Reorientations: Critical Theories & Pedagogies

Abstract

thought, appeals to senses through dramatic spectacle. He insisted that people respond and think, applying creative applications to basic principles. Both Coleridge and Hazlitt refer to Shakespeare's plays to reader's enthusiasm and sympathetic imagination which can better be gained by reading, attending stage presentations. Lamb's argument that theatre overwhelms senses specific pictorial images obscuring intellectual meaning of tragedies, anticipates twentieth-century film criticism which agrees with Romantics that text should be at core of any dramatic production (165). Heller indicates that true interpretation ofHazlitt's criticism shows that he, as well as other Romantics, were all interested in audience. Hazlitt believed that as playwright helps to identify characters, best literary criticism should arouse reader's imagination (99). Heller believes that the experience of reading Hazlitt's criticism is unique because he establishes intimate bonds between and dramatic characters, and between his own sensibility and that of reader (100). She emphasizes significance of Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt in her last chapter on twentieth-century views of drama, because Romantics were crusaders against timeless problems of idolatry of actors, tendency to compensate for bad scripts spectacle, and elevation of senses over imagination. Since Coleridge, Lamb, and Hazlitt were trying to educate audiences through their own drama criticism, Heller bridges Romantic concerns those of today. She concludes that concern readers is related to writer's view of purpose of literature and his or her approach to education (167). Plan to read this study; Heller's approach is a worthwhile educational experience. ANN MARGARET MARLOWE Missouri Southern State College BRUCE HENRICKSEN and THAIS E. MORGAN, eds. Reorientations: Critical Theories & Pedagogies. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990. 275 p. 1 he past two decades have witnessed an unprecedented boom in books on critical theories. But, as Terry Eagleton has said, not much of this theoretical revolution has yet spread beyond a circle of specialists and enthusiasts: it has still to make its full impact on student of literature and general reader (Literary Theory: An Introduction, Minneapolis: U ofMinnesota P, 1983, vii). This collection of thirteen essays by noted theoristteachers, divergent backgrounds and interests, is a timely and important attempt to explore and analyze impact of contemporary critical theories upon pedagogical practices in teaching of English literature and composition whether at a junior college or at a university. Addressing a wide range of issues related to literary canon, curricula, and pedagogy from standpoint of gender, race, class, culture, history, and politics, essays demonstrate how theory is significantly changing way we teach.