San Antonio College Library

As the study of literature has extended to cultural contexts, critics have developed a language all their own. Yet, argues Mark Bauerlein, scholars of literature today are so unskilled in pertinent sociohistorical methods that they compensate by adopting cliches and catchphrases that serve as substitutes for information and logic. Thus by labeling a set of ideas an "ideology" they avoid specifying those ideas, or by saying that someone "essentializes"...

In a book that is as humorous as it is learned, author Sutherland tells you how to read fiction better than you do now. He reminds readers how the delicate charms of fiction can be at once wonderful and inspired and infuriating. On one level this is about novels: how they work, what they're about, what makes them good or bad, and how to talk about them. At a deeper level, this book describes what happens when a reader meets a novel. Will a great love...

Discusses the meaning of transvestism, among other things.

At a time when theory seems to dominate academic thought, how can "close reading" justify itself as a cogent and sophisticated interpretive strategy? In Reading in an Age of Theory, twelve distinguished scholars discuss the relationship of theory to reading, an important topic for both teachers and students of literature. Focusing on the work of Richard Poirier, one of the most influential proponents of close reading in this country, they explore...

Radically revised and expanded from its original format, this second edition covers new material on Black feminisms, and the impact of post-modernism on feminism. It is the perfect introduction to feminist literary theory today.

Not too long ago, literary theorists were writing about the death of the novel and the death of the author; today many are talking about the death of Theory. Theory, as the many theoretical ism's (among them postcolonialism, postmodernism, and New Historicism) are now known, once seemed so exciting but has become ossified and insular. This iconoclastic collection is an excellent companion to current anthologies of literary theory, which have embraced...