Reading After Theory

Valentine Cunningham′s controversial manifesto asks what will and should happen to reading in the post–theory era. His account examines the spread of literary theory from the 1960s, when it was considered highly contentious, to the present time, when theoretical approaches are taken for granted across a range of disciplines. Whilst acknowledging the necessity of theory for reading and recognising the good it has done, he strongly criticises it for encouraging bad reading, and for diminishing the richness, scope and human connection of texts. Cunningham argues that theory has made texts secondary to questions of ideology, oppressions and resistance (important though they are) and proposes that what is needed in order to rescue literary studies is a return to close and "tactful" reading. His manifesto insists on the primacy of texts over all theorising about them, and on the restoration of the human to literary studies.

1. What Then? What Now?. 2. Reading Always Comes After. 3. Theory, What Theory?. 4. The Good of Theory. 5. Fragments . Ruins. 6. All What Jazz? Or, The Incredible Disappearing Text. 7. Textual Abuse: Or, Down with Stock Responses. 8. Theory Stinks. 9. Touching Rading. 10. When I Can Read My Title Clear. Notes. Index.

Valentine Cunningham is Professor of English Language and Literature at Oxford University and Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He is also Permanent Visiting Professor at the University of Konstanz in Germany. His previous publications include British Writers of the Thirties (1988), Everywhere Spoken Against: Dissent in the Victorian Novel (1975) and In the Reading Gaol: Postmodernity, Texts and History (Blackwell, 1993). He is the editor of The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Blackwell, 2000).

"This publisher′s ′Manifestos′ series seeks to offer educated but general readers chewy presentations of contemporary ideas, and Cunningham (English language and literature, Oxford) is stellar in his honing to that theme. This book is fun, involving, and inviting as both a social book–discussion subject and an important text that graduate students and literary specialists need to consider. Library Journal <!––end––> "Valentine Cunningham′s sharp, amusing critical polemic" Times Literary Supplement "In the process of developing his argument and attempting to refocus critical attention on the text – both the literary and the critical text – and what it says, Cunningham displays an intimate knowledge of the major works of contemporary literary theory." Choice