Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory

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Format: Trade Book
Pub. Date: 2002-09-06
Publisher(s): Red Globe Pr
List Price: $119.69

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Summary

This invaluable guide offers an accessible introduction to two important movements in the history of 20th century literary theory. A complementary text to the Palgrave volume Postmodern Narrative Theory by Mark Currie, this new title addresses a host of theoretical concerns, as well as each field's principal figures and interpretive modes. As with other books in the Transitions series, Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory includes readings of a range of widely-studied texts, including Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness , Charlotte Bronteuml;'s Jane Eyre , and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , among others.

Author Biography

Todd F. Davis is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Goshen College.

Kenneth Womack is Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Altoona.

Table of Contents

General Editor's Preface viii
Acknowledgements x
Introduction: Moving beyond the Politics of Interpretation 1(10)
Part I Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory: A Critical Introduction 11(80)
Twentieth-Century Formalism: Convergence and Divergence
13(26)
Separate yet human: Humanism and formalist conventions
17(5)
Moving from theory to practice: The legacy of I. A. Richards and Cleanth Brooks
22(4)
Another way of knowing: Formalism as literary discourse
26(2)
The limits of formalism: Universalism, eclecticism, and morality in the work of F. R. Leavis and Kenneth Burke
28(5)
The evolution of formalism: The case of Northrop Frye
33(3)
Formalist concerns in the present
36(3)
Russian Formalism, Mikhail Bakhtin, Heteroglossia, and Carnival
39(12)
Signs, signifiers, and the Prague Linguistic Circle
44(3)
Bakhtin and the narratological revolution
47(4)
Reader-Response Theory, the Theoretical Project, and Identity Politics
51(29)
Transactional reading in the theories of Louise M. Rosenblatt and Wayne C. Booth
53(4)
Reader-response theory, narratology, and the structuralist imperative
57(6)
A subjectivist feast: Reader-response theory and psychological criticism
63(10)
Searching for the gendered self: Reader-response theory and feminist criticism
73(7)
Stanley Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts, and the Professionalization of Literary Studies
80(11)
'Meaning as an event': The evolution of Stanley Fish's reader-response theory
82(4)
'Reading' critical theory, professionalization, and the lingering problem of intentionality
86(5)
Part II Readings in Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory 91(63)
A: Formalist Critical Readings
Travelling through the Valley of Ashes: Symbolic Unity in F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby
93(14)
Nick Carraway's narrative of hope and wonder
96(7)
The Great Gatsby, the romantic tradition, and narrative transcendence
103(4)
Charlotte Bronte and Frye's Secular Scripture: The Structure of Romance in Jane Eyre
107(16)
Romance and its contexts: The archetypal play of form and feeling
107(5)
Romantic expectations: Heroes, heroines, and their quests
112(5)
Descent and ascent: The structural movements of Jane and Rochester
117(6)
B: Reader-Response Critical Readings
`Telle us som myrie tale, by youre fey!': Exploring the Reading Transaction and Narrative Structure in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and Troilus and Criseyde
123(13)
Chaucer, narrative discourse, and the Clerk's Tale
124(5)
Chaucer and the transactional possibilities of literary parody
129(7)
Addressing Horizons of Readerly Expectation in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier, or, How to Put the `Reader' in `Reader Response'
136(18)
Engendering reader-response through Conrad's and Ford's literary impressionism
138(2)
Marlow's journey to the ethical void
140(5)
Dowell's narrative circumlocution and the ethics of storytelling
145(9)
Conclusion: Beyond Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory 154(3)
Notes 157(12)
Annotated Bibliography 169(8)
Works Cited 177(11)
Index 188

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