"Engaged debate among feminist, political, and psychoanalytic thinkers has secured Julia Kristeva's status as one of the most formidable figures in twentieth-century critical theory. Nevertheless, her precise relevance to the study of literature - the extent to which her theory is specifically a literary theory - can be hard for new readers to fathom.
This approachable volume explores Kristeva's definition of literature, her methods for analyzing it, and the theoretical ground on which those endeavors are based. Megan Becker-Leckrone argues that Kristeva's signature concepts, such as abjection and intertextuality, lose much of their force when readers extract them from the specific, complex theoretical context in which Kristeva produces them. Early chapters situate her theory in a broader conversation with Roland Barthes, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan and others around the issues of reading, textuality, and subjectivity. Subsequent chapters look at Kristeva's actual engagements with literary texts, specifically her challenging, highly performative reading of French novelist Louis-Ferdinand Céline in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection and her career-long preoccupation with James Joyce. A final chapter of the book looks at the way contemporary literary critics have marshaled her ideas in re-reading the poetry of William Wordsworth, while a helpful glossary identifies Kristeva's most pertinently ""literary"" theoretical concepts, by way of synopses of the texts in which she presents them."
By:
Megan Becker-Leckrone
Imprint: Red Globe Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 216mm,
Width: 138mm,
Spine: 16mm
Weight: 431g
ISBN: 9780333781937
ISBN 10: 0333781937
Series: Transitions
Pages: 232
Publication Date: 07 January 2005
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Primary
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
General Editor's Preface Preface Acknowledgements PART I The Objects, Objectives and Objectivity of Textual Analysis The Subject, the Abject and Psychoanalysis PART II Céline's Pharmacy Joyce's 'Quashed Quotatoes' Wordworth's Tales of Love Notes Glossary Annotated Bibliography Bibliography Index.
MEGAN BECKER-LECKRONE is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA, where she teaches literary theory and nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature.
