Robert Dale Parker

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)

Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies

How to Interpret Literature

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

A Reader for Literary and Cultural Studies

Critical Theory

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.

Robert Dale Parker

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