Overview

A thoroughly updated edition of the witty and engaging exploration of the history, application, and tenets of literary theory. The first edition of Ten Lessons served as a “literary” introduction to theoretical writing, a strong set of pedagogical prose poems unpacking Lacanian psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, Marxism, cultural studies, feminism, gender studies, and queer theory. Here Calvin Thomas returns to these ten “lessons,” each based on an axiomatic sentence selected from the canons of theory, each exploring the basic assumptions and motivations of theoretical writing. But while every lesson explains the working terms and core tenets of theory, each also attempts to exemplify theory as a “liberatory practice” (bell hooks), to liberate theory as a “practice of creativity” (Foucault) in and of itself. The revised, updated, and expanded second edition, featuring 25% new material, still argues for theoretical writing as a genre of creative writing, a way of engaging in the art of the sentence, the art of making sentences that make trouble, that desire to make radical changes in very fabrication of social reality. Features: - Critical keywords bolded for easy reference - Expanded footnotes with detailed discussion of key concepts - Anti-racist overhaul of each lesson in the wake of Trumpism, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo - Urgent emphasis on Afropessimism, critical race theory, and other developments in postcolonial Black cultural production - Designed to cross-reference with: Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology, edited by Calvin Thomas The Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory, edited by Jeffrey R. Di Leo The Bloomsbury Handbook to 21st Century Feminist Theory, edited by Robin Truth Goodman

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9781501383953

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Reviews

Ten Lessons in Theory: An Introduction to Theoretical Writing is an excellent, thoughtful, and sophisticated introduction to the use of theory in critical work. Calvin Thomas encourages readers to have a better understanding of foundational theoretical texts on a fundamental level ... This introduction is nuanced and holds something for everyone. * Literary Research and British Postmodernism * Thomas's advocacy is a spirited rhetorical performance, made more valiant when considered in the context of our distinctly post-theory climate. ... In lesser hands, this ambitious exercise might have easily ended up in a dizzying theoretical tour, rushed and routine, but Thomas develops an admirably tight narrative, marshaling vast multiplicities of often competing theories into an elegant labyrinthine argument, all the while offering sharp and fresh accounts of the different positions in question. The book would make for a perfect introduction to readers new to Theory. * Recherche litteraire/Literary Research * I know of nothing else like it on the market. There is no better single-volume textbook for introducing, explaining, and engaging thoughtfully (and literarily) with conceptual ideas and the power of language to change the world. Period. * Kristen L. Over, Associate Professor of English and Women's, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Northeastern Illinois University, USA *

Author Information

Calvin Thomas is Professor of English at Georgia State University in Atlanta, USA. His publications include Adventures in Theory: A Compact Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2019), Masculinity, Psychoanalysis, Straight Queer Theory: Essays on Abjection in Literature, Mass Culture, and Film (2008), Straight with a Twist: Queer Theory and the Subject of Heterosexuality (2000), and Male Matters: Masculinity, Anxiety, and the Male Body on the Line (1996).

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