Literary into Cultural Studies

By Antony Easthope

Book Overview

Modern Literary study was founded on an opposition between the canon and its other, popular culture. The theory wars of the 1970s and the 1980s and, in particular, the advent of structuralist and post structuralist theory, transformed this relationship. With the death of literature', the distinction between high and popular culture was no longer tenable, and the field of inquiry shifted from literary into cultural studies. Anthony Easthope argues that this new discipline must find a methodological consensus for its analysis of canonical and popular texts. Through a detailed criticism of competing theories (British cultural studies, New Historicism, cultural materialism) he shows how this new study should - and should not be done. Easthope's exploration of the problems, possibilities and politics of this new discipline includes an original reassessment of the question of literary value. By contrasting Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes, Easthope demonstrates how textuality sustains the opposition between high and popular culture darkness.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415066417
• ISBN13: 9780415066419
• Release Date: October 1991
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

It's all so simple now....

This is, put simply, a Very Useful Book. It seems to be mostly aimed at people used to traditional literary criticism, who are interested in the whole new & exciting thang that is Cultural Studies - reading and interpreting all sorts of cultural objects, from tv shows and movies, to public buildings, to cereal packets, to (and this is really where this book comes in) poems and novels and plays. It's a good, clear summary of a fascinating but often confusing field, and it's practical too if (like me) you want to start doing this cultural analysis yourself. I was saying to myself "Oh, that's right!" all the way through this book. Okay, so the guy next to me on the bus was looking at me funny, but who cares?! Since you have to live in our culture, you might as well get the tools to understand it!