Bringing his perennially popular course to the page, Yale University Professor Paul H. Fry offers in this welcome book a guided tour of the main trends in twentieth-century literary theory. At the core of the book's discussion is a series of underlying questions: What is literature, how is it produced, how can it be understood, and what is its purpose? Fry engages with the major themes and strands in twentieth-century literary theory, among them the hermeneutic circle, New Criticism, structuralism, linguistics and literature, Freud and fiction, Jacques Lacan's theories, the postmodern psyche, the political unconscious, New Historicism, the classical feminist tradition, African American criticism, queer theory, and gender performativity. By incorporating philosophical and social perspectives to connect these many trends, the author offers readers a coherent overall context for a deeper and richer reading of literature.

“There are no limits to the will—and the strength—of this unique female hero.” —Tamora Pierce, writer of the Song of the Lioness and the Protector of the Small quartets One for All is a gender-bent retelling of The Three Musketeers, in which a girl with a chronic illness trains as a Musketeer and uncovers secrets, sisterhood, and self-love. Tania de Batz is most herself with a sword in her hand. Everyone thinks her near-constant dizziness makes her weak, nothing but “a sick girl.” But Tania wants to be strong, independent, a fencer like her father—a former Musketeer and her greatest champion. Then Papa is brutally, mysteriously murdered. His dying wish? For Tania to attend finishing school. But L’Académie des Mariées, Tania realizes, is no finishing school. It’s a secret training ground for new Musketeers: women who are socialites on the surface, but strap daggers under their skirts, seduce men into giving up dangerous secrets, and protect France from downfall. And they don’t shy away from a sword fight. With her newfound sisters at her side, Tania feels that she has a purpose, that she belongs. But then she meets Étienne, her target in uncovering a potential assassination plot. He’s kind, charming—and might have information about what really happened to her father. Torn between duty and dizzying emotion, Tania will have to decide where her loyalties lie...or risk losing everything she’s ever wanted. Lillie Lainoff's debut novel is a fierce, whirlwind adventure about the depth of found family, the strength that goes beyond the body, and the determination it takes to fight for what you love. Includes an author's note about her personal experience with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome.

Where others have oriented Wordsworth towards ideas of transcendence, nature worship, or - more recently - political repression, Paul H. Fry argues that underlying all this is a more fundamental insight - Wordsworth is most astonished not that the world he experiences has any particular qualities, but rather that it simply exists.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- 1. The Critical Revolution Turns Right -- 2. The Scholarly Turn -- 3. The Historicist/Contextualist Paradigm -- 4. The Critical Unconscious -- Conclusion: The Future of Criticism -- Appendix: The Critical Paradigm and T.S. Eliot -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index

The latest installment of Yale French Studies explores the history and development of bande dessinée, Franco-Belgian comics This special issue of Yale French Studies on bande dessinée is a multifaceted reflection on its newfound academic status. It goes beyond the question, settled long ago, of its artistic legitimacy but aims to think "outside the boxes," or cases, themselves in order to explore the mutually enriching relationship between BD and the wider francophone cultural and intellectual world. Contributions thus intersect with art history, literary theory, cinema studies, postcolonialism, semiotics, and political sociology. Articles are by mainstream interdisciplinary scholars applying themselves to BD, leading authorities on bande dessinée itself, BD artists, and key figures in contemporary French thought whose texts appear in English for the first time.