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Literary Research: Marxist Literary Criticism
Literary Theory and Criticism
What is Marxist Literary Criticism?
"A form of cultural criticism that applies Marxist theory to the interpretation of cultural texts, using the key concepts of historical materialism, political economy, and ideology."
Brief Overviews:
- "Marxist Criticism." Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism.
- "Marxist Criticism." A Dictionary of Critical Theory.
- "Marxist Theory and Criticism." The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism.
Notable Scholars:
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Adorno, Theodor W., et al. Aesthetics and Politics. Verso, 2007.
(With Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, Bertolt Brecht, Georg Lukács)
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Eagleton, Terry. Criticism and Ideology: a Study in Marxist Literary Theory. NLB, 1976.
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Eagleton, Terry. Marxism and Literary Criticism. University of California Press, 1976.
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Forgacs, David, et al. Antonio Gramsci: Selections From Cultural Writings. Lawrence & Wishart, 2012.
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Gramsci, Antonio, et al. Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci. Edited by Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, Lawrence & Wishart, 2003. Further Selections.
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Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. Cornell University Press, 1981.
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Jameson, Fredric. Marxism and Form: Twentieth-Century Dialectical Theories of Literature. Princeton University Press, 1972.
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Lukács, György. History and Class Consciousness: Studies in Marxist Dialectics. Translated by Rodney Livingstone, MIT Press, 1971.
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Althusser, Louis, et al. Reading Capital: the Complete Edition. Verso, the imprint of New Left Books, 2015.
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French edition, Lire le Capital
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- Macherey, Pierre. A Theory of Literary Production. Translated by Geoffrey Wall, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978.
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French edition, Pour une théorie de la production littéraire
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Introductions & Anthologies
Marxist Literary Theory: A Reader by Publication Date: 1996This reader provides a sense of the historical formation of a Marxist literary tradition.
Marxism and Literature by Publication Date: 1977In this book, the author analyzes previous contributions to a Marxist theory of literature from Marx himself to Lukacs, Althusser, and Goldmann, and develops his own approach.The Politics of Literary Theory: An Introduction to Marxist Criticism by
Publication Date: 1990Philip Goldstein examines in this study the politics of a potpourri of modern criticism - new critical, authorial, reader-oriented phenomenological, structuralist, and poststructuralist.
Contemporary Marxist Theory by Publication Date: 2014This volume brings together works written by international theorists since the fall of the Berlin Wall... key texts by prominent and lesser-known thinkers from Latin America, Asia, Africa, America, and Europe.
Marxist Literary Criticism Today by Publication Date: 2019The first introduction to Marxist literary criticism to be published in decades.
After Marx: Literature, Theory, and Value in the Twenty-First Century by Publication Date: 2022The volume includes fresh approaches to reading poetry, fiction, film and drama, from Shakespeare to contemporary literature, and shows how Marxist literary criticism improves our understanding of racial capitalism, feminist politics, colonialism, deindustrialization, high-tech labor, ecological crisis, and other issues.
Also see other recent books discussing or using Marxist criticism in literature and scholar-recommended sources on Marxism via Oxford Bibliographies.
Buchanan, Ian. "Marxist Criticism." In A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Foley, Barbara. Marxist Literary Criticism Today, Pluto Press, 2019, p. 122.