Not Every “Monstrous Bitch” Is a Feminist Victim
Qualities coded as “monstrous” in Eleanor Johnson’s Monstrous Bitch are more interesting than assuming that their monstrosity is itself evidence of patriarchy.
literary theory
Video Game Storytelling Is a World-Colliding Reinvention
Whereas the novel specializes in psychological interiority, video game storytelling allows players to experiment outwardly in world-colliding fashion.
Are Marjane Satrapi’s Works Comics or Graphic Novels?
Marjane Satrapi is a complicated woman living and working at the intersection of many overlapping identity factors, and her books Persepolis and Embroideries provide us different facets through which to view this complex of relations.
How to Read Terry Eagleton’s ‘How to Read Literature’
Prolific literary critic Terry Eagleton tries to explain how but doesn't tell why, we shouldn't read about vacuum cleaners in How to Read Literature.
‘The Anguish of Thought’: A Logical Line of Analysis for a Study of Madness
Regarding Evelyne Grossman’s The Anguish of Thought, Ph.D. candidates across America should lay down their pencils before they embarrass themselves.
Epistemological Anxieties and Irony in ‘Who’s Who When Everyone Is Someone Else’
C.D. Rose’s Who’s Who When Everyone is Someone Else is as striking for its achievements as it is for its failures, but ultimately the whole exercise is inessential.
Dan Brown Meets Roland Barthes in ‘The Seventh Function of Language’
Laurent Binet's over-the-top amalgam of the airport conspiracy thriller and the French intelligentsia poses a simple question: can high theory be thrilling?