For a half century, the American intellectual Fredric Jameson has been a driving force in literary and cultural theory. In Periodizing Jameson, Phillip E. Wegner builds upon Jameson’s unique dialectical method to demonstrate the value of Jameson’s tools—periodization, the fourfold hermeneutic, and the Greimasian semiotic square, among others—and to develop virtuoso readings of Jameson’s own work and the history of the contemporary American university in which it unfolds. Wegner shows how Jameson’s work intervenes in particular social, cultural, and political situations, using his scholarship both to develop original explorations of nineteenth-century fiction, popular films, and other promiment theorists, and to examine the changing fortunes of theory itself. In this way, Periodizing Jameson casts new light on the potential of and challenges to humanist intellectual work in the present.

"Margreta de Grazia continues to change the course of Shakespeare studies in this book, where she focuses on four key terms: anachronism, chronology, periods, and the grand secular narrative. These 'unassailable' terms, once considered the bedrock of what we 'know' and how we study Shakespeare, are now under debate in our particular moment in the study of the past"--

This book demonstrates how Fredric Jameson’s understanding of the novel form has heavily influenced his work as a critical theorist. It contends that Jameson’s idiosyncratic engagements with the literary canon have had a major impact on his theoretical frameworks, particularly in his sense of historical change. The book investigates Jameson’s predominant literary interests in chapters focusing on realism, modernism, postmodernism and genre fiction. These readings provide fresh perspectives on Jameson’s career, ones that look beyond his most famous contributions to cultural theory and interpretive practice. Through this work, the book also rethinks the criticism that has surrounded Jameson, while suggesting ways in which his literary interpretation remains useful for contemporary reading practices.

A critical overview of the work of Fredric Jameson, with an emphasis on his notoriously difficult writing style.

Cultural Theory: An Anthology is a collection of the essential readings that have shaped and defined the field of contemporary cultural theory Features a historically diverse and methodologically concise collection of readings including rare essays such as Pierre Bourdieu’s “Forms of Capital” (1986), Gilles Deleuze “Postscript on Societies of Control” (1992), and Fredric Jameson’s “Reification and Utopia in Mass Culture” (1979) Offers a radical new approach to teaching and studying cultural theory with material arranged around the central areas of inquiry in contemporary cultural study —the status and significance of culture itself, power, ideology, temporality, space and scale, and subjectivity Section introductions, designed to assist the student reader, provide an overview of each piece, explaining the context in which it was written and offering a brief intellectual biography of the author A large annotated bibliography of primary and secondary works for each author and topic promotes further research and discussion Features a useful glossary of critical terms

Multi-volume history of American literature.