Recent work in critical theory - bibliography of recently published books from the Northern Illinois University libraries

Style, Winter, 1996 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 June 1995 and July 1996. 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 1995 and 1996, 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

Ackroyd, Peter. Blake: A Biography. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Ackroyd's biography of Blake traces the poet's life from his childhood in a Dissenter's household and his apprenticeship as an engraver through his studies at the Royal Academy Schools and the authorship of his masterworks, including Songs of Innocence and Experience, Jerusalem, and Milton. Ackroyd affords particular attention to the historical context of Blake's life in eighteenth-century London, a world marked by contradictory elements of radicalism, mysticism, and rationalism. Ackroyd also offers interpretations of Blake's paintings and engravings.

Alpers, Paul. What Is Pastoral? Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.

Alpers argues that pastoral literature finds its roots in a fundamental fiction that the lives of shepherds or other socially humble figures represent the lives of workaday human beings. Drawing upon such works as Virgil's Eclogues and Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, Alpers traces the pastoral's roots from classical and Renaissance literature through the twentieth century. He also offers close readings of works by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Wordsworth, Hardy, and Frost, among others.

Ashton, Rosemary. The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.

Ashton traces the complex personal of Coleridge through analyses of the interconnections between his prose and verse writings and his private opinions and emotions. In addition to exploring his close friendships with such figures as Charles Lamb and Thomas Poole, Ashton discusses the substantial influence of German philosophy upon Coleridge's theoretical base. Ashton also examines Coleridge's significant influence upon such Victorian thinkers as John Stuart Mill and Thomas Carlyle.

Bain, Robert, ed. Whitman's and Dickinson's Contemporaries: An Anthology of Their Verse. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1996.

Bain's edition attempts to reconstruct the American poetic landscape during the age of Whitman and Dickinson. He anthologizes the work of a variety of poets, including John Greenleaf Whittier, James Russell Lowell, Lydia Huntley Sigourney, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among a wide range of other writers. Bain contextualizes their work within the historical framework of the mid to latter half of the nineteenth century, with particular emphasis upon such events as the Civil War and the Mexican War in the late 1840s.

Baker, Carlos. Emerson among the Eccentrics: A Group Portrait. New York: Viking, 1996.

The late Carlos Baker explores the writers of the American Renaissance, including Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Amos Bronson Alcott, and Margaret Fuller. In addition to examining the journals and correspondence of these writers, Baker attempts to reconstruct the historical era of nineteenth-century Concord, Massachusetts the virtual Mecca of the American Renaissance movement's intelligentsia. Baker affords special attention to Emerson's central role as the American Renaissance's intellectual center, as well as his multiple vocations as preacher, lecturer, editor, farmer, and poet.

Belford, Barbara. Bram Stoker: A Biography of the Author of Dracula. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Belford traces the life of Bram Stoker through her analysis of his public and private faces. In addition to discussing Stoker's life as the innovative manager of London's Lyceum Theatre and his place among Victorian society's glitterati, Belford explores the writer's private obsessions in his novels with such forbidden subjects as seduction, rape, necrophilia, incest, and voyeurism. Belford also examines Stoker's place among the writers of his day, including Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, James Whistler, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and George Bernard Shaw.

Bercovitch, Sacvan, ed. The Cambridge History of American Literature. Volume Eight: Poetry and Criticism, 1940-1995. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996.

Bercovitch's volume includes two expansive chapters that trace the development of American poetry and criticism from the 1940s through the latter half of the twentieth century. Selections include Robert von Hallberg's "Poetry, Politics, and Intellectuals" and Evan Carton and Gerald Graff's "Criticism since 1940." The volume concludes with a "Chronology, 1940-1995."