This response to the current crisis in the field of literary studies describes the fundamental flaws of poststructuralist literary criticism, which has become a self-serving enterprise at the expense of scholarship at large and students in particular. Outlining an improved approach that meets the expectations of 21st-century students and teachers, the author proposes a new definition of the literary object of study which addresses the inconsistencies of the literary canon by including nontraditional narratives such as films, comic books and pop songs.

Daniel Ferreras Savoye is a professor of French and Spanish literary and cultural studies at West Virginia University. His work on marginalized authors, comic books, detective fiction, popular culture issues and critical theory has appeared in Hispania, French Literature Series, Ángulo Recto, The Popular Culture Review and La tribuna.

Daniel Ferreras Savoye
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 304
Bibliographic Info: notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2017
pISBN: 978-1-4766-6855-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-2784-7
Imprint: McFarland

Table of Contents


Acknowledgments vi

Preface 1

Introduction: The Great Academic Publishing Bubble 6

Part I: The Emperor’s New Rhetoric

1. Theorize or Agonize 12

2. Adventures in Criticism 17

3. A Question of Authority 21

4. Burn After Reading 30

5. Pardon My French 34

6. Grand Theft Theory 41

7. The Theme Behind the Method 47

8. Narcissistic Studies 51

9. Academic Starmania 59

10. A Fish Called Stanley 66

11. The Depth of Superficiality 69

12. Escape from the Text 76

13. Exploded Theory 80

Part II: Relative Synthesis

14. Deconceptivist Mode 90

15. Definitions of Literature 91

16. The Imaginary Multiverse 106

17. Parallel Dimensions Studies 122

18. A Theory of Theories 135

19. Welcome to Imaginology 184

20. Genres and Modes 216

21. Elegance in Theory 252

22. Semiosphere to Semiosphere 255

Conclusion: The Triumph of Imaginology 259

Chapter Notes 267

Works Cited 283

Index 291