Literary into Cultural Studies

Modern Literary study was founded on an opposition between the canon and its other , popular culture. The theory wars of the 1970s and the 1980s and, in particular, the advent of structuralist and post structuralist theory, transformed this relationship. With `the death of literature', the distinction between high and popular culture was no longer tenable, and the field of inquiry shifted from literary into cultural studies. Anthony Easthope argues that this new discipline must find a methodological consensus for its analysis of canonical and popular texts. Through a detailed criticism of competing theories (British cultural studies, New Historicism, cultural materialism) he shows how this new study should - and should not be done. Easthope's exploration of the problems, possibilities and politics of this new discipline includes an original reassessment of the question of literary value. By contrasting Conrad's Heart of Darkness with Burrough's Tarzan of the Apes, Easthope demonstrates how textuality sustains the opposition between high and popular culture darkness.

Easthope, Antony

Collapsing the Literary Studies Paradigm; Part 1 Constructing the Literary Object; Part 2 Dissolving the Literary Object; Part 3 The Question of Literary Value; Part 4 High Culture/popular Culture; Part 5 The Canon and Its Other: Eroding the Separation; Part 6 High Culture/popular Culture: Heart of Darkness and Tarzan of the Apes; Part 7 Towards a New Paradigm; Part 8 History and Signifying Practice; Part 9 Terms for a New Paradigm; Part 10 Analysing Culture; Part 11 The Subject of Literary Studies and the Subject of Cultural Studies; Part 12 The Politics of Cultural Studies;