The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory by Jeffrey R. Di Leo

Abstract

 Reviews excuse for otherwise respectable translators to talk dirty. A particularly interesting pattern emerges in the case of Ovid, whose popularity not only alternates with that of Virgil, but in different periods homes in either on the works dealing with exile or on those dealing with love and metamorphosis. ere will be few, if any, readers of this study who are familiar with all the twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors evoked here, and so a degree of summary is oen required, something that is more successful in the case of the poetic works than the more narrative texts, which require lengthier exposition, but the ground covered remains impressive. is is a rewarding study which inspires regret for the passing of the age of the classical education. S U D C e Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural eory. Ed. by J R. D L. London: Bloomsbury. . xiii+ pp. £. ISBN ––– –. e Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural eory is the latest in a long line of texts aiming to introduce students to the body of theoretical work that underpins contemporary literary and cultural studies. is has always been a difficult task, drawing as it does on so many other disciplines; any appraisal of scholarship relevant to the study of culture is necessarily commodious. is volume, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo, gamely takes on the task with a two-pronged approach: twentyseven essays devoted to different topics in theory, and an encyclopedia. is takes in well-known ‘major’ thinkers in the field (from eodor Adorno to Raymond Williams) as well as key concepts. Some of these concepts are well known and expected in such a context—intertextuality, negritude, patriarchy, and so on. At other moments, this handbook takes the opportunity to challenge more basic concepts that theory previously took for granted or erased, for example with an entry on the ‘Professor’ (founded, essentially, in the welcome addition of ‘University Studies’ to the roster of relevant subdisciplines). Di Leo also includes theory which has become widely popular only in the last ten or fieen years, such as Object-Oriented Ontology and Actor-Network eory. A close study of this book should certainly prepare students with the background knowledge generally required to rub along in even a graduate seminar in the literary and cultural disciplines. However, for all that it effectively maps the state of the art as it is widely perceived , the volume does miss other opportunities to shape the discourse of theory for the better, and remains relatively conservative in terms of the discussion it admits and what is therefore marked as important. Despite the protestations in the Introduction that there are new communities of theory which ‘may not go by recognizable names like the feminism, deconstruction, and psychoanalysis of the last century’ (p. ), there remains a great deal of work to be done on the ways we conceive of theory as a terrain. For instance, only one essay is set aside for ‘Race and Postcolonial Studies’; in an era of thriving decolonization movements, MLR, .,   and conversely of resurgent public displays of white supremacy both without the academy and within, it is disappointing that the editors have chosen to collapse a nuanced and vital field of study into a single chapter. Its author, Nicole Simek, takes on the Herculean task with aplomb, sweeping from the historical origins of race as a construct through the place of culture in resistance, and the role of neo-liberalism in suppressing liberation movements, finally ending with Édouard Glissant’s concept of the donner-avec. But there is only so much one essay can do, and to collapse generations of thought across the world into a few pages is a poor showing; a better volume would have seen chapters on ‘Black Radical ought’, ‘Decolonization’, ‘Whiteness’, and so on, and a greater integration of these ideas into the other chapters as well. While concepts key in critical race studies, such as thanatopolitics and diaspora, are covered in the encyclopedia section, one feels that they are relegated there, while the more prominently placed essays most oen do not examine their own whiteness and that of the field they are designed...