Contexts for Criticism

Contexts for Criticism introduces readers to the essential issues of literary interpretation. The text includes three complete works: Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Melville's Benito Cereno, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper. These texts - plus Shakespeare's The Tempest - are examined through seven fundamental critical theories: Historical (Author as Context and Culture as Context), Formal, Reader-Response, Mimetic, Intertextual, and Poststructural.