Marxist Literary Criticism Today

Barbara Foley is Distinguished Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark. She has published widely in the fields of Marxist criticism, US literary radicalism, and African American literature. Her books include Marxist Literary Criticism Today (Pluto, 2019), Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (Duke University Press, 2010) and Spectres of 1919: Class and Nation in the Making of the New Negro (University of Illinois Press, 2003).

'Invigorating and lucid - a fine introduction to Marxism in general and to Marxist literary criticism. Foley has done a superb job writing a book that is useful both for novices and for teachers who wish to show how literature is inescapably connected to the material world'

• Acknowledgements Prologue PART I: MARXISM1. Historical Materialism Materialism Production Dialectics Class Base and Superstructure Relative Autonomy Mediation Levels of Generality 2. Political Economy Commodities Commodity Fetishism Labor Power and Exploitation Surplus Value Alienation Capital 3. Ideology Three Definitions of Ideology in Marx Dominant Ideology Relative Autonomy and Mediation Revisited Ideology as Smorgasbord Reification Interpellation Hegemony and Alternative Hegemony PART II: LITERATURE4. Literature and Literary Criticism Defining Literature Fictionality Density Depth Concreteness and Particularity Showing Not Telling Defamiliarization Universality Empathy Individuality Group Identity Formal Unity Autonomy Beauty Greatness 5. Marxist Literary Criticism Rhetoric and Interpellation Ideology Critique Symptomatic Reading Humanism Realism Proletarian Literature and Alternative Hegemony 6. Marxist Pedagogy Alienation Rebellion Nation War Money Race and Racism Gender and Sexuality Nature Mortality Art Notes Bibliography Index