Engagements With Contemporary Literary and Critical Theory

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

List of contents

Introduction
Structure of the book and some caveats
References

1. 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


2. 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 Brontё’s Wuthering Heights
Engaging with contemporary literature: Hari Kunzru’s White Tears
Engaging with film and new media: Easy
References


3. Subjectivities and embodiments
The birth of the subject
Slavoj Žižek: 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


4. 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


5. 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

Product details

• Authors: Evan Gottlieb
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd.
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.10.2019
• EAN: 9781138853263
• ISBN: 978-1-138-85326-3
• No. of pages: 200
• Series: Routledge Engagements with Literature
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; LITERARY CRITICISM / Semiotics & Theory, LITERARY CRITICISM / Reference, 21st Century, 21st century, c 2000 to c 2100, Literary theory, Literary reference works