Books to read

dhriti · Dec 22, 2009

lacan

If anyone is interested in Lacan, then please go through the book "How to read Lacan" by Slavoj Zizek. Excellent book for the beginners

writeontime · Oct 11, 2012

This is a good list - I've added a couple to my TBR list already. Thanks.

If I may, I'd also like to add Gayatri Spivak's A Critique of Postcolonial Reason and Derrida's Specters of Marx.

names · Nov 22, 2012

sunandshadow said:
Interesting book I just read, The Midnight Disease by Alice W. Flaherty. About the drive to write, writer's block, hypergraphia, temporal lobe epilepsy, and bipolar disorder.

Anyone else read this book?

spamwarrior · Jun 20, 2013

Medievalist said:
For a short, readable and not too jargon-laden introduction to literary /critical theory:

Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. University of Minnesota Press; 2nd edition (November 1996).

I read this last summer before applying to graduate schools. I liked it! Eagleton's hilarious (and I mean that in the best way possible).

For my recommendation, I recommend Unsuspected Eloquence by James Anderson Winn. It's a pretty detailed and well-researched book about the relations between poetry and music.

ewynne · Jun 30, 2018

It's not so much theory, but if you want a guide to analyzing the authorial intent written into a work, I highly suggest How to Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster. I was assigned it in AP English in high school. Went on to major in English and Creative Writing, but even so, I think that book had a greater impact on how I interpret literature than any other. And of course, how I read has a big effect on how I write.

DMcCunney · Jan 22, 2019

Northrop Frye's "The Anatomy of Criticism"

For pure literary criticism theory, the place I start is the late Northrop Frye's "The Anatomy of Criticism". As Frye explained it:
"THIS book forced itself on me while I was trying to write something else, and it probably still bears the marks of the reluctance with which a great part of it was composed. After completing a study of William Blake (Fearful Symmetry, 1947), I determined to apply the principles of literary symbolism and Biblical typology which I had learned from Blake to another poet, preferably one who had taken these principles from the critical theories of his own day, instead of working them out by himself as Blake did. I therefore began a study of Spenser’s Faerie Queene, only to discover that in my beginning was my end. The introduction to Spenser became an introduction to the theory of allegory, and that theory obstinately adhered to a much larger theoretical structure. The basis of argument became more and more discursive, and less and less historical and Spenserian. I soon found myself entangled in those parts of criticism that have to do with such words as “myth,” “symbol,” “ritual,” and “archetype,” and my efforts to make sense of these words in various published articles met with enough interest to encourage me to proceed further along these lines. Eventually the theoretical and the practical aspects of the task I had begun completely separated. What is here offered is pure critical theory, and the omission of all specific criticism, even, in three of the four essays, of quotation, is deliberate. The present book seems to me, so far as I can judge at present, to need a complementary volume concerned with practical criticism, a sort of morphology of literary symbolism."

In the process, Frye gropes with such issues as the fact that is no term in English for a general work of prose fiction. He also talks about poetry, but makes clear his canvas is broader, and he uses various terms simply because a vocabulary for poetics exists, but one for prose largely doesn't.

For those who want to sample, there's a decently formatted HTML version taken from an Internet Archive scan up at http://northropfrye-theanatomyofcriticism.blogspot.com/ For an actual published copy, Princeton University Press has it available in paper and electronic form: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/7013.html

Frye's work made me reconsider how I thought about and analyzed literature.
______
Dennis

lucystrother · Jun 17, 2024

robeiae said:
One of my favorite subjects within the general fields of this forum is the philosophy of Martin Heidegger. Especially with regard to his support of National Socialism.

As far as deconstructionist theory goes, I enjoyed this book immensely:

Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger's "Being and Time"

I think Fritsche is flat-out wrong in a number of ways, but it's a great read and very well researched, imo.

I haven't read too far in this forum but may I suggest the "Wisdom of Insecurity" by Alan Watts: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/551520.The_Wisdom_of_Insecurity

He puts on the facade of a pissed off ex-Catholic boy who lost his way with God but if you unravel his critical theory of human nature, it's quite eye-opening. In my opinion, some of his examples are a bit extreme but with an open mind, you can make sense of his point. Anyone read this? It's my latest obsession.

Books to read

dhriti

writeontime

Why so serious?

names

spamwarrior

rewriting.

ewynne

DMcCunney

lucystrother