Tag Archives: Literary Theory

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

Who Determines What a Work Means?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 23, 2018

I share a copy of a talk I gave on how literary interpretations are decided, focusing on theorists Stanley Fish and Hans Robert Jauss.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Hans Robert Jauss, Reader Response Theory, Stanley Fish | Comments closed

Literature as a Basis for Social Change

By Robin Bates | Published: October 20, 2015

Italian activist Antonio Gramsci believed that the common people have an unconscious philosophy that, if harnessed, can become the basis for social change. I argue that they also have unconscious literary taste that can also be harnessed.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, class struggle, liberation movements, organic intellectuals, Prison Notebooks | Comments closed

Can Lit Help Build an Egalitarian World?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 17, 2015

Neo-Marxist literary theory calls for us to see literature as relevant to building an egalitarian society.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Frederic Jameson, Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift, Literary Theory: An Introduction, Terry Eagleton | Comments closed

Does Studying Lit Truly Change Things?

By Robin Bates | Published: September 14, 2015

Some claims for literature’s power have been inflated, such as those of F. R. Leavis, and sometimes lit has failed to change bad people. Still, it can play an important role in our lives.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged F. R. Leavis, Matthew Arnold, Scrutiny, Terry Eagleton | Comments closed

How Is Lit Useful? Let Me Count the Ways

By Robin Bates | Published: January 30, 2014

A recent issue of “New Literary History” explores a number of ways that literature is useful.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Hard Times, Lolita, reader response, utilitarianism, Vladimir Nabokov | Comments closed

Riveted by Competing Campaign Narratives

By Robin Bates | Published: November 3, 2012

Political campaigns have come to be seen as competing narratives, providing those who understand fiction with special insight.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Barack Obama, Election 2012, Mitt Romney, narrative, politics | Comments closed

Great Political Novels Not Agenda Driven

By Robin Bates | Published: September 27, 2012

Great political novels are rich in spiritual attitude. Poor ones are agenda driven.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Easter 1916", American Pastoral, Berger's Daughter, fathers and sons, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Henry James, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Conrad, Nadine Gordimer, Natalia Ginzburg, Orhan Pamuk, Philip Roth, political novel, snow, Stendahl, V.S. Naipaul, Vargas Llosa, William Butler Yeats | Comments closed

A Lit Theory that Affirms Readers

By Robin Bates | Published: May 21, 2012

The students in my “Theories of the Reader ” course found the theorists we read affirming.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged English Education, Hans Robert Jauss, Norman Holland, Reader Response Theory, Wayne Booth, Wolfgang Iser | Comments closed