Preface to the Second Edition Introduction/Thomas McLaughlin I: Literature as Writing 1: Representation/W. J. T. Mitchell 2: Structure/John Carlos Rowe 3: Writing/Barbara Johnson 4: Discourse/Paul A. Bove 5: Narrative/J. Hillis Miller 6: Figurative Language/Thomas McLaughlin 7: Performance/Henry Sayre 8: Author/Donald E. Pease II: Interpretation 9: Interpretation/Steven Mailloux 10: Intention/Annabel Patterson 11: Unconscious/Francoise Meltzer 12: Determinacy/Indeterminacy/Gerald Graff 13: Value/Evaluation/Barbara Herrnstein Smith 14: Influence/Louis A. Renza 15: Rhetoric/Stanley Fish III: Literature, Culture, Politics 16: Culture/Stephen Greenblatt 17: Canon/John Guillory 18: Literary History/Lee Patterson 19: Gender/Myra Jehlen 20: Race/Kwame Anthony Appiah 21: Ethnicity/Werner Sollors 22: Ideology/James H. Kavanagh 23: Popular Culture/John Fiske 24: Diversity/Louis Menand 25: Imperialism/Nationalism/Seamus Deane 26: Desire/Judith Butler 27: Ethics/Geoffrey Galt Harpham 28: Class/Daniel T. O'Hara In Place of an Afterword--Someone Reading/Frank Lentricchia References List of Contributors Index
Frank Lentricchia is the Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of Literature and Theater Studies in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University. He is the author or editor of ten critical works, most recently Modernist Quartet, several novels, and a memoir.
Neither a dictionary of critical terms nor a handbook for literary studies, this original work contains ``substantial investigations'' of 22 significant words used in modern literary criticism, words that ``are used widely, often loosely, and with little agreement on their meaning.'' Each chapter explains a term's history and its contemporary social and political connotations. The emphasis is on `` doing criticism,'' on putting theory into practice. Thus, many essays focus on the amplification of a term to a particular literary work, well exemplified in Myra Jehlen's thoughtful discussion of Huckleberry Finn in the chapter on the term gender. The essays are thorough, succinct, balanced, and illuminating (John Guillory on canon is a model of these qualities). The issues raised by the terms are often applied to nonliterary subjects, ranging from the Constitution to McDonald's hamburgers. Recommended.-- Jeffrey R. Luttrell, Youngstown State Univ., Ohio
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