Critical Theory Links

Don't be lazy:  the Web is sometimes sexy and convenient (click here to skip down to Web Links), but print is still your most reliable mode of high-quality info.  Get to the library and discover the ancient pleasures of roaming through the stacks!  How to roam more efficiently?  Searching electronic catalogs and databases is an art that can only be learned through practice, patience and frustration--so get cracking.  Still, there are some dependable short cuts.  Your first stop is Eagleton's bibliographies, both the formal one beginning on p. 217, and the more recent one contained in the "Notes" section of the Afterword (213-16).  You can ask me for ideas about other more recent resources, especially books and journals in the area of post-colonial and minority discourse studies.

Another good idea is simply to browse the shelves of the library in the relevant Library of Congress subject heading section(s). Most books of interest to us will be in the PN75's through the PN99's. In addition, there are dozens of scholarly journals publishing essays relevant to the concerns of our class; ask me for the titles of some prominent ones if you'd like to take a look.

Next, there are several books in the library that you should know about, several of which are in the Reference section (i.e., they don't circulate) and two of which I've put on reserve:

• Hugh C. Holman and William Harmon's A Handbook to Literature, 7th ed., includes thumbnail sketches of many theoretical schools, and quick definitions of hundreds of critical and theoretical terms, both old-fashioned and contemporary.  (Reference PN41 .H6 1992)  Good alternatives to this book are:
• Chris Baldick's Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Ref. PN41 .C67 1990) and
• M. H. Abrams's A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed. (Ref. PN41 .A814 1993), which contains a good bluffer's guide to literary theory in the back.
• Similar books dedicated exclusively to theory are nearby:
• Joseph Childers and Gary Hentzi's Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism (Ref. PN81 .C65 1995),
• Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth's Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism (Ref. PN81 .J54 1994), which also exists in an on-line, hypertext version (click on the link above).
• Jeremy Hawthorn's Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory (Ref. PN44.5 .H37 1994), and
• Irena R. Makaryk's Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory (Ref. PN81 .E52 1993).

• Lentricchia, Frank and Thomas McLaughlin, eds. Critical Terms for Literary Study. Not a handbook, exactly, but a collection of twenty-eight essays which discuss, in relatively plain language, some of the principal concerns of contemporary literary theory. Each essay is centered around one particularly rich or suggestive term: "discourse," "unconscious," "indeterminacy," "gender," "ideology," etc. Also includes a very good bibliography. REFERENCE / PN81 .C84 1995

• Newton, K. M., ed. Twentieth-Century Literary Theory: A Reader. A kind of handbook, and a very good one. It provides brief headnotes on most of the principal critical and theoretical schools of the 20th century, and includes fifty quick and dirty excerpts from important theoretical texts, a few of which appear in our xeroxed course reader. PN94 .T87 1988

• Richter, David H., ed. The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends. Contains most of the historical critical essays to be presented in the final five weeks of the class, as well as longer contemporary theoretical essays which are a bit beyond our ken or for which we don't have time. In addition, Richter provides reasonably good introductory essays on Marxism, Formalism, Poststructuralism, and so on. (The library doesn't own this, but you can borrow a copy from me.)

• Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth's Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism exists in an on-line, hypertext version (as I mentioned above).  When presented with the confusing choice between "Contents," "List of Entries," and "Index of Topics" on the Online Guide's front page, I find it most helpful to begin with the "List of Entries."  If you don't find what you're looking for (or a link that leads you to what you're looking for) there, then try the "Index."
N.B.:  If you connect to the Guide from off-campus, you will have to configure your Web Browser to use the HSU Library's "proxy server" (http://library.humboldt.edu/proxy.pac).  If you don't know how to do this, you can find more detailed instructions on the Library's Web Page.
 
• A short alternative is the Glossary of critical and theoretical terms for Engl 260, "Introduction to Literary Study," by Prof. Deborah Wyrick of North Carolina State University.  Much less comprehensive, but handy if you're in a hurry.

 
• "The Voice of the Shuttle" at UCSB aims to keep track of all the best Internet resources in literary study.  It has not only a comprehensive general page for students and researchers in English, but a specific page devoted to literary theory.  The theory page has exhuaustive hypertext links to many other resources (as always, of widely varying quality), including separate pages for gender studies, women's studies and queer theory; cultural studies; minority studies; philosophy; and literary criticism.  You can also connect here to on-line theoretical journals; full-text versions of classic texts by Aristotle, Plato, Marx, et al.; homepages, listservs and discussion groups dedicated to major theorists and schools of theory; etc., etc.  Many of the remaining sites (below) are also indexed at VoS.

 
• The Cultural Studies and Critical Theory page of  The English Server at Carnegie Mellon University catalogs academic essays and articles available online.  Though it breaks down Cultural Studies and Critical Theory into many sub-categories, the English Server also has separate sites devoted to Feminism, Gender & Sexuality, Economic and Social Theory, Modern and Classical Philosophy, and Race.
  
  
• k.i.s.s. of the panopticon (Dougie Bickett, New Media Research Lab, University of Washington) exists, among other reasons, to "give people a quick, user-friendly, one-stop shopping guide to [...] cultural/critical theory."  "[B]eyond a simple rehashing of the big ideas out there," says Bickett, "it is our modest (and populist) aim to make cultural theory both straightforward and intelligible -- hence the subtitle 'k.i.s.s.' ('Keep It Simple Stupid') -- as well as applicable to those of you asking yourself 'What does it all mean?'"  An attractive and generally reliable site.
  
  
• Worldwide Philosophy Resources.  An astounding site (thanks to Emily Weems for the reference) that must be explored to be fully appreciated.  Plan to spend some time.
  
  
  
• Sarah Zupko's Cultural Studies Center indexes sites devoted to individual theorists and critics.
• Cultural Studies Resource Center (Routledge)
• The Black Cultural Studies Site (unaffiliated)
• Postmodern Thought (University of Colorado, Denver)
• Deepika Petraglia-Bahri's Postcolonial Studies site at Emory University includes pages devoted to Frantz Fanon and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (including key terms in her work), as well as glosses of such concepts as "essentialism" and "Orientalism."
• www.theory.org.uk:  theory, gender and identity resources (David Gauntlett, Institute of Communications Studies, University of Leeds)
• Contemporary Literary Theory (John Lye, Brock University)
• Critical Theory (Bedford/St. Martin's Press):  short biographies and selected links on a handful of theorists.  Currently under construction--and of marginal value (so far).
• The Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy
 
Other assorted links:
• Carol Lloyd, "I Was Michel Foucault's Love Slave" (Salon, February 10, 1997):  a doubter rails self-deprecatingly against the theory industry
• Caleb Crain, "Pleasure Principles: Queer Theorists and Gay Journalists Wrestle Over the Politics of Sex" (Lingua Franca, October 1997)
• Scott McLemee, "Critic at the Carnival" (The Nation, December 29, 1997):  a useful introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin, via a review of Caryl Emerson's The First Hundred Years of Mikhail Bakhtin
• Adam Shatz, "Up From Tuskegee" (The Nation, January 12, 1998):  a survey of W.E.B. DuBois's life and thought, in the guise of a review of Adolph Reed's W.E.B DuBois and American Political Thought
• Marshall Berman, "Unchained Melody" (The Nation, May 11, 1998):  a review essay of the sesquicentennial edition of Marx & Engels's The Communist Manifesto