For students and scholars of literary theory, this unique volume provides organized access to a diverse body of literature. The 5,523 entries include listings of books, articles, and dissertations culled from such sources as the MLA International Bibliography, Dissertation Abstracts, Language and Language Behavior Abstracts, and the annual bibliography of the Modern Humanities Research Association. . . . Researchers can look forward to a Dictionary of Critical Theory, and a Handbook of Critical Theory by the same author within the next two years. Recommended, for its comprehensive coverage and currency, to graduate-level collections. Choice
Encompassing the variety of critical theories, the theoretical approaches, or schools influenced by continental theorists and philosophers that came to prominence beginning in the mid-1960s, this volume contains substantial, representative, and indexed bibliographies to assist researchers of specific topics in critical theory or those seeking works by major theorists. Nearly all-inclusive for the 1965-1987 period—a number of important works through August 1988 are also listed—the more than 5,500 works include books, articles, and dissertations available in English, French, or German and range from introductory to advanced levels; 350 of the works are listed in more than one section for the user's convenience. Readers are guided to appropriate works by the user-friendly, twelve-major-section format that classifies works on theory following the generally accepted names of current critical approaches including: structuralism, semiotics, narratology, psychological criticism, sociological criticism, feminist criticism, reader response criticism, reception aesthetics, phenomenological criticism, hermeneutics and deconstruction, post-structuralist, and post-deconstructive criticism. Each section has an index and may be used independently of the other sections. These section indexes are grouped together following the Classified Bibliography. Two additional indexes, a general index that aids in locating works covering more than one theory or that have not been classified into one of the theories, and an author index that applies to the entire bibliography, complete the volume.
Sources for the bibliography include annual bibliographies of the MLA, the MHRA, and such works as Dissertations Abstracts International and Language and Language Behavior Abstracts as well as database searches for topics, keywords, and theorists. Companion volumes to this work, A Dictionary of Critical Theory and A Handbook of Critical Theory will be published within the next two years by Greenwood Press.
