Recent work in critical theory

Style, Winter, 1995 by William Baker, Kenneth Womack

Booker, M. Keith. Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994.

Booker's volume offers an expansive vision of dystopian literature from its earliest origins in works such as Sir Thomas More's Utopia through its modem incarnations in works by Anthony Burgess, Vassily Aksyonov, George Orwell, and Yevgeny Zamyatin, among a diversity of other practitioners of the genre. Booker divides his reference guide into five sections: "A Guide to Selected Modern Cultural Criticism with Relevance to Dystopian Literature"; "A Guide to Selected Utopian Fictions"; "A Guide to Dystopian Fictions"; "A Guide to Selected Dystopian Drama"; and "A Guide to Selected Dystopian Films."

Bowen, Zack R. Bloom's Old Sweet Song: Essays on Joyce and Music. Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1995.

Bowen explores the musicality of Joyce's Ulysses and its role in communicating the author's themes of epiphany, comedy, and omphalos, among others. Bowen offers specific analyses of music as a vehicle for developing the character of Leopold Bloom and as a narrative device in the Sirens episode.

Bradbury, Malcolm. Dangerous Pilgrimages: Trans-Atlantic Mythologies and the Novel. London: Secker and Warburg, 1995.

Bradbury examines the cultural and imaginative commerce between the Old World and the New, concentrating his study upon the works of such writers as Martin Amis, Evelyn Waugh, and Henry James. Tracing the intellectual history of postmodern fiction to its earliest, Platonic origins, Bradbury reveals the enduring gap between image and reality, while highlighting its role in defining the literary tradition fomented by the great transatlantic encounters in his study.

Brooks, Cleanth. Community, Religion, and Literature. Columbia: U of Missouri P, 1995.

In this collection of essays, the late Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994) reads literature in regard to its role in the creation of social value systems and as a cultural vehicle that propounds a larger sense of human community. In addition to tracing the role of religion as a force, like literature, for rendering human truths in narrative and society alike, Brooks denounces contemporary critics who reduce writing to its purely linguistic essences.

Bucknell, Katherine, and Nicholas Jenkins, eds. W. H. Auden: The Language of Learning and the Language of Love: Uncollected Writings, New Interpretations. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.

The essays in the second volume of the Auden Studies series explore the first decade of Auden's literary career, while also examining his experiences as both as a public figure and a private individual. Selections include: Richard Davenport-Hines' introduction to "W. H. Auden's School Writings"; W. H. Auden's "Poems and Prose"; Jenkins' introduction to Auden's "Uncollected Songs and Lighter Poems, 1936-40"; Donald Mitchell and Philip Reed's "'For Hedli': Britten and Auden's Cabaret Songs"; W. H. Auden's "Songs and Poems"; David Luke's "Gerhart Meyer and the Vision of Eros: A Note on Auden's 1929 Journal"; Richard Bozorth's "'Whatever You Do Don't Go to the Wood': Joking, Rhetoric, and Homosexuality in The Orators"; David Pascoe's "'Everything Turns Away': Auden's Surrealism"; Stan Smith's "Persuasions to Rejoice: Auden's Oedipal Dialogues with W. B. Yeats"; Bucknell's "The Achievement of Edward Upward"; an appendix, "Edward Upward and his Friendship with Auden"; and Edward Mendelson's "Interviews, Dialogues, and Conversations with W. H. Auden: A Bibliography."