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Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction to the key thinkers and theories integral to the study of literature. Organized thematically, the book provides historical introductions and uses a variety of relevant contemporary examples to illuminate the field.
Evan Gottlieb contextualizes the latest developments with regard to forms; discourses; subjectivities and embodiments; media, networks, and machines; and animals, affects, objects, and environments. Each chapter elucidates its concepts through in-depth discussions of major contemporary theorists, including Giorgio Agamben, Sara Ahmed, and Catherine Malabou, and uses engaging examples from a canonical novel, a contemporary text, and a new-media artifact to demonstrate theoretical applications. Additional text boxes regularly introduce emerging or overlooked theorists of interest, including Fred Moten and Sianne Ngai.
An ideal guide for students of literary and critical theory, this book will give readers the background they need to continue their own explorations of this vibrant field of study.
List of contents
Introduction
Structure of the book and some caveats
References
- Forms
Matters of form in the twentieth century
Terry Eagleton: the Marxist critic as public intellectual
Fredric Jameson: committing to form and history
Franco Moretti: maps, graphs, and distant reading
Engaging with classic literature: Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
Engaging with contemporary literature: Ian McEwan's Atonement
Engaging with film and new media: Austen on the big screen
References
- Discourses
Matters of discourse in modernity
Jean Baudrillard: prophet of the postmodern
Giorgio Agamben: a genealogy of biopolitics
Rey Chow: entangling ethnicity, visuality, and language
Engaging with classic literature: Emily Bront 's Wuthering Heights
Engaging with contemporary literature: Hari Kunzru's White Tears
Engaging with film and new media: Easy
References
- Subjectivities and embodiments
The birth of the subject
Slavoj Zizek: theorizing with psychoanalysis and Marxism
Judith Butler: beyond gender performativity
Catherine Malabou: philosophy, plasticity, neuroscience
Engaging with classic literature: Daniel Defoe's The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Engaging with contemporary literature: Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch
Engaging with film and new media: The Fall
References
- Media, networks, machines
Toward our contemporary media moment
Jacques Rancière: aesthetics for everyone
Bruno Latour: from networks to modes of existence and beyond
N. Katherine Hayles: defining the posthuman
Engaging with classic literature: Bram Stoker's Dracula
Engaging with contemporary literature: Gwyneth Jones's Proof of Concept
Engaging with film and new media: Ryan Coogler's Black Panther
References
- Animals, affects, objects, environments
We have never been human
Donna Haraway: cyborgs, companion species, Chthulucene
Sara Ahmed: affects, objects, and feminist killjoys
Timothy Morton: being ecological with object-oriented ontology
Engaging with classic literature: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Engaging with contemporary literature: Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation
Engaging with film and new media: Margaret Atwood's Angel Catbird
References
About the author
Evan Gottlieb is Professor of English at Oregon State University, USA.
Summary
Engagements with Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory is a wide-ranging but accessible introduction that illuminates the field of theory through a variety of useful and relevant examples. Covering all key theories and theorists, this book looks at the relation of theory to form, discourses, subjectivity, and media
