AF/M001 Reading Practice / Reading Theory
Suggestions for secondary reading
You may want to begin by reading a general introduction such as
Catherine Belsey, Critical Practice (London: Routledge, 2nd edition 2002)
Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: OUP, 1997)
Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2nd edition 1996)
or reading further collections of essays e.g.
Peter Collier and Helga Geyer-Ryan (eds), Literary Theory Today (London: Polity, 1990)
Josué Harari (ed), Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Postmodernist Criticism (London:
Methuen, 1980)
David Lodge, Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: An Anthology (Harlow: Longman,
2000).
You may also wish to read further primary texts by the authors on whom you are focusing
(a few suggestions are included below). The categories below overlap to some extent, of
course; and there are many more works that you would find useful.
Block 1
Further reading on structuralism, semiotics and structuralist literary criticism
Internet version of Saussure's Course in General Linguistics:
http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/saussure.htm
Roland Barthes 'Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative' in Image: Music: Text
(London: Fontana, 1977)
— ‘Myth Today’ in Mythologies (London: Cape, 1972)
Seán Burke, The death and return of the author: criticism and subjectivity in Barthes,
Foucault and Derrida (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2nd edition 1998)
Jonathan Culler, Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of
Literature (London: Routledge, 1975)
Richard and Fernande DeGeorge (eds.) The Structuralists from Marx to Lévi-Strauss (New
York: Anchor: 1972)
Umberto Eco, The role of the reader: explorations in the semiotics of texts (Bloomington;
London : Indiana University Press , 1979).
Terence Hawkes, Structuralism and semiotics (London: Methuen, 1977)
Roman Jakobson, Language in Literature (Cambridge, MA, 1987)
Christopher Johnson, Claude Lévi-Strauss : the formative years (Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press, 2003)
Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (translators), Russian formalist criticism. Four essays
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965)
Paul de Man, 'Semiology and Rhetoric' in Allegories of Reading (Yale: Yale UP, 1979)
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale (Austin, 1968)
Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (London: Fontana, 1974)
Sturrock, John, (ed.) Structuralism and Since (Oxford: OUP, 1979)
Further Reading on Textuality and Barthes
Annette Lavers, Roland Barthes: Structuralism and After (Lonbdon: Methuen, 1982)
Michael Moriarty, Roland Barthes (Oxford: Polity, 1991)
Roland Barthes, 'The facts in the case of M. Valdemar' in David Lodge (ed). Modern
Criticism and Theory: An Anthology (Harlow: Longman, 2000)
Roland Barthes, The Pleasure of the Text (New York: Hill and Wang, 1975)
Michael Worton and Judith Still (eds.) Textuality and Sexuality (Manchester: Manchester
UP, 1993)
Further reading on deconstructive criticism
See also material above on Russian formalism etc.
Derek Attridge, The Singularity of Literature (London: Routledge, 2004)
Derek Attridge (ed.), Jacques Derrida: Acts of Literature (London: Routledge, 1992)
Leo Bersani, The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (New York: Columbia, 1986)
Timothy Clark, Derrida, Heidegger, Blanchot: Sources of Derrida’s Notion and Practice of
Literature (Cambridge: CUP, 1992)
Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs (London: Routledge, 1981)
Jacques Derrida, Acts of Literature (London: Routledge, 1991)
Rodolphe Gasché, The Tain of the Mirror (Cambrdige, MA: Harvard, 1986)
— Inventions of Difference (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1994)
— The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man (Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1998)
Marian Hobson, Jacques Derrida: opening lines (London: Routledge, 1998)
Howells, Christina, Derrida (London: Polity, 1998)
Christopher Johnson, Derrida: the scene of writing (London : Phoenix, 1997)
Paul de Man, Blindness and Insight (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1983)
— Allegories of Reading (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979)
— The Resistance to Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986)
— Aesthetic Ideology (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996)
Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London: Methuen , 1982)
Nicholas Royle, After Derrida (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995)
Lasse Thomassen (ed), The Derrida-Habermas reader (Edinburgh : Edinburgh University
Press, 2006)
Block 2
Alongside the general introductory guides listed in the secondary bibliography for block 1,
you may find the following useful for all sessions of this block:
Bersani, Leo, Homos (Cambridge Ma: Harvard University Press, 1995)
----The Freudian Body: Psychoanalysis and Art (New York: Columbia, 1986)
Bowie, Malcolm, Lacan (London: Fontana, 1991)
—Freud, Proust and Lacan : theory as fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1987)
Butler, Judith, The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1997)
Copjec, Joan, Read my Desire: Lacan Against the Historicists (Cambridge Ma: MIT Press,
1995)
Evans, Dylan, Critical Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis (London: Routledge, 2001)
Felman, Shoshana (ed.), Literature and Psychoanalysis (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press , 1982).
Fink, Bruce, The Lacanian Subject (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1996)
Mehlman, Jeffrey, 'Trimethyalmin: Freud's Analysis of a Specimen Dream', in Robert
Young (ed). Untying the Text (London: Routledge, 1981).
Mitchell, Juliet, Psychonalysis and Feminism: a Radical Reassessment of Freudian
Psychoanalysis (Harmondsworth: Allen Lane, 1974)
Mitchell, Juliet and Rose, Jacqueline (eds.), Feminine Sexuality: Jacques Lacan and the
école freudienne (London: Macmillan, 1982)
Rabaté, Jean-Michel, The Cambridge Companion to Lacan (Cambridge: CUP, 2003)
Wright, Elisabeth, Psychoanalytic Criticism (London: Methuen, 1984)
Wright, Elizabeth (ed.), Feminism and Psychoanaysis: a Critical Dictionary (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1992)
Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology (London: Verso, 1989)
—Enjoy Your Symptom! Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out (New York and London:
Routledge, 1992)
Zupančič, Alenka, Ethics of the Real (London: Verso, 2000)