Critical Lenses

The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms

The Bedford Glossary includes short definitions and overviews of literary terms (like foil character) and of major literary theories (like Formalism). It makes a great starting resource to begin research into the Critical Lenses because it will list the major ideas of each theory, major thinkers that have contributed to it, and indicate some important terms.

The Glossary can also be helpful gaining some insight into certain books because it will use texts to demonstrate certain literary concepts. Check the Index for text titles to find what the glossary offers about them.

Critical Lens Overviews

The Critical Lens Overview offers a breakdown of each of the major Critical Lenses that we use in this class. It offers a less in-depth overview than The Bedford Glossary, a list of major theorists, and key terms.

This resource is based on Dr. Kristi Siegel's "Introduction to Modern Literary Theory" course.

Citation: Siegel, Kristi. "Introduction to Modern Literary Theory." Mount Mary College, Jan. 2006, https://www.kristisiegel.com/theory.htm.

A Field Guide: Specialized Critical Approaches to Literature

This field guide offers a quick overview of different critical lenses with a quick application to Flannery O'Connor's works, some disadvantages of the theory, and key thinkers who have shaped the way the theory develops.

Citation: Pagaard, Timothy L. "A Field Guide: Specialized Critical Approaches to Literature."

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory

Contemporary Literary and Cultural Theory: The Johns Hopkins Guide is a clear, accessible, and detailed overview of the most important thinkers and topics in the field. Written by specialists from across disciplines, its entries cover contemporary theory from Adorno to Žižek, providing an informative and reliable introduction to a vast, challenging area of inquiry. Materials include newly commissioned articles along with essays drawn from The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, known as the definitive resource for students and scholars of literary theory and for philosophical reflection on literature and culture.

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction – Second Edition

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction provides an accessible overview of major figures and movements in literary theory and criticism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It is designed for students at the undergraduate level or for others needing a broad synthesis of the long history of literary theory. An introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism; further chapters survey theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century. For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches.

The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The new edition has been updated throughout, including new or expanded coverage of Marxist theory, disability studies, affect theory, and Critical Race Theory.

A Companion to Literary Theory

A Companion to Literary Theory is a collection of 36 original essays, all by noted scholars in their field, designed to introduce the modes and ideas of contemporary literary and cultural theory. Arranged by topic rather than chronology, in order to highlight the relationships between earlier and most recent theoretical developments, the book groups its chapters into seven convenient sections..

Allotting proper space to all areas of theory most relevant today, this comprehensive volume features three dozen masterfully written chapters covering such subjects as: Anglo-American New Criticism; Chicago Formalism; Russian Formalism; Derrida and Deconstruction; Empathy/Affect Studies; Foucault and Poststructuralism; Marx and Marxist Literary Theory; Postcolonial Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Theory; Freudian Psychoanalytic Criticism; Cognitive Literary Theory; Evolutionary Literary Theory; Cybernetics and Posthumanism; and much more.