Modern Literary Theory - A Reader - Fourth Edition

The book contains sections on:
• Formalism and Structuralism
• Marxism
• Feminism
• Gender and Subjectivity
• Histories and Textuality
• Postmodernism
• Postcolonialism
For the first time, the reader also includes extracts from seminal texts by authors such as Marx. Freud, and de Beauvoir - texts which do not necessarily focus on literature but which have had a fundamental influence on the development of literary theory. In addition, the text now includes a section on issues and debates. Focusing not on authors or approaches but rather on leading questions in critical debate, the extracts in this section present opposing points of view on central problems in contemporary critical controversy:
• Is literary criticism an ethical act? Martha Nussbaum vs Emmanuel Levinas
• Is the canon a timeless assembly of great works? Terry Eagleton vs Harold Bloom
• Is literature what the academy says it is? Edward Said vs Stanley Fish
• Is literary criticism an art or a science? Richard Rorty vs Donna Haraway