Literary Materialisms

Literary Materialisms addresses what has become a fundamental concern in the last decade: how do we today define literary studies as an academic discipline and literature as a relevant object of study? Avoiding unproductive proclamations, this volume unites new materialist critical thinking with a commitment to fundamental principles.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Materialism and Literature Revisited; Mathias Nilges and Emilio Sauri PART I: READING AND INTERPRETATION 1. Reading Dialectically; Carolyn Lesjak 2. Marxist Criticism, Then and Now; Imre Szeman 3. Literature, Immanent Critique and the Problem of Standpoint; Neil Larsen 4. The Bio-Political Unconscious: Toward an Eco-Marxist Literary Theory; Leerom Medovoi PART II: THE ONTOLOGY AND FUNCTION OF LITERATURE 5. Work as Art and Art as Life; Sarah Brouillette 6. How to Subsume Difference, or World Reduction in Delany; Kevin Floyd 7. Defining the World; Peter Hitchcock 8. Close Reading and the Market; Nicholas Brown PART III: FORM AND GENRE 9. Form(alism's) Now; Mathias Nilges 10. Objective Form: Reflections on the Dialectic of Roguery; Roberto Schwarz 11. Marxism and Melodrama; Bruno Bosteels 12. Creativity, Character and the Making of the American Middle-Class; Jason Potts 13. The Ends of Culture; or, Late Modernism, Redux; Phillip E. Wegner

About the Author :
Mathias Nilges, St. Francis Xavier University, Cananda Emilio Sauri, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Sarah Brouillette, Carleton University, Canada Kevin Floyd, Kent State University, USA Peter Hitchcock, City University of New York, USA Nicholas Brown, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA Roberto Schwarz, Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Brazil Bruno Bosteels, Cornell University, USA Jason Potts, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada Leerom Medovoi, Portland State University, USA Imre Szeman, University of Alberta, Canada Neil Larsen, University of California, Davis, USA Carolyn Lesjak, Simon Fraser University, Canada Phillip E. Wegner, University of Florida, USA

Review :
"Materialism has always been philosophically problematic, and it never completely coincided with that equally problematic mode called realism. Today, however, it is not only the literary text which can be interrogated for its materialist practice, but also literary criticism and theory itself Few recent collections have been so stimulating in the multiple ways in which they develop these problems and extend their possibilities in all kinds of new dimensions. I have personally found it intellectually productive to return again and again to these essays." - Fredric Jameson, William A. Lane Professor of Comparative Literature and Romance Studies, Duke University, USA