(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best literary criticism & theory books

Don't take that the wrong way, and definitely don't bail on Bone & Ink. I was just saying that 'success' as a writer is hard to measure, but any real amount of it involves much larger audiences. Few people are successful in that way quickly, it takes time to get used to both writing and publishing. Poetry is in a unique place because it sort of walks point for the nation in many ways. One of the main goals of poetry is surprise, and because the white male perspective has been the defacto voice of educated literati for some time, the fertility of new perspectives provides unique interpretations of the world... or, poetry's all about looking at both the macro and the micro with various lenses... sorry to point to something so common, but Wallace Stevens' 13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird really is a good way to think of perspective's role in poetry. And to illustrate how different lenses can greatly impact the picture shown.

I mean, my journal acceptances mean next-to-nothing (at least to hiring boards) and I've had well over 100 in some good journals. Don't get caught up on success, is the point. But you should definitely be proud of your accomplishments so far. It's a very good start.

As far as Red Dashboard, it depends. If you're super confident in the poems you could try contacting them and say you've had a change of heart and want to work on the poems more before they're published (never a bad idea), or that you want to publish more of the individual poems first, whatever. Also, you could just dust your hands off and get working harder on more poems. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with the book a vanity press publishes, it's the lack of peer review that allows the bad in with the good. If you are happy with what you've sent, work with them to make it the best it can be and buy a bunch of copies for yourself and to sell if you do any readings or anything, but don't expect them to do much with it. You're the PR person when it comes even to a lot of normal small presses.

Going forward the biggest thing I can recommend is to read as much as you can. And only some classic stuff, at least half or more should be literary journals and anthologies of stuff from the last few decades. Read as much as you can and while you're reading, take notes, not like study notes, but when something sticks out underline it or better yet, start a google doc file and type/copy in bits you like with the poet's name and the poem title. I also highly recommend classes. You need to approach them with the right frame of mind, but if you do they can be invaluable. Even adult school/community college classes. A workshop allows you direct feedback from readers who are also writers, often not sugarcoated how others might. You have to understand that your words aren't the golden record of communication and some parts may be unclear to readers who only have the words on the page and their own (often very different from your own) life experience. Because it's easy for young writers to forget that poetry and language in general is a contrivance invented to express our understanding and observations of the world with others in as universally understandable way as possible. It doesn't matter what you mean by words if the reader cannot reach that meaning with the key (words in the poem) that you've given them. Abstractions (non-physical things like love, many, smelly etc) are different to everyone and therefore should be used with caution. But mainly, take all comments with a grain of salt. Take the time to get as out of your own headspace as possible (detach yourself from ownership/creatorship of the piece) and objectively analyse if the change would make the piece better, or, sometimes they'll have a point with making an objection while you want to solve it in an alternative way.

Sorry, I'm meandering a bit because I'm writing this in snippets while working. Here are a couple recommendations that I really think will help:

1. Buy used books. Poets end up owning a lot of books. If money's no issue, go ham, especially on poets' individual collections because that actually affects them personally. But even then, for older books and anthologies, def go used, it's often like 80% or more cheaper, especially for poetry books.
   
   Poetry 180 is a free website with 180 accessible and very good poems. I usually point young writers there because it's almost entirely contemporary work, and it's easy to read and understand without sacrificing quality of writing. And it's relatively ecclectic. Not too much of the 'MFA' poems as I take you to mean. Billy Collins was the US Poet Laureate when he began the project and it's still rolling today. He's a good writer to check out too, and he's all over the internet. But, old white guy perspective trigger warning. haha.
   
   In the Palm of Your Hand: The Poet's Portable Workshop Buy this used for $5.14 with shipping. You won't regret it. It's kinda a DIY poetry workshop. It has themed sections and many poems to illustrate its craft points. Steve Kowit was an amazing poet and teacher and he's sadly missed. Also it's very accessible. Kowit was pretty core in the 'school' of poetry with many names, including "ultra-talk" "stand-up poetry" and a bunch of others, but basically, they use colloquial, often straightforward language and often include elements of humor and pop culture. If that sounds up your alley I cannot more highly recommend the anthology Stand Up Poetry: An Expanded Anthology edited by Charles Harper Webb. It's definitely one of my favorite anthologies. It's a little more expensive at $8.75 with shipping (these quotes may be slightly dif to CAN, but it should be close), but absolutely worth it.
   
   The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry edited by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux. Bother are tremendous poets and their work on this anthology is really really insightful and helpful for young poets. It was for me. This one is about $8.
   
   If you buy those three anthologies for a total of like $23US, and you read them and try the suggested exercises I can all but guarantee you'll become a better poet. Of course there are millions of ways to progress your poetry, I'd never claim this is the only or the absolute best way, but it will definitely improve your writing in a way that just aimless reading and writing will not.
   
