Date: Tue, 24 Oct 2000 18:57:48 -0400 (EDT)
From: David Langston <dlangsto-AT-mcla.mass.edu>
Subject: PLC: RE: critical theory




On Tue, 24 Oct 2000, Michael Harrawood wrote:

> I wonder if anybody has a favorite they would like to recommend.

Have you taken a look at Hazard Adams's _Critical Theory Since Plato_?  It
has good distribution of readings, and the students need only buy one book
for one term.

As for favorites:
Kenneth Burke is usually on every syllabus I teach in critical theory,
particularly some of the salient essays in _Language as Symbolic Action_.

Howard has said accurately that too few Marxists figure in American
critical theory, and among them, I think Raymond Williams is
indispensable...something from _Keywords_, the chapter on "base and
superstructure" from _Marxism and Literature_, or maybe a chapter from
_The Country and the City_. 

Edward Said:  something from _The Text, the world, and the critic_.  He
has other texts which are more focused on individual exposition; depending
on the kind of course you are teaching, particularly to introductory
students, his study, _The Question of Palestine_ or _Covering Islam_ might
fill the bill.

Donna Haraway:  "Cyborgs"

Walter Benjamin:  "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction."
--central  C20 text.

Gaston Bachelard:  a chapter out of _The Poetics of Space_ (I think the
Adams anthology includes one).

R. P. Blackmur:  "The Enabling Act of Criticism."

Elaine Showalter:  selection from _A Literature of their Own_ or
    or
Elizabeth Hardwick:  selection from _Seduction and Betrayal_

Eliseo Vivas:  "The Objective Correlative of T.S. Eliot" (one might link
this essay to Eliot's "Hamlet and His Problems")

...there are dozens of other good ones, but this is my Halloween list
<smile>.

Unsolicited advice:  mix together essays in critical theory with essays in
practical criticism where the students can see the critical principles at
work in the act of constructing a reading. 

Good luck.

David Langston




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