Customer Reviews

Falling into Theory: Conflicting Views on Reading Literature

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This book examines, explores, and supplies representative samples of literary theory. It is not a book that catalogs and summarizes all the genres of literary theory in a way that an encyclopedia or anthology would. Instead, Richter explores literary theory as phenomena, its origins and its value. He does this through three essays he authors: 1) Why We Read, 2) What We Read, and 3) How We Read. Each section is not just Richter's thoughts, but also references to pertinent opinions of well know cultural critics and professors who have written on issue. He paraphrases their thoughts and opinions with each section, but also supplies the full (or a large portion) of the original essay that he references in an appendix to each section, providing the reader even further reading to explore if the reader finds a view interesting and worthy of exploration.

I used this in my English class last semester and I loved it. It was split into three different sections with many essays from a multitude of people. Some of the text is really difficult to dissect and digest but we split it up amongst the class and the ideas introduced are really intriguing. Yes, it's literary theory, which can be tedious and a little boring sometimes, but the perspectives you get are fresh and it produces a lot of interesting class discussions (I'm a science person and I usually find other subjects pretty boring but this piqued my interest). The introductions help in getting a general feel for the material and understanding how they all tie in together. If you're getting this for an English class, look forward to it.

Representative or significant paragraph: Early in the Preface, Richter contends that the best way to teach our students to think well is "to be forthright about the irreconcilable differences within the profession over the interpretation and evaluation of texts and to highlight in our teaching precisely these differences" Studying the debates over the disciplinary object of literature and the multiple methods for its study helps students, in Gerald Graff's words, "learn to talk the otherwise mysterious intellectual discourse by which books and ideas are discussed in the academy and the world outside the academy. It helps students become active participants in a cultural conversation that has too often excluded them." If students do not find reason to examine the tacit assumption that they are now incontrovertibly citizens in a newly formed "state of theory" then they become all-too-willing captives of the ideology of that state.

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What happens when creative writing students become teachers and still aren't aware of such debates?