Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-15T20:24:59.258Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ideas of the Book and Histories of Literature: After Theory?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Peter D. McDonald
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The continuing fallout from the theory wars, evident not least in the nostalgic after-theory narrative that is still in vogue, has dissipated critical energy in contemporary literary studies. Rejecting that narrative, this essay calls for a review of the legacy of theory and the polemical oppositions that set it against other scholarly enterprises, like book history. In particular, it suggests that the theoretical interrogation of the category of literature in the past forty years fruitfully intersects with book history's investigation of the material conditions of literary production, opening up new possibilities for literary historiography, while also imposing new demands on it. The essay identifies two traditions of antiessentialist thought (the skeptical and the enchanted), considers the ontology of the printed literary text, and examines the legacies of, among others, Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu. (PDMcD)

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 121 , Issue 1: Special Topic: The History of the Book and the Idea of Literature , January 2006 , pp. 214 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Attridge, Derek. Peculiar Language. London: Methuen, 1988.Google Scholar
Attridge, Derek. “Singular Events: Literature, Invention, and Performance.” The Question of Literature. Ed. Bissell, ElizabethBeaumont. Manchester: U of Manchester P, 2002. 48–65.Google Scholar
Attridge, Derek. The Singularity of Literature. London: Routledge, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barthes, Roland. “Inaugural Lecture, Collège de France.” A Barthes Reader. Ed. Sontag, Susan. 2nd ed. London: Vintage, 2000. 457–78.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Lavers, Annette. London: Paladin, 1973.Google Scholar
Barthes, Roland. Writing Degree Zero. Trans. Lavers, Annette and Smith, Colin. New York: Hill, 2001. Trans. of Le degré zéro de l’écriture. Paris: Seuil, 1953.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. The Blanchot Reader. Ed. Holland, Michael. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.Google Scholar
Blanchot, Maurice. The Space of Literature. Trans. Smock, Ann. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1982. Trans. of L'espace littéraire.Google Scholar
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. London: Macmillan, 1995.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. Ed. Johnson, Randal. Cambridge: Polity, 1993.Google Scholar
Carroll, Noël. A Philosophy of Mass Art. Oxford: Clarendon, 1998.Google Scholar
Casanova, Pascale. La république mondiale des lettres. Paris: Seuil, 1999.Google Scholar
Cavallo, Guglielmo, and Chartier, Roger. Introduction. A History of Reading in the West. Ed. Cavallo and Chartier. Trans. Cochrane, Lydia G. Cambridge: Polity, 1999. 1–36.Google Scholar
Cunningham, Valentine. Reading after Theory. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002.Google Scholar
Darnton, Robert. “Censorship, a Comparative View: France, 1789—East Germany, 1989.” Historical Change and Human Rights. Ed. Hufton, Olwen. New York: Basic, 1995. 101–30.Google Scholar
de Man, Paul. The Resistance to Theory. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1986.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Acts of Literature. Ed. Attridge, Derek. London: Routledge, 1992.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever. Trans. Prenowitz, Eric. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Glas. Paris: Galilée, 1974.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Limited Inc. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1977.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2nd ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1997.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “La parole soufflée.” Writing and Difference. Trans. Bass, Alan. London: Routledge, 1978. 212–45.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. “Some Statements and Truisms about Neologisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and Other Small Seisisms.” The States of “Theory.” Ed. Carroll, David. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1994. 63–94.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques, and Roudinesco, Elisabeth. For What Tomorrow … a Dialogue. Trans. Fort, Jeff. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2004.Google Scholar
Docherty, Thomas. After Theory. London: Routledge, 1990.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. After Theory. London: Lane, 2003. New York: Penguin, 2004.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.Google Scholar
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.Google Scholar
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. “What Is an Author?” Modern Criticism and Theory. Ed. Lodge, David. London: Longman, 1988. 197–210.Google Scholar
Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. 1962. Cambridge: Polity, 1989.Google Scholar
Hartman, Geoffrey. “Words Not from on High.” Nowhere without No: In Memory of Maurice Blanchot. Ed. Hart, Kevin. Sydney: Vagabond, 2003. 33–38.Google Scholar
Kamuf, Peggy. The Division of Literature; or, The University in Deconstruction. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1997.Google Scholar
Kastan, David. Shakespeare after Theory. London: Routledge, 1999.Google Scholar
McDonald, Peter D. “Modernist Publishing: Nomads and Mapmakers.” A Concise Companion to Modernism. Ed. Bradshaw, David. Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. 221–42.Google Scholar
McDonald, Peter D. “The Writer, the Critic and the Censor: J. M. Coetzee and the Question of Literature.” Book History 7 (2004): 285–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McGann, Jerome. The Textual Condition. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991.Google Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKenzie, D. F. Making Meaning: “Printers of the Mind” and Other Essays. Ed. McDonald, Peter D. and Suarez, Michael. Boston: U of Massachusetts P, 2002.Google Scholar
Moi, Toril. “Feminist Theory after Theory: Toril Moi.” Payne and Schad 133–67.Google Scholar
Payne, Michael, and Schad, John, eds. life.after.theory. London: Continuum, 2003.Google Scholar
Report of the Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship. London: HMSO, 1979.Google Scholar
Rose, Jonathan, and Greenspan, Ezra. “An Introduction to Book History.” Book History 1 (1998): ix–xi.Google Scholar
Selden, Raman. Introduction. The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism. Ed. Selden, . Vol. 8. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
What Is Literature? Spec. issue of New Literary History 5.1 (1973): 1–201.Google Scholar
Wollheim, Richard. Art and Its Objects. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar