First published in 2002. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

'Postmodernism' and 'feminism' have become familiar terms since the 1960s, developing alongside one another and clearly sharing many strong points of contact. Why then have the critical debates arising out of these movements had so little to say about each other? Patricia Waugh addresses the relationship between feminist and postmodernist writing and theory through the insights of psychoanalysis and in the context of the development of modern fiction in Britain and America. She attempts to uncover the reasons why women writers have been excluded from the considerations of postmodern art. Her route takes her through the theorization of self offered by Freud and Lacan and on to the concept of subjectivity articulated by Kleinian and later object-relations psychoanalysts. She argues that much women's writing has been inappropriately placed and interpreted within a predominantly formalist-orientated aesthetic and a post-Freudian/liberal, individualist conceptualization of subjectivity and artistic expression. This tendency has been intensified in discussions of postmodernism, and a new feminist aesthetic is thus badly needed. In the second part of the book Patricia Waugh analyses the work of six 'traditional' and six 'experimental' writers, challenging the restrictive definitions of 'realist', 'modernist', 'postmodernist' in the light of the theoretical position developed in part one. Authors covered include: Woolf (viewed as a postmodernist 'precursor' rather than a 'high' modernist), Drabble, Tyler, Plath, Brookner, Paley, Lessing, Weldon, Atwood, Walker, Spark, Russ, and Piercy.

Metafiction begins by surveying the state of contemporary fiction in Britain and America and explores the complex political, social and economic factors which influence critical judgment of fiction. The author shows how, as the novel has been eclipsed by the mass media, novelists have sought to retain and regain a wide readership by drawing on the themes and preoccupations of these forms. Making use of contemporary fiction by such writers as Fowles, Borges, Spark, Barthelme, Brautigan, Vonnegut and Barth, and drawing on Russian Formalist theories of literary evolution, the book argues that metafiction uses parody along with popular genres and non-literary forms as a way not only of exposing the inadequate and obsolescent conventions of the classic novel, but of stuggesting the lines along which fiction might develop in the future.

Postmodernism and feminism have become familiar terms since the 1960s, developing alongside one another and clearly sharing many strong points of contact. Why then have the critical debates arising out of these movements had so little to say about each other? Patricia Waugh addresses the relationship between feminist and postmodernist writing and theory through the insights of psychoanalysis and in the context of the development of modern fiction in Britain and America. She attempts to uncover the reasons why women writers have been excluded from the considerations of postmodern art.

Her route takes her through the theorization of self offered by Freud and Lacan and on to the concept of subjectivity articulated by Kleinian and later object-relations psychoanalysts. She argues that much women s writing has been inappropriately placed and interpreted within a predominantly formalist-orientated aesthetic and a post-Freudian/liberal, individualist conceptualization of subjectivity and artistic expression. This tendency has been intensified in discussions of postmodernism, and a new feminist aesthetic is thus badly needed.

In the second part of the book Patricia Waugh analyses the work of six traditional and six experimental writers, challenging the restrictive definitions of realist, modernist, postmodernist in the light of the theoretical position developed in part one. Authors covered include: Woolf (viewed as a postmodernist precursor rather than a high modernist), Drabble, Tyler, Plath, Brookner, Paley, Lessing, Weldon, Atwood, Walker, Spark, Russ, and Piercy.

Contents:
General editor's preface. Acknowledgements. 1. What is metafiction and why are they saying such awful things about it? 2. Literary self-consciousness: developments 3. Literary evolution: the place of parody 4. Are novelists liars? The ontological status of literary-fictional discourse 5. Fictionality and context: from role-playing to language games Notes. Bibliography. Further reading.

By interrogating the terms and concepts most central to cultural change, Future Theory interrogates how theory can play a central role in dynamic transition. It demonstrates how entangled the highly politicized spheres of cultural production, scientific invention, and intellectual discourse are in the contemporary world and how new concepts and forms of thinking are crucial to embarking upon change. Future Theory is built around five key concepts - change, boundaries, ruptures, assemblages, horizons - examined by leading international thinkers to build a vision of how theory can be applied to a constantly shifting world.

The new edition of this core text has been thoroughly revised and updated in light of the latest developments in the field. Covering the key theoretical approaches in modern literary theory, the text includes those essays and documents that are essential reading for students of literature and critical theory. The original structure of the book has been improved and new material has been added, including extracts from the writings of Marx, Freud, and de Beauvoir, and a new section devoted to contemporary critical debates and issues.

This collection reflects on developments in criticism which bear on a debate between different modes of knowledge: a science model and its place in the university versus other ways of conceiving knowledge for which the arts have traditionally been seen as vehicles. Discussion ranges widely with contributions from outside the literary academy, including essays by the novelists Doris Lessing and David Lodge. All the essays are concerned with what literature, and therefore criticism, is or aims to be. Several are concerned with a specifically aesthetic way of knowing, the value of which lies in its very resistance to scientific models of knowledge. The answers about how literature can resist such models, and what kinds of knowing best respond to the distinctive nature of aesthetic experience, are varied. The collection also addresses the consequences for literary criticism of the politically-driven critique which has recently undermined traditional concepts of truth and knowledge in both arts and sciences. And finally it asks whether professional criticism should be a deepened extension of the sense-making activity of ordinary intelligent reading, or whether it should be a purely objective study, analogous to other scientific forms of knowledge studied in an academic context.

Critical Transitions interrogates the terms and concepts most central to the urgent task of examining cultural change as a process of dynamic transition. This volume approaches the question of transition from multiple perspectives, demonstrating how the highly politicized spheres of cultural production, scientific invention and intellectual discourse are entangled in the contemporary world. Organized into five clusters of concepts - change, boundaries, ruptures, assemblages, horizons - by leading and emerging thinkers in the arts, humanities and social sciences, and spanning fields including geography, literary studies, cultural theory, philosophy, and politics.

Postmodernism is a valuable resource for the increasing numbers of teachers and students in higher education involved in courses on postmodernism and literary tneory. It is a collection of the incessantly cited but nevertheless still widely-scattered critical texts on the subject and includes all the classics as well as some less obvious, through no less stimulating, choices. An introduction and commentary by Pat Waugh provides essential information and offers a context within which to view the chosen texts.