Recent work in critical theory

Style, Winter, 1995 by William Baker, Kenneth Womack

Enright, D. J., ed. The Oxford Book of the Supernatural. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.

Enright's anthology traces the place of the role of the supernatural and spiritualism in literature, featuring selections devoted to magic, witchcraft, exorcism, fairies, miracles, vampires, dreams, telepathy, near-death experiences, immortality, and spontaneous combustion, among other issues.

Featherstone, Simon, ed. War Poetry: An Introductory Reader. London: Routledge, 1995.

Featherstone's anthology features the works of such war poets as Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, Keith Douglas, Herbert Read, H. D., and Sorley MacLean, among others. In addition to providing readers with selections of essays, articles, and correspondence by the writers in his collection, Featherstone offers expansive introductory chapters to each figure and explores at length the cultural, political, and social issues that motivated their poetic pursuits.

Foster, Edward Halsey. Understanding the Black Mountain Poets. Columbia: U of South Carolina P, 1995.

Foster explores the Black Mountain poetry of Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, and others, and, for the first time, attempts to define the poetic tableau of the Black Mountain school. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of such figures as Paul Christensen, Sherman Paul, and Nathaniel Mackey, Foster traces the development of Black Mountain Poetry and its critical reception during the previous two decades.

Frankel, Jonathan, ed. Studies in Contemporary Jewry, Volume 10: Reshaping the Past: Jewish History and the Historians. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994.

Frankel's collection features an expansive selection of articles devoted to the dialogue between Jewish history and historiography, changing national and popular myths, and the historical consciousness of Jews in modern times. Frankel includes the works of a number of distinguished writers, including Joseph Heller, Israel Bartal, Sander L. Gilman, Joseph B. Blass, Yaacov Ro'i, Robert Alter, Leslie Fiedler, Susan Starr Sered, and Stephen J. Whitfield, among a host of others.

Franklin, V. P. Living Our Stories, Telling Our Truths: Autobiography and the Making of the African-American Intellectual Tradition. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995.

Franklin explores the lives and works of twelve principal members of the African-American intelligentsia during this century, including Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Adam Clayton Powell, Alexander Crummell, James Weldon Johnson, Harry Haywood, and Ida B. Wells-Barnett. In addition to demonstrating the centrality of autobiography to the African-American literary tradition, Franklin examines the ways in which these figures interpret their struggles for freedom and against injustice at the core of the collective experience of African Americans in the United States.

Frow, John. Cultural Studies and Cultural Value. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1995.

Using the theoretical insights of such figures as Pierre Bourdieu, Michel de Certeau, Stuart Hall, and Ernesto Laclau, Frow delineates the evolution of cultural studies and its growing significance in the academy. Frow affords particular emphasis to the multiple centers and multiple genres that currently define cultural studies, while also considering the manner in which intellectuals mediate the cultural field through the cultural capital that privileges their position as critics of the polar distinction between the classes.