After Strange Texts
208 pages, 6 x 9
1 B&W illustration
Paperback
Release Date:15 Mar 2016
ISBN:9780817302245
After Strange Texts
The Role of Theory in the Study of Literature
Edited by Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller
University of Alabama Press
After Strange Texts is a collection of essays that will help to advance discussion about the value and significance of literary theory. The editors, Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller, open the volume with a cogent and philosophically sophisticated survey of the contemporary theoretical scene, and they argue with particular force about the "inescapability" of theory. As Jay and Miller point out, "theory" means, among other things, the techniques by which critics and scholars undertake their "practical" work; if we say we are "against" theory or claim to practice "without" theory, then we are in a real sense simply deceiving ourselves.
All scholars subscribe to theories, and these are embedded in their criticism and scholarship. Whatever the excesses of (and differences between) deconstruction, feminism, the new historicism, and the other theories that Jay and Miller review, they share a commitment to heightening the teacher/critic's self-consciousness about the labor that he or she performs.
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All scholars subscribe to theories, and these are embedded in their criticism and scholarship. Whatever the excesses of (and differences between) deconstruction, feminism, the new historicism, and the other theories that Jay and Miller review, they share a commitment to heightening the teacher/critic's self-consciousness about the labor that he or she performs.
*
After Strange Texts is a fine collection of essays that will help to advance discussion about the value and significance of literary theory.’ —South Atlantic Modern Language Association
After Strange Texts displays a range and rigor that will both stimulate and challenge its readers, and it stands as an admirable contribution to the field.' —South Atlantic Review
Gregory S. Jay is the author of American Literature and the Culture Wars and America the Scrivener: Deconstruction and the Subject of Literary History.
David L. Miller is the author of Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father's Witness and The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 “Faerie Queene”
David L. Miller is the author of Dreams of the Burning Child: Sacrificial Sons and the Father's Witness and The Poem's Two Bodies: The Poetics of the 1590 “Faerie Queene”
