In History, Literature, Critical Theory, Dominick LaCapra continues his exploration of the complex relations between history and literature, here considering history as both process and representation. A trio of chapters at the center of the volume concern the ways in which history and literature (particularly the novel) impact and question each other. In one of the chapters LaCapra revisits Gustave Flaubert, pairing him with Joseph Conrad. Other chapters pair J. M. Coetzee and W. G. Sebald, Jonathan Littell's novel, The Kindly Ones, and Saul Friedlander's two-volume, prizewinning history Nazi Germany and the Jews. A recurrent motif of the book is the role of the sacred, its problematic status in sacrifice, its virulent manifestation in social and political violence (notably the Nazi genocide), its role or transformations in literature and art, and its multivalent expressions in "postsecular" hopes, anxieties, and quests. LaCapra concludes the volume with an essay on the place of violence in the thought of Slavoj Zizek. In LaCapra's view Zizek's provocative thought "at times has uncanny echoes of earlier reflections on, or apologies for, political and seemingly regenerative, even sacralized violence."

This edited volume assembles the work of leading international scholars in a comprehensive history of Russian literary theory and criticism from 1917 to the post-Soviet age. By examining the dynamics of literary criticism and theory in three arenas—political, intellectual, and institutional—the authors capture the progression and structure of Russian literary criticism and its changing function and discourse. The chapters follow early movements such as formalism, the Bakhtin Circle, Proletklut, futurism, the fellow-travelers, and the Russian Association of Proletarian Writers. By the cultural revolution of 1928, literary criticism became a mechanism of Soviet policies, synchronous with official ideology. The chapters follow theory and criticism into the 1930s with examinations of the Union of Soviet Writers, semantic paleontology, and socialist realism under Stalin. A more "humanized" literary criticism appeared during the ravaging years of World War II, only to be supplanted by a return to the party line, Soviet heroism, and anti-Semitism in the late Stalinist period. During Khrushchev's Thaw, there was a remarkable rise in liberal literature and criticism, that was later refuted in the nationalist movement of the "long" 1970s. The same decade saw, on the other hand, the rise to prominence of semiotics and structuralism. Postmodernism and a strong revival of academic literary studies have shared the stage since the start of the post-Soviet era. For the first time anywhere, this collection analyzes all of the important theorists and major critical movements during a tumultuous ideological period in Russian history, including developments in emigre literary theory and criticism.

Exploring the works of a diverse group of 20th century writers including D.H. Lawrence, H.L. Mencken, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida, this book provides an accessible scholarly introduction to modern literary theory and criticism, placing various modes of criticism in their historical and intellectual contexts.

This comprehensive guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day provides an authoritative overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, as well as surveying their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. Supplies the cultural, historical and philosophical background to the literary criticism of each era Enables students to see the development of literary criticism in context Organised chronologically, from classical literary criticism through to deconstruction Considers a wide range of thinkers and events from the French Revolution to Freud’s views on civilization Can be used alongside any anthology of literary criticism or as a coherent stand-alone introduction

In Soundings in Critical Theory, Dominick LaCapra continues his attempt to fashion a historiography that is at once critical and self-critical—a project he initiated in Rethinking Intellectual History: Texts, Contexts, Language (1983); and History and Criticism (1985), both available from Cornell University Press. This new collection of essays offers a provocative assessment of the nature of historical understanding and the role of critical theory in historical understanding; of the practice of historical writing as a dialogic exchange both with the past and among professional historians and critics; and of the problem of how to read texts and documents in relation to processes of contextual understanding. A central concern of the volume is the interaction between Marxism, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism, and all of the essays demonstrate the complex ways in which this trio of critical theories continues to affect how historians frame their task. LaCapra first provides a general appraisal of the problems and possibilities of criticism as a genre that questions its own limits, and examines the roles of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean-François Lyotard, and Mikhail Bakhtin in the development of contemporary criticism. Subsequent chapters address such issues as the implications of psychoanalysis for the writing of history, the debate between Robert Darnton and Roger Chartier concerning the status of the symbolic dimension in history, and the problem of how best to read and make use of Marx's work. LaCapra concludes by exploring the larger project of forging viable links between history and critical theory and by evaluating the contributions of deconstruction and the new historicism to this project. Contemporary cultural and intellectual historians, literary theorists and critics, philosophers, and social scientists will welcome this book.

This incredibly useful volume offers an introduction to the history of literary criticism and theory from ancient Greece to the present. Grounded in the close reading of landmark theoretical texts, while seeking to encourage the reader's critical response, Pelagia Goulimari examines: major thinkers and critics from Plato and Aristotle to Foucault, Derrida, Kristeva, Said and Butler; key concepts, themes and schools in the history of literary theory: mimesis, inspiration, reason and emotion, the self, the relation of literature to history, society, culture and ethics, feminism, poststructuralism, postcolonialism, queer theory; genres and movements in literary history: epic, tragedy, comedy, the novel; Romanticism, realism, modernism and postmodernism. Historical connections between theorists and theories are traced and the book is generously cross-referenced. With useful features such as key-point conclusions, further reading sections, descriptive text boxes, detailed headings, and with a comprehensive index, this book is the ideal introduction to anyone approaching literary theory for the first time or unfamiliar with the scope of its history.