Annotated Bibliography

Arnold, M., Culture and Anarchy. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

In Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold describes culture as a necessity in a

machinery dominated world and how culture will make human beings ‘look
beyond machinery’. Arnold argues that ‘doing as one like’ will lead to
anarchy and contrasts one’s ‘ordinary self’ with one’s ‘best self’ to
demonstrate how an ideal state should look like. He further distinguishes
between barbarians (as aristocrats), philistines (as the middle class) who are
‘resistant to light’ and populace (as the working class) who may lead to
anarchy since they ‘do as one likes’. He ultimately believes in a ‘common
humanity’ where culture will suppress the peoples’ predilection towards
anarchy.

Culler, J., Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2011.

In his book, Jonathan Culler introduces literary theory as a whole, discussing

shared questions and claims regarding several concepts such as structuralism,
feminism, Marxism, rather than comparing schools of criticism. He states that
‘it is better to discuss important debates that do not oppose one ‘school’ to
another but may mark salient divisions within movements.’ Culler considers
that treating contemporary theory by comparing approaches and methods is a
lack of force and interest of its true meaning. He takes up various topics,
debates, and issues and reflects on them stating his opinions about what has
been learned.

Milner, A., Browitt, J., Contemporary Cultural Theory. Australia: Allen & Unwin, 2002.

The Contemporary Cultural Theory displays a great range of contemporary

theoretical approaches to the analysis of culture. Andrew Millner and Jeffrey
Browitt start from their own definition of culture as ‘that entire range of
institution, artefacts and practices that make up our symbolic universe’ (5)
and they reach the point where they consider the analysis of culturalism as
anti-utilitarian. Milner and Browitt turn to analyses of cultural approaches as
 stated by Matthew Arnold, T.S Eliot, Stuart Hall and Williams. Moreover,
they also extend to the Derrida’s concept of ‘différance’; to Bourdieu,
Deleuze and Guattari and also to postmodernism.

Miller, T., A Companion to Cultural Studies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2001.