DOING LITERARY CRITICISM

By Tim Gillespie. Veteran teacher Tim Gillespie shares his experience using the lenses of literary criticism as a powerful tool for helping students tackle challenging literary texts. He breaks down the dense language of critical theory into clear, lively, and thorough explanations of many schools of critical thought—reader response, biographical, historical, psychological, archetypal, genre based, moral, philosophical, feminist, political, formalist, and postmodern. The book gives each theory its own chapter with a brief overview along with an in-depth discussion of its benefits and limitations. Each chapter also includes ideas for classroom practices and activities. The author provides a wealth of specific classroom-tested suggestions for discussion, essay and research paper topics, recommended texts, exam questions, and more. The accompanying CD offers abbreviated overviews of each theory (designed to be used as classroom handouts), examples of student work, and more. Stenhouse. 306 pages. ©2010.literaryterms