How To Interpret Literature

Parker, Robert Dale

New York, Oxford University Press

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, Fourth Edition, presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. The only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies with cultural studies, this text provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies from the 1930s to the present. It is the only up-to-date survey of literary theory that devotes extensive treatment to queer studies, postcolonial and race studies, environmental criticism, and disability studies. How to Interpret Literature is ideal as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings, like Robert Dale Parker's Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Oxford University Press

Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, Fourth Edition, presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. The only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies with cultural studies, this text provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies from the 1930s to the present. It is the only up-to-date survey of literary theory that devotes extensive treatment to queer studies, postcolonial and race studies, environmental criticism, and disability studies. How to Interpret Literature is ideal as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings, like Robert Dale Parker's Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies.

Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. Ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in literary and critical theory, this is the only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies with cultural studies, including film. Robert Dale Parker provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies since the 1930s, including those often omitted from other texts. He includes chapters on New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, Queer Studies, Marxism, Historicism and Cultural Studies, Postcolonial and Race Studies, and Reader Response. Parker weaves connections among chapters, showing how these different ways of thinking respond to and build upon each other. Through these exchanges, he prepares students to join contemporary dialogues in literary and cultural studies. Parker's engaging writing style relates directly to today's students and their daily lives. He underscores the connections between critical theory and students' other coursework, as well as its links to their technologically filled lives. The text is enhanced by charts, text boxes that address frequently asked questions, photos, and a bibliography. Intellectually challenging yet remarkably readable--and devoted to the interpretation of both literary and cultural studies--How to Interpret Literature stands out from other surveys of critical theory. Its flexible format makes this volume ideal as either a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings.

Designed for upper level courses in theory and criticism often required of English majors, this survey of key critical approaches to literature offers a fresh and accessible approach to the major movements in criticism. How to Interpret Literature updates the standard approaches to criticism, such as Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, and introduces cutting-edge areas of study for both student and instructor, such as Queer Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Reader Response Theory. The informal tone engages readers and helps them to grasp the intimate connections not only between critical theory and their studies, but also its application to their lives outside the classroom. The volume is a nice counterpoint to our often-used and more formal work by Guerin et al, A Handbook Of Critical Approaches to Literature 5e, (OUP 12/04).

The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression uncovers a forgotten side of modernism: the literature of unemployment and poverty in the 1930s, particularly fiction and poetry about people starving on the street or struggling on welfare, people who often don't know where they'll find their next meal or whether they'll find someplace to sleep. They spend the night on park benches or in filthy flophouses, or they trade sex for food and shelter, or they starve. Time itself changes. For the starving poor standing for hours and hours in a breadline, the speed of modern culture slows down. Parker expands on previous studies of the 1930s by recovering the fiction and poetry of dozens of forgotten writers and reading them together with political cartoons and with underknown writing by such acclaimed or understudied writers as Langston Hughes, Tom Kromer, Dorothy West, and Martha Gellhorn. From an age so immersed in despair and suffering that many writers came to doubt the very idea of literary aesthetics, this book rescues a vast archive of literary analogues to the famous documentary photographs that burned the Depression into American visual memory. It shapes a collective portrait and interpretation of a nearly lost literary history that represents a nation, its crisis, and its literature of crisis from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression

Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, Third Edition, presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. The only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies with cultural studies, this text provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies since the 1930s, including those often omitted from other texts. It is also the only up-to-date survey of literary theory that devotes extensive treatment to Queer Theory and Postcolonial and Race Studies. How to Interpret Literature is ideal as a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings such as Robert Dale Parker's Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. Distinctive Features * A conversational and engaging tone that speaks directly to today's students * Wider coverage than any book of its kind * A rich assortment of pedagogical features (charts, text boxes, photos, and suggestions for further reading)

How To Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

Offering a refreshing combination of accessibility and intellectual rigor, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, Second Edition, presents an up-to-date, concise, and wide-ranging historicist survey of contemporary thinking in critical theory. The only book of its kind that thoroughly merges literary studies with cultural studies, this text provides a critical look at the major movements in literary studies since the 1930s, including those often omitted from other texts. It is also the only up-to-date survey of literary theory that devotes extensive treatment to Queer Theory and Postcolonial and Race Studies. How to Interpret Literature, Second Edition, is ideal as either a stand-alone text or in conjunction with an anthology of primary readings such as Robert Dale Parker's Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES * Uses a conversational and engaging tone that speaks directly to today's students * Covers a variety of theoretical schools--including New Criticism, Structuralism, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Marxism--weaving connections among chapters to show how these different movements respond to and build on each other * Offers a rich assortment of pedagogical features (charts, text boxes that address frequently asked questions, photos, and a bibliography)

Literary

A wide-ranging and refreshingly up-to-date anthology of primary readings, Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies, edited by Robert Dale Parker, presents a provocative mix of contemporary and classic essays in critical theory. From the foundational ideas of Marx and Freud to key writings by Fanon and Foucault, the essays in this collection represent the most influential ideas in modern critical thought and in the contemporary interpretation of literature and culture. Ideal as a stand-alone reader or as a companion to a critical theory survey--including How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, also by Robert Dale Parker--this collection of seminal readings invites students to join in the ongoing debates and controversies of critical discussion, reading, writing, and interpretation. DISTINCTIVE FEATURES * Provides a comprehensive selection of key works that speak to students' needs and interests without overwhelming them with too many selections * Offers clear, brief, and engaging headnotes at the beginning of each selection that place the essay in context (i.e., what the essay responds to or what responds to it) and elucidate its key arguments * Includes key pieces from cultural studies critics not always well known in literary studies, including selections on youth culture by Dick Hebdige, Angela McRobbie, and Tricia Rose * Provides a glossary of critical terms, giving students a quick and reliable in-text resource * Covers a variety of theoretical schools--from New Criticism, Structuralism, and Deconstruction to Feminism, Queer Studies, and Postcolonial and Race Studies--weaving connections among chapters to show how these different movements respond to and build on each other * Organizes selections by theoretical school, unfolding chronologically and matching the organization of Parker's popular How to Interpret Literature * Features "see also" recommendations that connect different essays and critical movements from across the volume

Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies

The Invention of Native American Literature

In an original, widely researched, and accessibly written book, Robert Dale Parker helps redefine the study of Native American literature by focusing on issues of gender and literary form. Among the writers Parker highlights are Thomas King, John Joseph Mathews, D'Arcy McNickle, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Ray A. Young Bear, some of whom have previously received little scholarly attention.Parker proposes a new history of Native American literature by reinterpreting its concerns with poetry, orality, and Indian notions of authority. He also addresses representations of Indian masculinity, uncovering Native literature's recurring fascination with restless young men who have nothing to do, or who suspect or feel pressured to believe that they have nothing to do. The Invention of Native American Literature reads Native writing through a wide variety of shifting historical contexts. In its commitment to historicizing Native writing and identity, Parker's work parallels developments in scholarship on other minority literatures and is sure to provoke controversy.

Arts & Photography

Cornell University Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parker, Robert Dale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Parker, Robert Dale

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Parker, Robert Dale. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

How To Interpret Literature

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

The Literature of Extreme Poverty in the Great Depression

How To Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

Critical Theory: A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies

The Invention of Native American Literature