Literary Criticism in the 21st Century: Theory Renaissance 1st Edition by Vincent B. Leitch (PDF)

Description

For more than a decade literary criticism has been thought to be in a post-theory age. Despite this, the work of thinkers such as Derrida, Deleuze and Foucault and new writers such as Agamben and Ranciere continue to be central to literary studies. Literary Criticism in the 21st Century explores the explosion of new theoretical approaches that has seen a renaissance in theory and its importance in the institutional settings of the humanities today.Literary Criticism in the 21st Century covers such issues as: The institutional history of theory in the academy The case against theory, from the 1970s to today Critical reading, theory and the wider world Keystone works in contemporary theory New directions and theory’s many futuresWritten with an engagingly personal and accessible approach that brings theory vividly to life, this is a passionate defence of theory and its continuing relevance in the 21st century.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Spot on. Thanks for the quick delivery.

⭐In the first chapter, Leitch tells us the events in his life which influenced his approach to literary theory. Basically, he had economic troubles, and his kids have big college debts, and–he decided he needed to help reform the American distribution of wealth. Using literary theory.Why would it be any less valid for a physicist to come to work and say, “Unemployment is a big problem in America. We’ve got to make our physics research more unemployment-aware!”?Page after page, Leitch makes clearer his position on “theory”: He is opposed to reason, rationality, empirical evidence, and debate. He’s opposed to drawing distinctions, or just generally thinking rigorously. He believes his job as a literary theorist is to skim what others have said, respond to it emotionally, and say what he feels in his heart rather than use “reason” or “logic”. He responds to the New Critics by lying about what they said, then saying that it’s unreasonable of them to complain about being misrepresented, since progression in theory comes by revolting against your predecessors, not by understanding them. He wants to use the money set aside by universities for studying literature to critique society instead, and to force students who signed on to study literature into social activism instead. He never shows any awareness of why this needs explanation. He doesn’t comprehend the idea that a society has multiple parts, that even if it needs police, it still needs cooks, and similarly, even if it needs social activists, it still needs literary theorists who actually study literature rather than use it for social activism.His discussion is unabashedly one-sided. He presents himself as a defender of “theory”, but doesn’t realize that a “theory” is actually a scientific system for representing, simplifying, analyzing, understanding, and making predictions about a topic. He and his fellow “theorists” are opposed to all of that.

⭐Amazing condition

⭐Among author Vincent B. Leitch’s other credentials in the field known by the vague name of “theory,” he is the general editor of the monumental

⭐. In this book, a collection of articles originally published in other venues, he takes an interesting and engaging look at the field as it exists today.After some introductory personal material in Chapter 1 (“What I believe and why”), Chapters 2 and 3 look at the recent phenomenon that Leitch calls “antitheory” — a heterogeneous backlash against theory and its analytic approach to examining literature. (Leitch describes

⭐as the “bible of antitheory arguments.”) Here’s an interesting quote from Leitch on this subject; one that also stands as a concise definition of “theory”:”Even the non-academic reader relies on theory — knowingly as well as unwittingly. He believes he knows what literature is; why characters make decisions; where men, women, and children properly belong; how to understand people, society, the world; what constitutes well-made as well as poorly constructed literary plots and good literary styles; the conventions of genre. There is no escape from theory for readers.”Personally, I found these two chapters to be the most interesting in this book. After reading them I couldn’t help wondering if the fact that this book on theory is titled “Literary Criticism in the 21st Century,” with the word “Theory” oddly relegated to the subtitle was itself a marketing decision driven by this ongoing antitheory mindset.Chapters 4 and 5 are both interviews of Leitch conducted by other scholars. These present Leitch’s thoughts on theory’s place in academe and its value as a tool for understanding our world.Chapters 6 and 7 look at the history, present state, and possible future of French theory, with Chapter 7 being a lengthy review of a

⭐.Chapter 8 considers postmodernism, in particular a recent renewal of interest in much of what that nebulous term encompasses.Finally, Chapters 9 and 10 look at the present state of theory and Leitch’s view of its likely future relevance, with Chapter 9 focussing on what he considers a “twenty-first-century theory renaissance.”This book does assume some prior knowledge of theory, but apart from referring to the various schools and branches of theory by their (often intimidating) names, it’s relatively free of jargon and opaque “academese” writing. I found it an engaging and rewarding read.Full disclosure: I received a copy of this book in return for a review.

⭐This is a mess of a book. Leitch has done yeoman service with his anthologies, but this is a strange pastiche of materials, mostly about Derrida (one chapter is just a summary of someone else’s bio). The author mixes autobiography with (well-founded) complaints about the state of the contemporary university, some short book recommendations, and a lot of very general generalizations about theory over the last thirty years. There is nothing very new here, except in a chapter about the return of postmodernism. There is an initial kind of promise that we’ll get a review of the whole range of the current topical areas of literary criticism (there is even a chart), but it never materializes. Anyone looking for an overview of what the title promises needs to look elsewhere.

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