Literary Theories in Praxis

Abstract

Literary Theories in Praxis analyzes the ways in which critical theories are transformed into literary criticism and methodology. To demonstrate the application of this analysis, critical writings of Roland Barthes, Harold Bloom, Cleanth Brooks, Jacques Derrida, Northrop Frye, Norman Holland, Barbara Johnson, Jacques Lacan, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Scholes are examined in terms of the primary critical stance each author employs--New Critical, phenomenological, archetypal, structuralist/semiotic, sociological, psychoanalytic, reader-response, deconstructionist, or humanist. book is divided into nine sections, each with a prefatory essay explaining the critical stance taken in the selections that follow and describing how theory becomes literary criticism. In a headnote to each selection, Staton analyzes how the critic applies his or her critical methodology to the subject literary work. Shirley F. Staton's introduction sketches the overall philosophical positions and relationships among the various critical modes. The proverbially 'welcome addition to the field.' It has a surprising breadth and balance in these days of reluctant canonization and yet fierce ideological attitudes.--College Literature