Recent work in critical theory

Style, Winter, 1998 by William Baker, Kenneth Womack

This alphabetically arranged bibliography annotates recently published books and is based primarily on materials coming into the Northern Illinois University libraries between August 1997 and August 1998. Inclusion does not mean exclusion in a subsequent Style bibliography or review. Our remarks will simply convey the basic content of each item as objectively as possible. The publication dates for most of the items are 1997 and 1998, although some monographs have earlier imprints.

As noted in previous surveys of "Recent Work in Critical Theory," it has been difficult to arrange systematically in subject categories the wealth of recent material in the field of critical theory; some placement is ineluctably arbitrary. While only too aware of the limitations of categories, we have adopted the following rubrics: 1. General; 2. Semiotics, Narratology, Rhetoric, and Language Systems; 3. Postmodernism and Deconstruction; 4. Reader-Response and Phenomenological Criticism; 5. Feminist and Gender Studies; 6. Psychoanalytic Criticism; 7. Cultural and Historical Criticism.

(1) General

Adey, Lionel. C. S. Lewis, Writer, Dreamer, and Mentor. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.

Adey surveys the development of C. S. Lewis as a maker and reader of books. Adey demonstrates the ways in which the two sides of Lewis's personality - the "Dreamer" and the "Mentor" - affected his writing in its various modes: literary history and criticism, fiction for adults and for children, poetry, essays and addresses, and letters. Additionally, Adey explores the formative biographical events in Lewis's life and offers an estimate of Lewis's achievement and legacy as a writer.

Allen, Michael, ed. Seamus Heaney: Contemporary Critical Essays. New York: St. Martin's, 1997.

Selections include Allen's introduction; Christopher Ricks's "Growing Up: Review of Death of a Naturalist"; Conor Cruise O'Brien's "A Slow North-east Wind: Review of North"; Edna Longley's "'Inner Emigre' or 'Artful Voyeur'?: Seamus Heaney's North"; Seamus Deane's "Seamus Heaney: The Timorous and the Bold"; Eamonn Hughes's "Representations in Modern Irish Poetry"; Ricks's "The Mouth, the Meal, and the Book: Review of Field Work"; Terry Eagleton's "Review of Field Work"; Neil Corcoran's "Writing a Bare Wire: Station Island"; Heaney's "The Government of the Tongue"; Thomas Docherty's "The Sign of the Cross: Review of The Government of the Tongue"; David Lloyd's "'Pap for the Dispossessed': Seamus Heaney and the Poetics of Identity"; Patricia Coughlan's "'Bog Queens': The Representation of Women in the Poetry of John Montague and Seamus Heaney"; Docherty's "Ana-; or Postmodernism, Landscape"; Stan Smith's "The Distance Between: Seamus Heaney"; and Richard Kirkland's "Paradigms of Possibility: Seamus Heaney."

Allen, Richard, and Murray Smith, eds. Film Theory and Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997.

Selections include Allen and Smith's "Introduction: Film Theory and Philosophy"; Gregory Currie's "The Film Theory That Never Was: A Nervous Manifesto"; Kendall L. Walton's "On Pictures and Photographs: Objections Answered"; Allen's "Looking at Motion Pictures"; Edward Branigan's "Sound, Epistemology, Film"; Paisley Livingston's "Cinematic Authorship"; Berys Gaut's "Film Authorship and Collaboration"; Noel Carroll's "Fiction, Non-Fiction, and the Film of Presumptive Assertion: A Conceptual Analysis"; Trevor Ponech's "What is Non-Fiction Cinema?"; George Wilson's "On Film Narrative and Narrative Meaning"; Jennifer Hammett's "The Ideological Impediment: Epistemology, Feminism, and Film Theory"; Hector Rodriguez's "Ideology and Film Culture"; Tommy L. Lott's "Aesthetics and Politics in Contemporary Black Film Theory"; Peter Kivy's "Music in the Movies: A Philosophical Enquiry"; Flo Leibowitz's "Personal Agency Theories of Expressiveness and the Movies"; Deborah Knight's "Aristotelians on Speed: Paradoxes of Genre in the Context of Cinema"; Carl Plantinga's "Notes on Spectator Emotion and Ideological Film Criticism"; Dirk Eitzen's "Comedy and Classicism"; Smith's "Imagining From the Inside"; and Malcolm Turvey's "Seeing Theory: On Perception and Emotional Response in Current Film Theory."

Allen, Vivien. Hall Caine: Portrait of a Victorian Romancer. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1997.

Lavishly illustrated, Allen's study of Caine's life addresses the writer's impact upon the literary world. In addition to discussing the novelist's significant relationship with Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Allen explores Caine's association with such figures as Bram Stoker, Christina Rossetti, and George Bernard Shaw, among others. Using previously unpublished archives and correspondence, Allen concludes her volume with a selection of useful appendices, including "The Letters of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Hall Caine"; "Hall Caine (1853-1931): A Select Bibliography"; and a "Caine Family Tree."

Arnold, Bruce. Jack Yeats: A Biography. New Haven: Yale UP, 1998.

Arnold offers a new biography devoted to the life and work of Jack Yeats, the twentieth-century Irish artist. In addition to discussing Yeats's relationships with such luminaries as John Masefield, John Millington Synge, and Samuel Beckett, among others, Arnold examines Yeats's complex association with older brother, poet William Butler Yeats. Arnold affords special attention to the analysis of Yeats's various attempts at crafting drawings, illustrations, comic cartoons, novels, and plays.