Recent work in critical theory

Style, Winter, 1998 by William Baker, Kenneth Womack

Bloom, Clive. Cult Fiction: Popular Reading and Pulp Theory. New York, St. Martin's, 1996.

Bloom offers an introductory study of pulp literature and cult fiction, genres in which contemporary popular culture narrates its themes of violence, sensationalism, and eroticism. Bloom explores the publishing and reading practices of pulp literature in England and the United States, as well as the genre's commercial problems. Bloom also examines such issues as pulp literature's canon, its encounters with censorship, and its place in the ongoing debate regarding the discrepancies between high and low culture.

Bloom, James D. The Literary Bent: In Search of High Art in Contemporary Fiction. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1997.

Bloom identifies traditional notions of literary greatness in the works of such contemporary writers as Robert Stone, Jane Smiley, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Pinsky, among others. Bloom argues that each writer displays the necessary critical awareness of their literary forebears while arousing curiosity among their contemporary readership. Bloom also explores the manner in which these writers enhance their contemporary reputations, communicating with the various nonliterary media that dominate the popular culture of our age.

Booth, Martin. The Doctor, the Detective, and Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography of Arthur Conan Doyle. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1997.

Booth offers a new study of the biographical and literary lives of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Booth devotes particular attention to Conan Doyle's formative years in which he suffered a poverty-stricken childhood at the hands of an alcoholic father. After abandoning his medical training, Conan Doyle finally pursued the literary career which earned him great wealth and fame. Booth also discusses the qualities that ensured Conan Doyle's success, including his enormous self-confidence and stubbornness, as well as his refusal to pass up any opportunity for adventure.

Botting, Fred. Gothic. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Botting traces the origins, sources, and developments of the Gothic as a transgressive genre that has persisted for more than two centuries. In addition to addressing the genre's history from the eighteenth century through its modernist and postmodernist representations, Botting examines Gothicism's themes, images, and literary effects. Botting discusses a variety of prevalent Gothic forms, including ghosts, monsters, vampires, and doubles.

Brand, Peter, and Lino Pertile, eds. The Cambridge History of Italian Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997.

Selections include Jonathan Usher's "Origins and Duecento"; Pertile's "Dante"; Pamela D. Stewart's "Boccaccio"; John Took's "Petrarch"; Steven Botterill's "Minor Writers"; Brian Richardson's "Prose"; Peter Marinelli's "Narrative Poetry"; Anthony Oldcorn's "Lyric Poetry"; Richard Andrews's "Theatre"; Paolo Cherchi's "The Seicento: Poetry, Philosophy, and Science"; David Kimbell's "Opera"; Franco Fido's "The Settecento"; Kimbell's "Opera since 1800"; Robert Dombroski's "Writer and Society in the New Italy"; Felicity Firth's "Pirandello"; Dombroski's "The Rise and Fall of Fascism (1910-45)"; John Gatt-Rutter's "The Aftermath of the Second World War (1945-56)" and Michael Caesar's "Contemporary Italy (Since 1956)."