Rarely has a single figure had as much influence on Western thought as Sigmund Freud. His ideas permeate our culture to such a degree that an understanding of them is indispensable. Yet many otherwise well-informed students in the humanities labor under misconceptions or lack of knowledge about Freudian theory. There are countless introductions to Freudian psychoanalysis but, surprisingly, none that combine a genuinely accessible account of Freud's ideas with an introduction to their use in literary and cultural studies, as this book does. It is written specifically for use by advanced undergraduate and graduate students in courses dealing with literary and cultural criticism, yet will also be of interest to the general reader. The book consists of two parts. Part one explains Freud's key ideas, focusing on the role his theories of repression, conscious and unconscious mental processes, sexuality, dreams, free associations, "Freudian slips," resistance, and transference play in psychoanalysis, and on the relationship between ego, superego, and id. Here de Berg refutes many popular misconceptions, using examples throughout. The assumption underlying this account is that Freud offers not simply a model of the mind, but an analysis of the relation between the individual and society. Part two discusses the implications of Freudian psychoanalysis for the study of literature and culture. Among the topics analyzed are Hamlet, Heinrich Heine's Lore-Ley, Freud's Totem and Taboo and its influence on literature, the German student movement of the late 1960s, and the case of the Belgian pedophile Marc Dutroux and the public reactions to it. Existing books focus either on Freudian psychoanalysis in general or on psychoanalytic literary or cultural criticism; those in the latter category tend to be abstract and theoretical in nature. None of them are suitable for readers who are interested in psychoanalysis as a tool for literary and cultural criticism but have no firm knowledge of Freud's ideas. Freu

Post-Theories in Literary and Cultural Studies focuses on the shifting paradigms in literary and cultural studies. Prompted by the changes and problems on the global scale, the last two decades have seen a resurgence of scholarly interest in theories which are more embedded in the social realities and human condition. This volume shows that theory can reinvent theory and re-define criticism according to the demands of the new millennium. In this context, it examines new ways of considering the relation of post-theory to the concepts such as ethics, aesthetics, truth, value, authenticity, human, and reality to understand the mindset of the new century. This volume presents the various suggestions and concerns of post-theoretical studies that reflect the sensibilities of the contemporary social and cultural life. The book is a source of reference to develop an understanding of this change of attitude in post-theoretical studies towards a more directly and sincerely responsive approach to the current problems worldwide, their representations in literature and language, reflections in theory, roots in socio-political domains, and effects on the material reality.

From folk ballads to film scripts, this new five-volume encyclopedia covers the entire history of British literature from the seventh century to the present, focusing on the writers and the major texts of what are now the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In five hundred substantial essays written by major scholars, the Encyclopedia of British Literature includes biographies of nearly four hundred individual authors and a hundred topical essays with detailed analyses of particular themes, movements, genres, and institutions whose impact upon the writing or the reading of literature was significant. An ideal companion to The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature, this set will prove invaluable for students, scholars, and general readers. For more information, including a complete table of contents and list of contributors, please visit www.oup.com/us/ebl

The Communist Party’s attitude toward art in this period was, in general, epiphenomenal of its economic policy. A resolution of 1925 voiced the party’s refusal to sanction anyone’s literary faction. This reflected the New Economic Policy (NEP) of a limited free-market economy. The period of the First Five-Year Plan (1928–1932) saw a more or less voluntary return to a more committed artistic posture, and during the second Five-Year Plan (1932–1936), this commitment was crystallized in the formation of a Writers’ Union. The first congress of this union in 1934, featuring speeches by Maxim Gorky and Bukharin, officially adopted socialist realism, as defined primarily by Andrei Zhdanov (1896–1948). Aptly dubbed by Terry Eagleton as “Stalin’s cultural thug,” it was Zhdanov whose proscriptive shadow thenceforward fell over Soviet cultural affairs. Although Nikolai Bukharin’s speech at the congress had attempted a synthesis of Formalist and sociological attitudes, premised on his assertion that within “the microcosm of the word is embedded the macrocosm of history,” Bukharin was eventually to fall from his position as the leading theoretician of the party: his trial and execution, stemming from his political and economic differences with Stalin, were also symptomatic of the fact that Formalism soon became a sin once more. Bukharin had called for socialist realism to portray not reality “as it is” but rather as it exists in socialist imagination.

This comprehensive guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day provides an authoritative overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, as well as surveying their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. Supplies the cultural, historical and philosophical background to the literary criticism of each era Enables students to see the development of literary criticism in context Organised chronologically, from classical literary criticism through to deconstruction Considers a wide range of thinkers and events from the French Revolution to Freud’s views on civilization Can be used alongside any anthology of literary criticism or as a coherent stand-alone introduction

The Poverty of Structuralism is the first in a sequence of volumes which examine in turn the basic ideas of Saussure, Marx and Freud, and analyse the way in which they have been developed and applied to art, culture and modern textual theory. The text offers a critical introduction to the structuralist foundations of modern literary theory. It gives an account of the way such foundations have been developed, twisted and distorted to become part of the language that contemporary literary and cultural theoreticians use. It also addresses some of the fundamental issues about language and society that are presupposed by the often difficult language of modern literary and cultural theory.

This collection looks at the growing rapprochement between contemporary theory and early modern English literary-cultural studies. With sections on posthumanism and cognitive science, political theology, and rematerialism and performance, the essays incorporate recent theoretical inquiries into new readings of early modern texts.

"Literature, Culture and Society makes a determined attempt to re-establish the connections between literary studies, cultural studies and sociology. Andrew Milner provides a critical overview of the various theoretical approaches to textual analysis, from hermeneutics to post-modernism, and presents a substantive account of the processes by which literary, film and television texts are produced and consumed." "This new second edition has been fully revised and updated. There are entirely new sections on major theorists and critical approaches including Bourdieu, Zizek and psychoanalysis, Moretti and world systems theory."--BOOK JACKET.

'The Lab'ring Muses' is the first study to bring together a wide range of verse published by laboring-class authors between 1730 and 1830. The book examines a total of sixteen case studies that establish a specifically English tradition of laboring-class poetics.

Bringing together innovative and internationally renowned experts, this volume provides concise presentations of the main concepts and cutting-edge research fields in the study of culture (rather than the infinite multitude of possible themes). More specifically, the volume outlines different models for the study of culture, explores avenues for interdisciplinary exchange, assesses key concepts and traces their travels across various disciplinary, historical and national contexts. To trace the travelling of concepts means to map both their transfer from one discipline, approach or culture of research to another, and also to identify the transformations which emerge through these processes of transfer. The volume serves to show that working with (travelling) concepts provides a unique strategy for research and research design which can open up a wide range of promising perspectives for interdisciplinary exchange. It offers an exemplary overview of an interdisciplinary and international approach to the travelling concepts that organize, structure and shape the study of culture. In doing so, the volume serves to initiate a dialogue that exceeds disciplinary and national boundaries and introduces a self-reflexive dimension to the field, thus affording a recognition of how deeply disciplinary premises and nation-specific research traditions affect different approaches in the study of culture.