Literature, In Theory

Tropes, Subjectivities, Responses and Responsibilities

Julian Wolfreys

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781441123244
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781441182302
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Jacques Derrida has argued about the difference between literature and theory that despite its institutional status, part of its 'institution' is the right of literature to say anything. Literature cannot be defined as such, and as soon as one seeks to produce a reading of the literary, complications arise. 

Yet despite its institutional significance, 'theory' remains something many wish would go away; and which, for others, is still not read, is misread, and remains to be read. Like literature, it remains as an enigmatic identity, resistant to definition, but subject to misperceptions and open to general statements that are more or less inaccurate.

By examining how 'theory' and 'literature' are concepts and names which touch on one other in complex ways, Julian Wolfreys seeks to understand their intersections and differences. Examining a wide range of authors, from Dickens to Joyce, and engaging directly with a number of major theorists, Wolfreys takes the reader on a journey through the issues and ideas involved in reading literature, in theory. 

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword, in Lieu of an Introduction
• 1 Toward a Phenomenology of Urban Gothic: The Example of Dickens
• 2 Houses, Homes, Rooms and Tombs: The Unhomely Spaces and Monstrous Economies of Dombey and Son
• 3 In Visibility, or the Appearance of ‘True Histories’: Truth, Confession and Revelation in Anne Brontë
• 4 Contested Grounds: Historical, Epistemological and Political Identities in Nineteenth-Century Literature
• 5 (Sub) Urbi et Orbi: The ‘Little Worlds’ of London, or, Fear, Whimsy and Singularity
• 6 Professions: Of English Diaspora?
• 7 No, Not, None, Nothing, Nobody: Place, Pattern, Death and Narratives of Negation in Dubliners
• 8 ‘A self-referential density’: Glyph, Fictions of Transgression and the ‘Theory’ Thing
• 9 ‘Theory’ & the novel (and The Novel?)
• 10 Ghosts: Of Ourselves, or, Drifting with Hardy and Heidegger
• 11 The Reiterable Circularity Of Being: Poetics, Selfhood and the Singular Witness that is ‘I’
• 12 Teaching Derrida: ‘but just a minute, before we begin, a preface of sorts (after the event), a defence, apologia, apologue . . .’, and other responses in the face of (yet another) programmed avoidance of reading
• 13 ‘The strong dead return’: Harold Bloom’s Daemonic Shades
• 14 Face to Face with Agamben or, the Other in Love
• 15 Responsibilities of J, or, Aphorism’s Other: Criticism’s Transformation
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index of Proper Names