Literary theory of the twentieth century in the Anglo-American tradition forms a coherent whole, dividing into discrete clusters. This theory is riddled with purely logical problems inherent in its enterprise, resulting from the fact that Modernist theory develops as an offshoot of Romanticism. Such fundamental flaws, or discontents, afflict all Modernist theory, from Russian Formalism through Structuralism and Deconstruction. The problems of Modernist theory cannot be solved; at most we can resolve to take theory in a new direction.

What provoked the fierce and systematic 'will to experiment' that was Modernism? Paranoia--thought especially to afflict those whose identities were founded on professional expertise--was described in the contemporary psychiatric literature as the violent imposition of system onto life's randomness. Modernism's great writers--Conrad, Ford, Lewis, Lawrence--both lived and wrote about these psychopathies of expertise.

Nasr Hamid Abu Zayd, the contentious Egyptian thinker, has proposed different ideas about the revelation and the Qur’an and encountered with different reactions. He made endeavor to provide some natural and non metaphysical explanations for the Islamic phenomena. In this regard he went through the miraculous feature of the Qur’an differently and reduced it to a cultural-literary phenomenon that everyone who knows Arabic takes it as a fundamental cultural text. Analyzing the literature and the linguistic mechanism of the Qur’an (...) from the viewpoint of the current literary criticism will show its role in the creation of history and culture. This view is radically different from the viewpoint of faithful people because it reduces the religious attitude to a cultural atmosphere in which the Qur’an is like the other masterpieces which may be literary criticized. The content of the Qur’an, in this kind of criticism, is ignored while in the current literary criticism the content is heeded too. (shrink)

Lenin, the great teacher of the proletariat, was deeply concerned with both the development of socialist literature and the problem of the correct critical acceptance of the literary heritage by the proletariat. Lenin frequently spoke of the works of Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Nekrasov, Shchedrin, Chekov, and others. Among the western European classical authors he particularly respected Shakespeare, Goethe, Heine, Hugo, Dickens, and Zola. In the brilliant classical writings which Lenin has left us he frequently made use of (...) artistic images, first molded in classical literary works, with which the people were familiar in order to expound problems of a theoretical nature. Furthermore he used them as tools for carrying on ideological education for the people. For example, in his writings Materialism and Empiriocriticism, and "The Marxist Critics and the Land Question," he used the image of Voroshilov, the false man of learning in Turgenev's novel Smoke, to elucidate a problem; he used the satirical images of bourgeois liberals from Shchedrin to reveal the basic nature of the enslavement and oppression of the people by the reactionary party, and so on. In addition, Lenin has left us in his works many incisive views directly related to the problem of the critical acceptance of the literacy heritage. They constitute an indivisible part of Lenin's theoretical estate. To study new Lenin's theories on the problem of the critical acceptance of the literacy heritage can be of great help to us today for our own correct treatment of the classical literacy heritage. (shrink)

Mind and matter.--Moral nerve.--Herbert Spencer as a moralist.--Huxley as a moralist.--Substitutional morals: the principle of punishment.--Literary and scientific verdicts.--The genesis of modern kindliness.--Stuart Mill.--Thomas Carlyle.--The French revolution.--Epoch-making incidents and persons.--The slow change in the fundamental characteristics of peoples and individuals.--Emerson on Napoleon.--Goldwin Smith.--Material prosperity and religion.--Nerve forces as totalities.--The evolution of the direct man (direct brain).

A culturally influential sub-discipline within literary studies, literary theory has developed in parallel form in other arts and social science disciplines, so that one might refer to "cultural theory" or "social theory" as well, or even just to "theory." It's as familiar as the word "postmodern" and as tricky as "deconstruction." What is it about? What is at stake? Theory is about rationality. This book's title invites two different interpretations of what it might mean to say so. For (...) many, the essence of literary theory is the unmasking and redescription of rationality in other terms. Put ironically, rationality is male; rationality is white; rationality is repression.... The book's title, however, can also be read in a second way. On this reading, rationality itself is the essence of literary theory and central to literature, art, and society. Certain conceptions of what it entails can be problematic; the critique in the first way of reading the title remains relevant. Yet one can affirm rationality as integral to human flourishing, including the processes of producing, analyzing, and enjoying literature, art, and culture. This book provides readers with a clear overview of theory's development and the abiding presence of its concern with the status of rationality across its forms. (shrink)