What is Literature?
An Anthology of Criticism and Theory
1st Edition
Published on 9. February 2011
Book
Paperback/Softback
608 pages
978-1-4051-8294-2 (ISBN)
Description
An essential guide to understanding literary theory and criticism in the European tradition
What is Literature? A Critical Anthology explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. 'What is literature?' is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a specific form. What is Literature? reveals how ideas of the literary draw on the foundations of Western thought in ancient Greece and Rome, charting the emergence of modern literature in the eighteenth century, and including selections from the present state of the art.
The anthology includes the work of leading writers and critics of the last two thousand years including Plato, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Rancière, and many others. The book is an insightful examination of the nature of literature, its meanings and values, functions and forms, provocations and mysteries.
What is Literature? brings together in one volume influential and intriguing essays that show our enduring fascination with the idea of literature. This important guide:
* Contains a broad selection of the most significant texts on the topic of literature
* Includes leading writers from ancient times to the most recent thinkers on literature and criticism
* Encourages readers to reflect on the varied meanings of "literature"
What is Literature? A Critical Anthology is a unique collection of texts that will appeal to every student and scholar of literature and literary criticism in the European tradition.
What is Literature? A Critical Anthology explores the most fundamental question in literary studies. 'What is literature?' is the name of a problem that emerges with the idea of literature in European modernity. This volume offers a cross-section of modern literary theory and reflects on the history of thinking about literature as a specific form. What is Literature? reveals how ideas of the literary draw on the foundations of Western thought in ancient Greece and Rome, charting the emergence of modern literature in the eighteenth century, and including selections from the present state of the art.
The anthology includes the work of leading writers and critics of the last two thousand years including Plato, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jacques Rancière, and many others. The book is an insightful examination of the nature of literature, its meanings and values, functions and forms, provocations and mysteries.
What is Literature? brings together in one volume influential and intriguing essays that show our enduring fascination with the idea of literature. This important guide:
* Contains a broad selection of the most significant texts on the topic of literature
* Includes leading writers from ancient times to the most recent thinkers on literature and criticism
* Encourages readers to reflect on the varied meanings of "literature"
What is Literature? A Critical Anthology is a unique collection of texts that will appeal to every student and scholar of literature and literary criticism in the European tradition.
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Person
Mark Robson is the Chair of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Dundee, Scotland, where he also teaches philosophy and visual culture. He founded and is the Director of the Centre for Critical and Creative Cultures at Dundee, and is author and editor of several books including Theatre & Death, The Sense of Early Modern Writing and(with James Loxley) Shakespeare, Jonson, and the Claims of the Performative.
Content
Introduction
Mark Robson
From Hamburg Dramaturgy (1769)
G. E. Lessing
'Of the Standard of Taste' (1777)
David Hume
From Critique of Judgment (1790)
Immanuel Kant
From On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
Friedrich Schiller
From On the Study of Greek Poetry (1797) and Philosophical Fragments (1798-1800)
Friedrich Schlegel
From Lectures on Dramatic Art (1811)
A. W. Schlegel
Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
William Wordsworth
From Biographia Literaria (1817)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From Aesthetics (1835)
G. W. F. Hegel
'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' (1864)
Matthew Arnold
From The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
Friedrich Nietzsche
'The Art of Fiction' (1884)
Henry James
'Crisis of Verse' (1897)
Stéphane Mallarmé
'Art as Technique' (1917)
Viktor Shklovsky
From 'The Uncanny' (1919)
Sigmund Freud
'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919) and 'The Function of Criticism' (1923)
T. S. Eliot
From A Room of One's Own (1929)
Virginia Woolf
'The Storyteller' (1936)
Walter Benjamin
'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' (1944)
Jorge Luis Borges
From What is Literature? (1948)
Jean-Paul Sartre
'Literature and the Right to Death' (1948)
Maurice Blanchot
'Language' (1950)
Martin Heidegger
'Trying to Understand Endgame' (1958)
T. W. Adorno
'The Meridian' (1960)
Paul Celan
'What is an Author?' (1969)
Michel Foucault
From 'Sorties' (1975)
Hélène Cixous
From 'What is a Minor Literature?' (1975)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
'Literature and Life' (1993)
Gilles Deleuze
From The Literary Absolute (1978)
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy
From Orientalism (1978)
Edward Said
'Autobiography as De-facement' (1979)
Paul de Man
'Che cos'è la poesia?' (1988) and 'Before the Law' (1982)
Jacques Derrida
'Signs Taken for Wonders' (1986)Homi K. Bhabha
'What is the History of Literature?' (1997)
Stephen Greenblatt
From A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
'Literature for the Planet' (2001)
Wai Chee Dimock
'The Politics of Literature' (2003)
Jacques Rancière
'Close Reading in an Age of Global Writing' (2013)
Rebecca L. Walkowitz
Mark Robson
From Hamburg Dramaturgy (1769)
G. E. Lessing
'Of the Standard of Taste' (1777)
David Hume
From Critique of Judgment (1790)
Immanuel Kant
From On the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795)
Friedrich Schiller
From On the Study of Greek Poetry (1797) and Philosophical Fragments (1798-1800)
Friedrich Schlegel
From Lectures on Dramatic Art (1811)
A. W. Schlegel
Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1802)
William Wordsworth
From Biographia Literaria (1817)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
From Aesthetics (1835)
G. W. F. Hegel
'The Function of Criticism at the Present Time' (1864)
Matthew Arnold
From The Birth of Tragedy (1872)
Friedrich Nietzsche
'The Art of Fiction' (1884)
Henry James
'Crisis of Verse' (1897)
Stéphane Mallarmé
'Art as Technique' (1917)
Viktor Shklovsky
From 'The Uncanny' (1919)
Sigmund Freud
'Tradition and the Individual Talent' (1919) and 'The Function of Criticism' (1923)
T. S. Eliot
From A Room of One's Own (1929)
Virginia Woolf
'The Storyteller' (1936)
Walter Benjamin
'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' (1944)
Jorge Luis Borges
From What is Literature? (1948)
Jean-Paul Sartre
'Literature and the Right to Death' (1948)
Maurice Blanchot
'Language' (1950)
Martin Heidegger
'Trying to Understand Endgame' (1958)
T. W. Adorno
'The Meridian' (1960)
Paul Celan
'What is an Author?' (1969)
Michel Foucault
From 'Sorties' (1975)
Hélène Cixous
From 'What is a Minor Literature?' (1975)
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari
'Literature and Life' (1993)
Gilles Deleuze
From The Literary Absolute (1978)
Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy
From Orientalism (1978)
Edward Said
'Autobiography as De-facement' (1979)
Paul de Man
'Che cos'è la poesia?' (1988) and 'Before the Law' (1982)
Jacques Derrida
'Signs Taken for Wonders' (1986)Homi K. Bhabha
'What is the History of Literature?' (1997)
Stephen Greenblatt
From A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999)
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
'Literature for the Planet' (2001)
Wai Chee Dimock
'The Politics of Literature' (2003)
Jacques Rancière
'Close Reading in an Age of Global Writing' (2013)
Rebecca L. Walkowitz