The Literary Theory Handbook

The Literary Theory Handbook provides the ideal starting point to the subject for students, offering clarity on the history, scope and application of literary theory, and providing four distinct entryways into this vast and varied discourse.  Raising key questions about the nature of theory and literature, individual chapters offer historical, thematic, biographical, practical perspectives on theoretical concepts, ideas and modes of practice. A chapter on the historical development of theoretical movements, trends and ideas makes connections between and among theories across a century of development. Separate entries on major theories bring together similar methods or objects of study, such as Form, Structure, and Narrative, and short biographical sketches provide a handy reference for key theorists and their major works. The final section of the Handbook features brief readings of literary texts—including works by Shakespeare, Conrad, Faulkner, Beckett, and Rushdie—each informed by multiple perspectives that exemplify theoretical practice.

Acknowledgments x Alphabetical Listing of Key Movements and Theories xii Introduction 1 The Nature of Literary Theory 2 What is Literature? 4 The Practice of Theory 8 How To Use the Handbook 9 1 The Rise of Literary Theory 11 Early Developments in Literary Theory 12 Modernism and Formalism, 1890s–1940s 18 Cultural and Critical Theory, 1930s–1960s 24 The Poststructuralist Turn, 1960s–1970s 27 Culture, Gender, and History, 1980s–1990s 33 Postmodernism and Post–Marxism, 1980s–2000s 39 Posthumanism: Theory at the Fin de Siècle 44 Conclusion 47 2 The Scope of Literary Theory 51 1 Form/Structure/Narrative/Genre 52 Formalism and Structuralism 52 New Criticism 59 Chicago School Neo–Aristotelian Theory 63 Narrative Theory/Narratology 68 Theory of the Novel 75 2 Ideology/Philosophy/History/Aesthetics 84 Marxist Theory 84 Critical Theory 91 Post–Marxist Theory 101 New Historicism/Cultural Poetics 119 Postmodernism 125 3 Language/Systems/Texts/Readers 142 Phenomenology and Hermeneutics 142 Reader–Response Theory 153 Deconstruction 160 Poststructuralism 167 4 Mind/Body/Gender/Identity 178 Psychoanalysis 178 Feminist Theory 190 Gender Studies 198 Gay and Lesbian Studies 204 Trauma Studies 209 5 Culture/Ethnicities/Nations/Locations 218 Cultural Studies 218 African American Studies 225 Ethnic and Indigenous Studies 231 Chicano/a Studies 232 Native and Indigenous Studies 235 Asian American Studies 237 Postcolonial Studies 242 Transnationalism 254 6 People/Places/Bodies/Things 266 Posthumanism 266 Evolutionary Literary Theory 278 Object–Oriented Ontologies 283 Disability Studies 290 Ecocriticism 298 3 Key Figures in Literary Theory 313 Theodor Adorno (1903–69) 313 Giorgio Agamben (1942– ) 314 Louis Althusser (1918–90) 315 Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (1895–1975) 316 Roland Barthes (1915–80) 317 Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) 318 Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) 319 Homi Bhabha (1949– ) 320 Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) 321 Lawrence Buell (1939– ) 322 Judith Butler (1956– ) 323 Hélène Cixous (1937– ) 324 Lennard Davis (1949– ) 324 Teresa de Lauretis (1939– ) 325 Gilles Deleuze (1925–95) and Félix Guattari (1930–92) 326 Paul de Man (1919–83) 327 Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) 328 Terry Eagleton (1943– ) 330 Frantz Fanon (1925–61) 330 Stanley Fish (1938– ) 331 Michel Foucault (1926–84) 332 Henry Louis Gates (1950– ) 333 Sandra Gilbert (1936– ) and Susan Gubar (1944– ) 334 Stephen Greenblatt (1943– ) 335 Elizabeth Grosz (1952– ) 336 Stuart Hall (1932– ) 337 Donna Haraway (1944– ) 338 N. Katherine Hayles (1943– ) 339 bell hooks (1952– ) 340 Luce Irigaray (1930– ) 341 Wolfgang Iser (1926–2007) 342 Fredric Jameson (1934– ) 343 Julia Kristeva (1941– ) 344 Jacques Lacan (1901–81) 345 Bruno Latour (1947– ) 346 Jean–François Lyotard (1924–98) 348 J. Hillis Miller (1928– ) 349 Antonio Negri (1933– ) 350 Jacques Rancière (1940– ) 351 Edward Said (1935–2003) 352 Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1950–2009) 353 Elaine Showalter (1941– ) 354 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1942– ) 355 Raymond Williams (1921–88) 356 Cary Wolfe (1959– ) 358 Slavoj i ek (1949– ) 358 4 Reading with Literary Theory 361 William Shakespeare, The Tempest 362 John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” 364 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre; Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea 366 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart 370 Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 374 Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God 376 Samuel Beckett, Endgame 378 Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children 380 Recommendations for Further Reading 383 Glossary 392 Index 412

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.