Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. 7th ed. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999.
This dictionary contains hundreds of succinct essays explicating terms and concepts useful in discussing literature. Each entry consists of an explanation of a term’s meaning and examples drawn from a wide array of literary texts. Using accessible prose, this reference guide also elucidates terminology associated with literary theory and periodization.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2002.
A clear-speaking introduction to theoretical approaches, including structuralism, post-structuralism, and deconstruction, postmodernism, psychoanalytic criticism, lesbian/gay criticism, Marxist criticism, new historicism and cultural materialism, postcolonialism, narratology, and ecocriticism. See the helpful one page lists of “What each kind of theorist does.”
Bennett, Andrew and Nicholas Royle. Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory, 2nd ed. New York: Prentice Hall, 1999.
Bennett and Royle accurately claim that their “clear and accessible [book] . . . offers new ways of thinking about literature and about what is involved in reading critically.” The book includes 28 short chapters (each 8-10 pages) on “key critical concepts all of which have more or less familiar names.” The opening chapter is on the idea of “The beginning,” the concluding chapter on the idea of “The end.” In between are chapters on “Readers and reading,” “The text and the world,” “Monuments,” “The Uncanny” “Narrative,” “Character,” “Voice,” “Figures and Tropes,” “Laughter, “The Tragic,” “History,” “Me,” “Ghosts,” “Sexual difference,” “God,” “Secrets,” “Pleasure,” and so on. The authors apply the concepts to literary texts, their “primary focus . . . [being] on what is powerful, complex and strange about literary works themselves.” The result is a fear-allaying, even enjoyable introduction to what might otherwise appear to be frightful literary theory.
Gibaldi, Joseph, ed. Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literature, 2nd ed. New York: MLA, 1992.
One of the few texts written specifically to serve as an introduction to graduate studies. Includes general introductory essays on Textual Scholarship, Canonicity and Textuality, Literary Interpretation, Historical Scholarship, and Literary Theory. Also includes a section on Cross-Disciplinary and Cultural Studies, with essays on Interdisciplinary Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Ethnic and Minority Studies, Border Studies, and Cultural Studies.
Gilbaldi, Joseph, ed. MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. 7th ed. New York: MLA, 2009.
A reference guide to the standard formatting of critical writing on literature.
Graff, Gerald. Clueless in Academe: How Schooling Obscures the Life of the Mind. New Haven: Yale UP. 2003.
Gerald Graff’s book addresses the breach between students who feel alienated from the professional discussion of literature that occurs in critical and theoretical journals, and professional scholars and teachers who are frustrated and perplexed by their students’ resistance to engaging in critical arguments about literature. Graff suggests that those on each side of the divide can take more responsibility for building bridges rather than walls. Academic professionals need to realize that they sometimes make “ideas, problems, and ways of thinking look more opaque, narrowly specialized, and beyond normal learning capacities than they are or need to be.” And students need to realize that critical and theoretical “talk about books and subjects is as important educationally as the books and subjects themselves.”
Greenblatt, Stephen and Giles Gunn, ed. Redrawing the Boundaries: The Transformation of English and American Literary Studies. New York: MLA, 1992.
A slightly dated, but still very informative account of the field(s) of literary studies, the book contains essays on literary periods (Medieval Studies, Renaissance/Early Modern Studies, Seventeenth-Century Studies, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Romantic Studies, Victorian Studies, Modernist Studies,Postmodernist Studies, American Literary Studies to the Civil War, and American Literary and Cultural Studies Since the Civil War) and on fields of literary theory (Feminist Criticism, Gender Criticism, African American Criticism, Marxist Criticism, Psychoanalytic Criticism, Deconstruction, New Historicism, Cultural Criticism, Postcolonial Criticism, Composition Studies, and Composition and Literary Studies). The essays are by experts in the areas of focus and sometimes use specialized language.
Lentricchia, Frank and Thomas McLaughlin. Critical Terms for Literary Study. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P,1995.
This collection of essays offers an engaging and accessible introduction to key concepts in the field of literary and cultural study. In the simplest terms, it provides the conceptual language of theory: “representation,” “rhetoric,” “culture,” “ethnicity,” “desire,” and more. This collection offers not only extended definitions, but a vivid sense of the value and use of these concepts. A very helpful reader for student and teacher alike.