   As for publishing, Duotrope is amazing, but has a subscription fee so for the moment you can do most research at free places. I recommend
   
   The Review Review (reviews of journals, lists, interviews with editors and articles regarding publishing)
   
   New Pages (see desc. of TRR)
   
   and
   
   Poets and Writers (great craft articles, a decent journal database and a great contest calendar)
   
   And... don't be afraid of rejection. Even continued rejection. I have pieces that have been rejected upwards of 30 times get accepted at journals much more prestigious than a lot of journals that had already rejected it. Poetry is highly subjective (though, there are metrics, standards of craft that all poems are measured against before subjectivity really comes into play). Reading poetry, even, can be subjective. I once accidentally resubmitted the same poem to a journal 5 years after it had been rejected and it was accepted the second time with very little in way of changes. So yeah, you have to get your writing to a certain place, but once you're beyond that, it's largely a numbers game that you get better and better at managing as you become more intimately familiar with journals and your writing gains nuance and you feel more comfortable in your voice.
   
   If you have any more questions or need more recommendations let me know, always trying to help young poets find their path. I know my own path would've been much different with some earlier direction, but I'm very grateful for what I received eventually.

It's good that you want to expand your reading! And honestly, you'll probably always feel like you're missing something. My reading list has gone out of control since I started college. The more you read the more you'll want to know!

I suppose that's what I meant by range. Being able to sample different and varying bodies of work. That way you learn a little bit, but still open up avenues for finding new information. (Like going to a grocery store and eating all the samples, but then only buying one of the products to take home to fill your tummy until the next shopping day.)

There's a couple ways you can do this: start with a really broad scope and then go specific from there. Or, start with a narrow focus and then go broad.

An example of narrow to broad: I took a class on African American Science Fiction. Which is a pretty narrow field of study. We read lots of different authors whose works were specific to African American literature (e.g. Nalo Hopkins, Octavia Butler), but also situated within the broader genre of sci-fi. So we had to pay attention to not only the African American perspective, but also what was going on in these books that was pertinent to sci-fi writing. After the class was over I got more interested in sci-fi as a genre because it can do some really cool stuff!

Broad to narrow: During the same quarter I also took a literary criticism class and we got this monstrous behemoth as a textbook: http://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism-Edition/dp/0393932923 (To this day I can't look at that book without feeling anxious. It's DENSE. Helpful and interesting, but DENSE.) Anyways, for the class we read a lot of different authors with extremely diverse perspectives and focuses (e.g. Saussure, Marx, Haraway etc.). That's the type of writing (i.e. critical essays) that you can apply and find incredibly relevant in other areas. You can take one of those essays and manipulate it and use different perspectives/readings to understand another piece of work more deeply. So for my final essay in this class, I used Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto and applied it to my particular understanding of a short story we read in my African American Science Fiction.

Both of these classes allowed/forced me to read things I normally wouldn't have. They put me out of my comfort zone.

So long story short, read lots and make connections!

As far as where to start...that's really up to you. Find something that you're interested in and go from there. Like superheros? Read Watchmen by Alan Moore. Like history? Read the actual story of Pocahontas (spoiler: it's nothing like Disney). Like all of the current hullabaloo about the NSA? Read 1984.

Don't read something just because it's a classic. Read it because you're actually interested in what it's about. That being said, it's best to try and keep an open mind. Also, genre writing can get a lot of flack for not being "literary enough." But genre writing has it's own merits, they're just a little different.

If you're looking for more suggestions and are curious about what's being read in academia, try googling a university and their English dept. Often they'll link to course catalog descriptions that may include their required reading lists.

I hope this helps! :)

TL;DR Just keep reading. Really. Even reading the back of a shampoo bottle is better than nothing.

For learning Ancient Greek (as an autodidact), start by signing up for The Great Courses Plus and take the Ancient Greek course, taught by Hans-Friedrich Meuller:

Greek 101: Learning an Ancient Language | The Great Courses Plus

You can sign up for a free trial on The Great Courses, for just long enough to complete the Greek course. But I think it’s totally worth paying for ALL of the content.

I recommend downloading the guidebook and doing ALL of the homework. Copy and paste the exercises into a Word doc and type out the answers/translations. Take the course as many times as you can for mastery.

I’ve created a couple of free courses on Memrise for Ancient Greek verbs that (I hope) people may find helpful. I use (my best attempt at) Modern Greek pronunciation. Audio can be disabled by anyone who has a problem with that. My Memrise account (Diachronix) has some other Modern Greek courses.

