Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theory

Provides a road map for negotiating the tensions between the text and the world in our reading practices It sets out an innovative agenda for approaching literary critique which will open new avenues of research especially with regard to the formation of disciplines and critical method in literary studies It deals with the link between modernism and theory as an important object of intellectual history and discusses theory as much more than a transatlantic moment of modernization It elaborates on the potential of feminism and psychoanalysis to respond to the new relational ontologies by opening up affirmative resources in language Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theory demonstrates the non-linear temporalities and trajectories through which theory operates. Italian Theory acts as the fulcrum of a more inclusive and less combative notion of critique. This 'living thought' cuts across the translation of European thought into Anglo-American theory and carries with it lingering modernist motifs linked to feminist and psychoanalytic criticism. While connecting to the 'post-critique' debate, the study focuses on recovering the ethical underpinnings of critique. Mena Mitrano demonstrates that before being a specific method or disciplinary practice, critique is an a stance towards others including indocility, receptiveness, openness to transformation, awareness of relationality, attention to language, attunement to the body, distance, displacement, externality and wonder.