Beyond Literary Analysis

"This book will make the case for multiple, diverse kinds of analysis to be taught in the high school English classroom. In addition to showing what written analysis looks like "in the wild," the authors will provide readers with a framework of fundamental analytical skills for instruction. Importantly, Marchetti and O'Dell will advocate for framing analytical writing around students' (of all levels and abilities) passions and expertise. And just as they do in their previous Heinemann book, Writing with Mentors, they will share resources for bringing many different kinds of analytical writing into the classroom"--

This anthology presents the results of the Second International Colloquium of the Narratology Research Group (Hamburg University). It engages in the exploration of approaches that broaden Narratology's realm. The contributions illustrate the transcendence of traditional models common to Narratology. They also reflect on the relevance of such a 'going beyond' as seen in more general terms: What interrelation can be observed between re-definition of object domain and re-definition of method? What potential interfaces with other methods and disciplines does the proposed innovation offer? Finally, what are the repercussions of the proposed innovation in terms of Narratology's self-definition? The innovative volume facilitates the inter-methodological debate between Narratology and other disciplines, enabling the conceptualization of a Narratology beyond traditional Literary Criticism.

Literary culture has become a form of popular culture over the last fifteen years thanks to the success of televised book clubs, film adaptations, big-box book stores, online bookselling, and face-to-face and online book groups. This volume offers the first critical analysis of mass reading events and the contemporary meanings of reading in the UK, USA, and Canada based on original interviews and surveys with readers and event organizers. The resurgence of book groups has inspired new cultural formations of what the authors call "shared reading." They interrogate the enduring attraction of an old technology for readers, community organizers, and government agencies, exploring the social practices inspired by the sharing of books in public spaces and revealing the complex ideological investments made by readers, cultural workers, institutions, and the mass media in the meanings of reading.

In Writing with Mentors, high school teachers Allison Marchetti and Rebekah O'Dell prove that the key to cultivating productive, resourceful writers-writers who can see value and purpose for writing beyond school-is using dynamic, hot-off-the-press mentor texts. In this practical guide, they provide savvy strategies for:--finding and storing fresh new mentor texts, from trusted traditional sources to the social mediums of the day --grouping mentor texts in clusters that show a diverse range of topics, styles, and approaches --teaching with lessons that demonstrate the enormous potential of mentor texts at every stage of the writing process.

For a long time now, readers and scholars have strained against the limits of traditional literary criticism, whose precepts--above all, "objectivity"--seem to have so little to do with the highly personal and deeply felt experience of literature. The Intimate Critique marks a movement away from this tradition. With their rich spectrum of personal and passionate voices, these essays challenge and ultimately breach the boundaries between criticism and narrative, experience and expression, literature and life. Grounded in feminism and connected to the race, class, and gender paradigms in cultural studies, the twenty-six contributors to this volume--including Jane Tompkins, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Shirley Nelson Garner, and Shirley Goek-Lin Lim--respond in new, refreshing ways to literary subjects ranging from Homer to Freud, Middlemarch to The Woman Warrior, Shiva Naipaul to Frederick Douglass. Revealing the beliefs and formative life experiences that inform their essays, these writers characteristically recount the process by which their opinions took shape--a process as conducive to self-discovery as it is to critical insight. The result--which has been referred to as "personal writing," "experimental critical writing," or "intellectual autobiography"--maps a dramatic change in the direction of literary criticism. Contributors. Julia Balen, Dana Beckelman, Ellen Brown, Sandra M. Brown, Rosanne Kanhai-Brunton, Suzanne Bunkers, Peter Carlton, Brenda Daly, Victoria Ekanger, Diane P. Freedman, Olivia Frey, Shirley Nelson Garner, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Melody Graulich, Gail Griffin, Dolan Hubbard, Kendall, Susan Koppelman, Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Linda Robertson, Carol Taylor, Jane Tompkins, Cheryl Torsney, Trace Yamamoto, Frances Murphy Zauhar

Beyond Literary Theory is not representative of any particular school of criticism. Its purpose is to demonstrate the scope and limits of critical theories based on logic, scientism, and psychoanalysis. Eduard H. Strauch allows readers to explore beyond literary theory to discover dimensions of human experience that define timeless literature.

This response to the current crisis in the field of literary studies describes the fundamental flaws of poststructuralist literary criticism, which has become a self-serving enterprise at the expense of scholarship at large and students in particular. Outlining an improved approach that meets the expectations of 21st-century students and teachers, the author proposes a new definition of the literary object of study which addresses the inconsistencies of the literary canon by including nontraditional narratives such as films, comic books and pop songs.

Beyond the Story: American Literary Fiction and the Limits of Materialism argues that theology is crucial to understanding the power of contemporary American stories. By drawing on the theories of M. M. Bakhtin, Christian personalism, and contemporary phenomenology, Lake argues that literary fiction activates an irreducibly personal intersubjectivity between author, reader, and characters. Stories depend on a dignity-granting valuation of the particular lives of ordinary people, which is best described as an act of love that mirrors the love of the divine. Through original readings of the fiction of Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, and others, Lake enters into a dialogue with postsecular theory and cognitive literary studies to reveal the limits of sociobiology’s approach to culture. The result is a book that will remind readers how storytelling continually reaffirms the transcendent value of human beings in an inherently personal cosmos. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of theology and literary studies, as well as a broad audience of readers seeking to engage on a deeper level with contemporary literature.