I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.
Tag Archives: Literary Theory
Why I Think the Way I Think
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett Comments closed
Who Determines What a Work Means?
I share a copy of a talk I gave on how literary interpretations are decided, focusing on theorists Stanley Fish and Hans Robert Jauss.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Hans Robert Jauss, Reader Response Theory, Stanley Fish Comments closed
Literature as a Basis for Social Change
Italian activist Antonio Gramsci believed that the common people have an unconscious philosophy that, if harnessed, can become the basis for social change. I argue that they also have unconscious literary taste that can also be harnessed.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, class struggle, liberation movements, organic intellectuals, Prison Notebooks Comments closed
Can Lit Help Build an Egalitarian World?
Neo-Marxist literary theory calls for us to see literature as relevant to building an egalitarian society.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Frederic Jameson, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton Comments closed
How Is Lit Useful? Let Me Count the Ways
A recent issue of “New Literary History” explores a number of ways that literature is useful.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Lolita, reader response, utilitarianism, Vladimir Nabokov Comments closed
Great Political Novels Not Agenda Driven
Great political novels are rich in spiritual attitude. Poor ones are agenda driven.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Easter 1916", American Pastoral, Berger's Daughter, fathers and sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, Nadine Gordimer, Natalia Ginzburg, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, political novel, snow, Stendahl, V.S. Naipaul, Vargas Llosa, William Butler Yeats Comments closed
A Lit Theory that Affirms Readers
The students in my “Theories of the Reader ” course found the theorists we read affirming.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged English Education, Hans Robert Jauss, Norman Holland, Reader Response Theory, Wayne Booth, Wolfgang Iser Comments closed
