professor of English at the University of Delaware. He is the editor of Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies (2000), and Styles of Cultural Activism: From Theory and Pedagogy to Women, Indians and Communism (1993). He is author of The Politics of Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Marxist Cultural Theory (1990).

• Chapter 1 Introduction: Reception Study in a Multicultural EraChapter 2 Cultural Value and Poststructionalist Theory: The Case for a Leftwing Reception StudyChapter 3 Marxism and/as Humanism: The Reception of HamletChapter 4 Feminism and Poststructionalist Criticism: The Reception of Pride and PrejudiceChapter 5 Conformity and Resistance in High Art: From Thomas Hardy to Toni MorrisonChapter 6 Gender, Spies, and Art: Ian Fleming, John Le Carré, Mickey Spillane, and Sara ParetskyChapter 7 Orwell as a (Neo)conservative: The Reception of 1984Chapter 8 Critical Realism or Black Modernism? The Reception of Their Eyes Were Watching God

Reception Theory's understanding of textual meaning as the social and historical life of texts gives it a metacritical status in relation to other interpretive discourses, which are themselves a part of that life. Philip Goldstein's Communities of Cultural Value makes an important move in putting reception theory back on the agenda of literary and cultural studies.