This book provides a wide-ranging guide to current directions in literary criticism. Introducing Criticism in the 21st Century develops out of continental thinking and insights from poststructuralism, feminism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis and introduces new modes of ‘hybrid’ criticism which are emerging at the beginning of the 21st century. The chapters provide thought-provoking overviews of critical thinking at the cutting edge. Each of the authors explains in lucid terms the various contours of their discourses while bringing these into sharp relief for the student reader through readings of canonical novels, poems, plays, films and websites. It addresses the various ‘states of criticism’ at the beginning of the century. Each chapter explores and explains aspects of the theory it addresses, provides a brief 3-4 page reading of a literary text, film text or website and concludes with questions for further consideration, an annotated bibliography and a supplementary bibliography. The critical readings provide a teaching and study resource and demonstrate the scope of theoretical applications.
Contents
One Sigh Fits All: Critical and Creative Practice in the Teaching of Creative Writing, K Featherstone
Memory work and Criticism, T Caeners
Multimodality, and Linguistic Approaches to Literary Study, A Maioranni
Philosophies of Literary Reading in a Digital Age, K Hext
Giorgio Agamben’s Gestural Nineteenth Century, A Murray
Thing Theory, J Frenk
Critical Making in the Digital Humanities, R Whitson
Spectrality and subjectivity: Phenomenological criticism from Kant to Badiou, J Wolfreys
Affect Theory, C Berberich
Critical Climate Change, T Cohen
Criticism and ‘the Animal’, L Turner