Group items tagged

appears to be a good reference in entering the discussion of how narrative criticism fits into the broader heading of literary criticism.

Does not contain a specific chapter on narrative criticism; however it details the literary critical approach from which narrative criticism developed.

Small volume, also helpful as beginning look at exegesis

an academic writing, but useful for its discussion on using literary approaches to biblical narratives. Comprehensive Bibiliography helpful.

A good introduction to freudian psychoanalysis that defines key terms and concepts, and then moves to show how they apply to literary criticism.

An essay by Mary Ann Tolbert applying psychoanalytic criticism to the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son. Article is on EBSCO, so you will possibly need to sign in to my.iliff to view. PDF of Full Text available.

Whereas historical study tended to be concerned with the prehistory of the text (oral traditions and written source materials) and with its development through successive redactions, literary study focused on the final form of the text.

Right off of Wikipedia: Theory Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly be called "phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was precisely the false problem, and the "depth" of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in 1959 Derrida asks the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured, in order to be the genesis of something?[3] In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[4] At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulated-complex-such that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[5] It is this thought of originary complexity, rather than original purity, which destabilises the thought of both genesis and structure, that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which derive all of its terms, including deconstruction.[6] Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating all the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter