Literary Theories in Praxis

by Staton, Shirley F.

• ISBN13: 9780812212341
• ISBN10: 0812212347
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1987-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Pennsylvania Pr

Summary

Literary Theories in Praxisanalyzes the ways in which critical theories are transformed into literary criticism and methodology. To demonstrate the application of this analysis, critical writings of Roland Barthes, Harold Bloom, Cleanth Brooks, Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Norman Holland, Barbara Johnson, Jacques Lacan, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Scholes are examined in terms of the primary critical stance each author employs--New Critical, phenomenological, archetypal, structuralist/semiotic, sociological, psychoanalytic, reader-response, deconstructionist, or humanist. The book is divided into nine sections, each with a prefatory essay explaining the critical stance taken in the selections that follow and describing how theory becomes literary criticism. In a headnote to each selection, Staton analyzes how the critic applies his or her critical methodology to the subject literary work. Shirley F. Staton's introduction sketches the overall philosophical positions and relationships among the various critical modes.

Table of Contents

Introduction Pre-Text, Con-Text, and Sub-Text	p. 1
New Criticism	p. 12
Ecstasy: Dickinson's "My Life Had Stood -- a Loaded Gun -- "	p. 14
Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"	p. 18
The Rhyme Structure of the Byzantium Poems	p. 22
Interpretation "The Birthmark"	p. 33
Hawthorne's "The Birthmark": Science as Religion	p. 36
The Shadow's Shadow: the Motif of the Double in Edgar Allan Poe's "The Purloined Letter"	p. 43
Interpretation "A Rose for Emily"	p. 54
Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation"	p. 58
Phenomenological Criticism	p. 62
Poe's Detective Tales	p. 64
A Woman -- White: Emily Dickinson's Yarn of Pearl	p. 70
Hawthorne, Heidegger, and the Holy: the Uses of Literature	p. 75
The Parables of Flannery O'Connor	p. 90
Archetypal and Genre Criticism	p. 97
Emily Dickinson and the Deerslayer	p. 99
The Archetypes of Literature Northrop Frye	p. 111
Flannery O'Connor and the Catholic Grotesque	p. 124
Structuralist-Semiotic Criticism	p. 133
Sign, Structure, and Self-Reference in W. B. Yeats's "Sailing to Byzantium"	p. 135
William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"	p. 155
What Novels Can Do That Films Can't (and Vice Versa)	p. 160
Decoding Papa: "A Very Short Story" as Work and Text	p. 171
Striptease	p. 180
Subculture the Meaning of Style	p. 183
Sociological Criticism: Historical, Marxist, Feminist	p. 196
The Text, the Poem, and the Problem of Historical Method	p. 203
Theatre for Pleasure or Theatre for Instruction	p. 216
Power and Law in Hawthorne's Fictions Eric Mottram	p. 222
Ideology and Literary Form: W. B. Yeats	p. 233
The Cinema After Babel: Language, Difference, Power	p. 235
Vesuvius at Home: the Power of Emily Dickinson	p. 248
Women Beware Science: "The Birthmark"	p. 261
A Rose for "A Rose for Emily"	p. 270
Psychoanalytic Criticism	p. 279
"The Purloined Letter"	p. 281
Fiction and the Unconscious: "The Birthmark"	p. 284
Fantasy and Defense in Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"	p. 295
A Psychoanalytic Study: "Sailing to Byzantium"	p. 308
Yeats and "Sailing to Byzantium"	p. 313
Seminar on "The Purloined Letter"	p. 321
Reader-Response Criticism	p. 351
Norman N. Holland and "A Rose for Emily" -- Some Questions Concerning Psychoanalytic Criticism	p. 353
How Readers Make Meaning	p. 357
Styles of Reading	p. 367
The Text and the Structure of Its Audience	p. 380
Deconstructionist Criticism	p. 388
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences	p. 391
The Frame of Reference: Poe, Lacan, Derrida	p. 410
Humanist Criticism	p. 425
The Practice of Theory	p. 426
Selected Bibliography	p. 441
Contributors	p. 453
Index	p. 461
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