Recent work in critical theory

Style, Winter, 1995 by William Baker, Kenneth Womack

Burke, Sean. Authorship from Plato to the Postmodern: A Reader. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1995.

Using the theoretical insights of post-colonial and feminist criticism, Burke discusses notions of textuality, divine and human creativity, the self, and death as they relate to the concept of authorship. In addition to tracing the evolution of authorship from its classical origins to the postmodern present, Burke explores its controversial application in the works of such writers as Martin Heidegger and Salman Rushdie.

Byrne, Janet. A Genius for Living: The Life of Frieda Lawrence. New York: Harper Collins, 1995.

Drawing on a variety of unpublished manuscripts, letters, and diaries, Byrne traces the rich and tumultuous life of Frieda Lawrence, from her aristocratic Prussian childhood, through her affair with free-love advocate Otto Gross and her marriage to D. H. Lawrence, to her third marriage to the Italian soldier, Angelino Ravagli. Byrne explodes the notion that Frieda functioned as a sexual libertine and instead posits a portrait of her as an intensely aggressive intellectual with a complex vision of life and the relations between the sexes.

Campbell, James. Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian, and Others on the Left Bank, 1946-60. London: Secker and Warburg, 1994.

Campbell explores the complex web of literary and social events that captured the interest of the intelligentsia during the 1940s and 1950s on Paris' left bank. In addition to offering anecdotes about the meeting of Richard Wright and Gertrude Stein during the Spring of 1946, Campbell investigates suspicious links between writers and the CIA; the literary rebirth of Samuel Beckett; the bizarre life of Boris Vian, the French engineer and novelist who led a strange double life; and the story of Maurice Girodias' Olympia Press, the infamous publisher of such modern classics as Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, Beckett's Watt, and William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

Childers, Joseph, and Gary Hentzi, eds. The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 1995.

In addition to providing scholars and students alike with entries for hundreds of critical terms, Childers and Hentzi's reference guide traces the evolution of critical theory through its detailed examinations of such disciplines as psychoanalytic criticism, deconstruction, and film theory, among a host of others. Each entry features analysis of the place of its subject in the theater of contemporary critical theory, while also providing readers with a useful bibliography of supplementary sources.

Coers, Donald V., Paul D. Ruffin, and Robert J. DeMott, eds. After The Grapes of Wrath: Essays on John Steinbeck in Honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi. Athens: Ohio UP, 1994.

Collected in honor of Tetsumaro Hayashi, the distinguished founder and editor of the Steinbeck Quarterly, this volume features essays that explore the evolution of Steinbeck's aesthetic after the publication of his great literary achievements of the 1930s. Selections include: Warren French's introduction; Cliff Lewis' "Art for Politics: John Steinbeck and FDR"; Susan Shillinglaw's "Steinbeck and Ethnicity"; Robert E. Morsberger's "Of Mice and Music: Scoring Steinbeck Movies"; Roy Simmonds' "The Metamorphosis of The Moon Is Down: March 1942-March 1943"; Eiko Shiraga's "Three Strong Women in Steinbeck's The Moon is Down"; Kevin Hearle's" 'The Boat-Shaped Mind': Steinbeck's Sense of Language as Discourse in Cannery Row and Sea of Cortez"; Debra K. S. Barker's "Passages of Descent and Initiation: Juana as the 'Other' Hero of The Pearl"; Brian Railsback's "The Wayward Bus: Misogyny or Sexual Selection?"; John Ditsky's "Work, Blood, and The Wayward Bus"; DeMott's "Charting East of Eden: A Bibliographical Survey"; DeMott's "Sweet Thursday Revisited: An Excursion in Suggestiveness"; Michael Meyer's "Citizen Cain: Ethan Hawley's Double Identity in The Winter of Our Discontent"; Geralyn Strecker's "Reading Steinbeck (Re)-Reading America: Travels with Charley and America and Americans"; Mimi Reisel Gladstein's "America and Americans: The Arthurian Consummation"; Coers' "'John Believed in Man': An Interview with Mrs. John Steinbeck"; and a bibliography, compiled by DeMott, "Tetsumaro Hayashi: A Checklist of Scholarly Publications."