Reconstructing literature in an ideological age

About this book

While many literary scholars consider feminism, deconstruction, and multiculturalism new avenues to truth, other readers find that such prior ideological commitments distort literature. In Reconstructing Literature in an Ideological Age, Daniel E. Ritchie offers a "biblical poetics" as an alternative approach to ideological criticism, exploring how the Bible's own negotiations with language affect our view of literature, specifically with respect to older texts, gender issues, ethnic diversity, and the apparent arbitrariness of language itself. Focusing here on Restoration and eighteenth-century literature, Ritchie examines how a biblical poetics provides a basis for literary study in the texts of Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, John Milton, Edmund Burke, and Alexander Pope, and he contrasts it to recent ideological approaches to these texts. Ritchie's biblical treatment of particular literary issues provides the basis for original historical research or literary interpretation often sharply at odds with current critical theories.