From the Personal Heresy to Ecocriticism: Moving Canons, Creating Reading Communities

Abstract

Il presente saggio esamina alcune delle forme che gli studi letterari anglofoni hanno preso nel corso degli ultimi due secoli, ponendo un’enfasi particolare sulle comunita di lettori. Partendo dalla controversia su “The Personal Heresy” degli anni ’30, si riassumono le origini dello studio istituzionalizzato della letteratura inglese, nella Londra del XIX secolo, per poi affrontare la Nuova Critica e i suoi vari approcci, ‘teoria’ che ha dominato lo studio accademico della letteratura negli ultimi decenni del XX secolo. Essa si oppone al formalismo con approcci eticamente impegnati, come il postcolonialismo e l’ecocriticismo, concludendo che, nelle loro iterazioni piu altruiste, questi due approcci parlino a, e per conto di, una comunita di lettori inclusiva e planetaria e offrano la possibilita di un futuro eco-sostenibile. DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-55 Bibliografia Achebe, Chinua. 1988. An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad ’ s Heart of Darkness . Hopes and Impediments. Selected Essays, 1965-1987 . Oxford: Heinemann, 1-13. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths & Helen Tiffin. 1989. The Empire Writes Back , Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures . London-New York: Routledge. Bakhtin, Mikhail. 1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays . Austin: University of Texas Press. Brooks, Cleanth. 1968 [1947]. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry . London: Methuen. Campbell, Joseph. 1949. The Hero with a Thousand Faces . Princeton (NJ): Pantheon Books. Conrad, Joseph. 1994 [1899]. Heart of Darkness . Harmondsworth: Penguin. DeLoughrey, Elizabeth & George B. Handley eds. 2011. Postcolonial Ecologies: Literatures of the Environment . Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press. Eagleton, Terry. 1983. Literary Theory: An Introduction . Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Fish, Stanley. 1980. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities . Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 . New York: Pantheon. Foucault, Michel. 1986. Of Other Places. Diacritics , 16, 1: 22-27. Ghosh, Amitav. 1986. The Circle of Reason . London: Hamish Hamilton. Ghosh, Amitav. 1996. The Calcutta Chromosome . London: Picador. Ghosh, Amitav. 2004. The Hungry Tide . London: Harper Collins. Ghosh, Amitav. 2016. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable . Chicago-London: The University of Chicago Press. Gilbert, Helen. 2001. Postcolonial Plays: An Anthology . London-New York: Routledge. Gowdy, Barbara. 2000 [1998]. The White Bone . London: Picador. Huggan, Graham & Helen Tiffin. 2010. Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment . Oxford-New York: Routledge. James, C. L. R. 1969 [1963]. Beyond a Boundary . London: Hutchinson. Massey Doreen. 1994. Space, Place and Gender . Cambridge: Polity Press. Massey, Doreen. 2005. For Space . London: Sage. Milton, John. 1957. Complete Poems and Major Prose . New York: The Odyssey Press. Palmer, David. 1965. The Rise of English Studies: An Account of the Study of English Language and Literature from Its Origins to the Making of the Oxford English School . London: University of Hull/Oxford University Press. Pope, Alexander. 1978. Poetic Works . Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rangarajan, Swarnalatha. 2014. Engaging with Prakriti : A Survey of Ecocritical Praxis in India. Greg Garrard ed. The Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism . Oxford-New York: Oxford University Press, 527-536. Soja, Edward. 2011 [1989]. Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory [2 nd ed.]. London: Verso. Tennyson, Alfred Lord. 1992. Selected Poems . New York: Dover. Thieme, John. 2016. Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place . London: Palgrave Macmillan. Tillyard, E. M. W. 1930. Milton . New York: Dial Press. Tillyard, E. M. W. & C. S. Lewis. 1939. The Personal Heresy: A Controversy , London: Oxford University Press. Wimsatt, W. K. & Monroe C. Beardsley. 1946. The Intentional Fallacy. Sewanee Review , 54, 3: 468-488. Wimsatt, W. K. & Monroe C. Beardsley. 1949. The Affective Fallacy. Sewanee Review , 57, 1: 31-55.