edited by Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller
University of Alabama Press, 1985
Paper: 978-0-8173-0224-5 | Cloth: 978-0-8173-0223-8 | eISBN: 978-0-8173-9015-0
Library of Congress Classification PN85.A34 1985
Dewey Decimal Classification 801.95

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
After Strange Texts is a collection of essays that will help to advance discussion about the value and significance of literary theory. The editors, Gregory S. Jay and David L. Miller, open the volume with a cogent and philosophically sophisticated survey of the contemporary theoretical scene, and they argue with particular force about the "inescapability" of theory. As Jay and Miller point out, "theory" means, among other things, the techniques by which critics and scholars undertake their "practical" work; if we say we are "against" theory or claim to practice "without" theory, then we are in a real sense simply deceiving ourselves.

All scholars subscribe to theories, and these are embedded in their criticism and scholarship. Whatever the excesses of (and differences between) deconstruction, feminism, the new historicism, and the other theories that Jay and Miller review, they share a commitment to heightening the teacher/critic's self-consciousness about the labor that he or she performs.
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