Links with info about lit critters

[ColoradoGuy]

I think it's helpful to have a sticky with links people think are particularly helpful for understanding some of the assorted lit critters and movements we're discussing. I'll start with these. Please chime in with others.

1. Paul de Man. His reputation suffered when some anti-semitic things he wrote during WWII came to light after his death, but he's still one of the biggies.
2. Jacques Derrida. The godfather of deconstruction. Major post-structuralist
3. Jacques Lacan. The guy who made Freud legit again.
4. Stanley Fish. The big name in reader-response theory.
5. Michel Foucault. Particularly known for his examinations of prisons, madness, and sexuality. Major post-structuralist
6. Ferdinand de Saussure. Often said to be the father of modern linguistic studies and semiotics (the study of signs).
7. Claude Levi-Strauss. Actually an anthropologist, his structuralist analysis became popular with critters.
8. Roland Barthes . Major structuralist.
9. New Criticism. A point of view emphasizing the text in isolation.
10. New Historicism. The inevitable reaction to New Criticism.
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

[Higgins]

Originally Posted by ColoradoGuy

I think it's helpful to have a sticky with links people think are particularly helpful for understanding some of the assorted lit critters and movements we're discussing. I'll start with these. Please chime in with others.

Oh dear....New Criticism? New Historicism? Those are just going to be painful. (As are Stanley Fish and Paul de Man).

How about...

Mary Douglas: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Douglas

G. Spivak: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayatri_Chakravorty_Spivak

Julia Kristeva: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Kristeva

Elinor S. Shaffer http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/Book...n%3D0521298075 ....she seems to be working more on science and literature these days. Anyway...very brilliant and not much of a POMO or structuralist....just brilliant.

[ColoradoGuy]

Originally Posted by Sokal

Oh dear....New Criticism? New Historicism? Those are just going to be painful. (As are Stanley Fish and Paul de Man).

To you, perhaps. I'd beware of too many Wiki links, by the way.

[Higgins]

Originally Posted by ColoradoGuy

To you, perhaps. I'd beware of too many Wiki links, by the way.

What is the problem with Wiki links? I only use ones that I've looked at to make sure they are not insane.

I wish I could have found a Wiki-style link for Elinor S. Saffer....

[ColoradoGuy]

Originally Posted by Sokal

What is the problem with Wiki links? I only use ones that I've looked at to make sure they are not insane.

Oh, well -- if you've approved them, then I'm quite satisfied they're just fine.

[Medievalist]

I'm all for explication de texte, and am perfectly willing to duel over it . . . and yeah, New Criticism, taken to the extreme, is just as daft as any other technique taken to the extreme.

And if you've not read de Man in French, you haven't read him.

[Higgins]

Originally Posted by Medievalist

I'm all for explication de texte, and am perfectly willing to duel over it . . . and yeah, New Criticism, taken to the extreme, is just as daft as any other technique taken to the extreme.

And if you've not read de Man in French, you haven't read him.

Come on! Ya gotta go ape over the New Criticism! It has only been dead and gone for the last 60 years....but it is exactly what everybody gets taught in creative writing classes, but only through some indirect source, apparently, or so I would guess.

Hmmm...nice about Paul de Man. I didn't want to read him anyway and now I haven't.

[ColoradoGuy]

Originally Posted by Sokal

Come on! Ya gotta go ape over the New Criticism! It has only been dead and gone for the last 60 years..

It is often useful, even interesting, to know what has gone before.

[Cath]

Thanks for posting these, folks. I've got some reading to do!

[Certain_Entropy]

You should add Slavoj Zizek. He's a neo Lacanian and writes about everything theses day, from psychoanalyzing The Usual Suspects to framing the US in ideological coordinates of capitialism.

[Alexruns]

Ooo this thread is really interesting - i did a course in philosophy of language or ordinary language philosphy as its sometimes called or 20th analytical philosophy! Take your pick!!We looked at Wittengenstein a lot, Bertrand Russell in particular his book The Problems of Philosophy and A J Ayre - although i didnt pay this much for my copy!!

[AMCrenshaw]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Ricoeur

Time and Narrative

M.M. Bakhtin
Walter Benjamin
Jean Baudrillard
Noam Chomsky

(will work on finding links for these others)




AMC

[GOTHOS]

I'll recommend this blog on the work of my "main critic," Northrop Frye.

http://fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/

[ColoradoGuy]

Originally Posted by GOTHOS

I'll recommend this blog on the work of my "main critic," Northrop Frye.

http://fryeblog.blog.lib.mcmaster.ca/

I still like Frye, although I understand he's quite unfashionable now.

[GOTHOS]

Originally Posted by ColoradoGuy

I still like Frye, although I understand he's quite unfashionable now.

My impression is that Frye came at the crux of a "literature as myth" meme that got started in the early part of the century, but that after that Marxist and Freudian hermeneutics became entrenched as the only way to properly critique art/literature.

Frederic Jameson, who unlike many Marxists might have the intelligence to properly critique Frye, botched the job in his POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS. It's easier to ignore Frye than to refute him these days.