Are there any good books that give a good overview of literary theory and its constituent movements (e.g. marxist...

Hello, Reddit

you can't interpret a novel until you know the plot. likewise you can't interpret theory until you have a handle on the basic argument. in most of the important theory in the 20th century you won't be able to get that on a first read-through, and it's very likely that you'll end up misreading something in the first 20 pages that will fuck over your idea of the argument as it appears by the 200th page or whatever. lecture is meant as a corrective to these problems. these are people whose whole career is devoted to understand how these texts work, and why students have trouble with them. now, granted, a report of the argument is in some respect an interpretation. but i promise you theory is rich enough that such a crutch won't impact your ability to dig in and tear it apart anyway, if you are so inclined, which is what people who read theory usually are anyway. I've read probably 30 articles and a handful of books on one book in particular that has captivated me and there is still ample room for alternative readings.

Marxism and Form by fredric jameson is pretty great, but it just focuses on western marxism.

another jamesonfag? what was your favorite chapter of M&F?

Its been years since I read it, sorry user. I just remember overall finding it very impressive. And I do like Jameson, but I switched to just studying philosophy later in undergrad and am getting my PhD in it now so haven't read him much in years, although I do respect him a good deal.

quite depressing that "literary theory" just means critical theory

only if you want it to be that way

not true, there's lots of exciting theory (mostly older, and the authors at the time probably would have just called it "criticism") that is not overtly political. check out Empson's 7 Types of Ambiguity. it's a masterpiece of later new criticism, at its most theoretical.

ah, oh well. good for you. what's your focus?

I'm writing my dissertation on Kant. My focus is kant and early modern, plus history and philosophy of logic. But I like pretty much all philosophy...

>marxist
>lit theory movement

This is going to be a fun thread.

This seems the right thread to ask: what are some good books/essays that go directly against 'deconstruction' (in the Derrida sense) in literary theory?

Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious. but it probably won't be in a direction you like very much: his basic thesis is that Marxist readings is the final horizon of interpretation, meaning that no "reading" of the text is truly complete until it has situated it politically, socially, and historically in the development of modes of production. in order to do so, he argues obliquely against the primacy claimed by deconstruction, retaining it as a device for reading texts, but ultimately subordinating its conclusions (the fragmentation of the text, its repressions, its "unwritten," the binaries it replicates, etc) to the marxist concerns outlined above. deconstruction is such that it can't really be argued against in the sense you mean, except, of course, by a more agile deconstruction.

Are you suggesting that literary theory hasn't been profoundly influenced by marxism? that some of the most significant marxist theorists and philosophers didn't devote their attention to the analysis of literature?

you might also like more "traditional" lit theory like Auerbach's Mimesis and Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. Kenneth Burke, Permanence and Change, and The Philosophy of Literary Form might appeal to you as well. but be warned that they are all eminently "deconstructible" texts. deconstruction is not so much a "philosophy" or w/e as it is a method, and like any other method you are free to "take it or leave it." the best way to counter it is by showing the insufficiency of particular readings on their own terms, and abstracting a general theory from this. but deconstruction is a bit like sulfuric acid: once it's in a structure, the whole thing is practically dissolved.

good suggestions user.

Thanks! I'll check them out.

its constituent movements aren't worth the paper.
Anything and everything outside of formalism is ideological pandering

formalism can be extremely ideological too, see eagleton's the ideology of the aesthetic

I'd suggest Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide because it uses The Great Gatsby as it analyzes the text through the lens of each theory and it's explained clearly and for noobs. Theories include: psychoanalysis, Marxism, feminism, New Criticism, reader-response, structuralism and semiotics, deconstruction, queer theory, postcolonial, and more. It has a lot of praise from professors and is published by Routledge (they're known for some quality books).

>My diary desu.

But in all seriousness critical theory is a Jewish plot ment to destabilize the west and erode Christian values

formalism is the ground zero of ideological reproduction, what crack are you smoking?

that sound pretty cool actually

>philosophy of logic.
What's your favourite logic.