Literary Theory Handbook

Gregory Castle is a professor of British and Irish literature at Arizona State University. He is author of Modernism and the Celtic Revival (2001), Reading the Modernist Bildungsroman (2006), and The Blackwell Guide to Literary Theory (2007) and has  edited Postcolonial Discourses (2000) and the Encyclopedia of Literary and Cultural Theory, vol. 1 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011). He has also published numerous essays on Joyce, Yeats, Wilde, and other Irish writers.

• Acknowledgments xAlphabetical Listing of Key Movements and Theories xiiIntroduction 1The Nature of Literary Theory 2What is Literature? 4The Practice of Theory 8How To Use the Handbook 91 The Rise of Literary Theory 11Early Developments in Literary Theory 12Modernism and Formalism, 1890s–1940s 18Cultural and Critical Theory, 1930s–1960s 24The Poststructuralist Turn, 1960s–1970s 27Culture, Gender, and History, 1980s–1990s 33Postmodernism and Post-Marxism, 1980s–2000s 39Posthumanism: Theory at the Fin de Siècle 44Conclusion 472 The Scope of Literary Theory 511 Form/Structure/Narrative/Genre 52Formalism and Structuralism 52New Criticism 59Chicago School Neo-Aristotelian Theory 63Narrative Theory/Narratology 68Theory of the Novel 752 Ideology/Philosophy/History/Aesthetics 84Marxist Theory 84Critical Theory 91Post-Marxist Theory 101New Historicism/Cultural Poetics 119Postmodernism 1253 Language/Systems/Texts/Readers 142Phenomenology and Hermeneutics 142Reader-Response Theory 153Deconstruction 160Poststructuralism 1674 Mind/Body/Gender/Identity 178Psychoanalysis 178Feminist Theory 190Gender Studies 198Gay and Lesbian Studies 204Trauma Studies 2095 Culture/Ethnicities/Nations/Locations 218Cultural Studies 218African American Studies 225Ethnic and Indigenous Studies 231Chicano/a Studies 232Native and Indigenous Studies 235Asian American Studies 237Postcolonial Studies 242Transnationalism 2546 People/Places/Bodies/Things 266Posthumanism 266Evolutionary Literary Theory 278Object-Oriented Ontologies 283Disability Studies 290Ecocriticism 2983 Key Figures in Literary Theory 313Theodor Adorno (1903–69) 313Giorgio Agamben (1942– ) 314Louis Althusser (1918–90) 315Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) 316Roland Barthes (1915–80) 317Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) 318Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) 319Homi Bhabha (1949– ) 320Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) 321Lawrence Buell (1939– ) 322Judith Butler (1956– ) 323Hélène Cixous (1937– ) 324Lennard Davis (1949– ) 324Teresa de Lauretis (1939– ) 325Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) and Félix Guattari (1930–92) 326Paul de Man (1919–83) 327Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) 328Terry Eagleton (1943– ) 330Frantz Fanon (1925–61) 330Stanley Fish (1938– ) 331Michel Foucault (1926–84) 332Henry Louis Gates (1950– ) 333Sandra Gilbert (1936– ) and Susan Gubar (1944– ) 334Stephen Greenblatt (1943– ) 335Elizabeth Grosz (1952– ) 336Stuart Hall (1932– ) 337Donna Haraway (1944– ) 338N. Katherine Hayles (1943– ) 339bell hooks (1952– ) 340Luce Irigaray (1930– ) 341Wolfgang Iser (1926–2007) 342Fredric Jameson (1934– ) 343Julia Kristeva (1941– ) 344Jacques Lacan (1901–81) 345Bruno Latour (1947– ) 346Jean-François Lyotard (1924–98) 348J. Hillis Miller (1928– ) 349Antonio Negri (1933– ) 350Jacques Rancière (1940– ) 351Edward Said (1935–2003) 352Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) 353Elaine Showalter (1941– ) 354Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1942– ) 355Raymond Williams (1921–88) 356Cary Wolfe (1959– ) 358Slavoj ?i?ek (1949– ) 3584 Reading with Literary Theory 361William Shakespeare, The Tempest 362John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 364Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea 366Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 370Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 374Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 376Samuel Beckett, Endgame 378Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children 380Recommendations for Further Reading 383Glossary 392Index 412