Paradigms of Ancient Greek Verbs

Principal Parts of Ancient Greek verbs

Professor Al Duncan produced an excellent series of Ancient Greek videos (on Youtube: Learn Attic Greek with Al Duncan - YouTube), which follows along the exercises in chapters 1–10 and 30–34 of Cynthia Shelmerdine’s Introduction to Greek.

That textbook is a bit error-prone, but it’s still pretty good for beginners. I recommend using it to follow along in Professor Duncan’s videos, at least until they cut off at chapter 10. But you’re on your own between chapters 11 and 29. Again, I recommend typing out ALL of the exercises.

The Athenaze Book 1 and Athenaze Book 2 are good self-study resources for intermediate learners, with a lot of excellent reading material. I also have a Memrise course for the vocabulary in these texbooks.

Athenaze: Book 1

Athenaze: Book 2

Leonard Muellner (Professor Emeritus of Classical Studies at Brandeis University) has a Youtube series on Ancient Greek: Learn Ancient Greek, with Prof. Leonard Muellner - YouTube

Unfortunately the audio throughout most of this series is terrible. But if you manage to listen closely (and not fall asleep), it’s quite edifying. Meullner is a genius. The course follows along the Greek: An Intensive Course textbook by Hansen & Quinn. You could try getting that textbook and following along, but I would recommend this last. I just can’t imagine most people having the patience for it. And I’ve heard mixed reviews on Hansen & Quinn, which professor Meullner criticizes ad nauseam throughout his videos.

Another resource I really like is the online version of ΓΡΑΜΜΑΤΙΚΗ ΤΗΣ ΑΡΧΑΙΑΣ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΣ by ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΟΥ. You can turn the audio in the bottom right and a robot reads it out-loud. It’s helpful to learn the grammatical terminology in Greek and, if you can manage reading demotic Greek, you can experience the way the Greeks approach Ancient Greek (and observe the notable differences). They have interesting grammatical category distinctions that we don’t have in the West, many of which are quite handy. But this textbook doesn’t have any engaging reading material, aside from bland descriptions of the language. So it’s not for everyone.

Most other learning material I could recommend is mentioned in the various links above. But here are some key items for building a collection of self-study material:

*Geoffrey Horrocks’ “Greek - A History of the Language and Its Speakers” (MUST READ)

Plato: A Transitional Reader

Kaegi’s Greek Grammar

Smyth’s Greek Grammar

Plato Apology

Homeric Greek - A Book for Beginners

Rouse’s Greek Boy - A Reader

Basics of Biblical Greek

A Graded Reader of Biblical Greek

Geoffrey Steadman’s Ancient Greek reader SERIES

If you're new and really want a good wide sampling, I heartily endorse a well-edited anthology. Not a shitty anthology of the classics, but a good, well-curated, interesting, broad, informative collection of poems. My first was the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, which, though it's country specific and leaves out some good poets, is pretty terrific for the relatively recent, American stuff. A different route in the anthology department is The Making of A Poem, which covers formal aspects of poetry without treating you like an infant or talking over your head, and then gives a spectacular, chronologically organized range of examples of those forms.


I think the best way to find out what you like is to read a few issues of Poetry magazine, everything they do is on their website, and find out what clicks with you.


I like to read individual collections, so I'll list some of my all time favorites here. Obviously there are a lot more than this list, and I'm offering here the stuff I think is a bit more accessible, even the moderns and Whitman are pretty lucid, even if Pound is a bit dense and Williams is a bit flightly.


Contemporary/Recent:

Maurice Manning - Bucolics and Lawrence Booth's Book of Visions

Robert Hass - Praise

Donald Justice - Departures

Louise Gluck - Averno and The Wild Iris


Further Back:

Ezra Pound - Personae

Willian Carlos Williams - Al Que Quiere! and Sour Grapes

HD - Sea Garden

Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass


Non-English:

Charles Baudelaire - Fleurs du Mal

Tomas Transtromer - New Collected Poems (tr. Robin Fulton)

The CELT (Corpus of Electronic Texts) database hosted by UCC hosts transcriptions of many Old Irish texts. There are some English translations, though they can be difficult to dig up. Nonetheless the database contains a wide variety of material the narrative literature section includes mythology.

Ignoring the somewhat dodgy-looking website MaryJones.us contains a wide selection of Irish (and Celtic!) material and more translations. The only real downside to MaryJones is that the sources of translations aren't always provided, so the accuracy cannot be checked against the actual texts the translation is working from. Nonetheless, the majority are good translations.

Irish Literature which includes many of the historical and mythological texts that CELT also has, and some Pre-Christian Inscriptions.

In terms of books, The Táin, early Ireland's great epic is a good one. I've yet to read the latest translation, admittedly, but I do quite enjoy Kinsella's version: he manages to capture the feel of Old Irish, so to speak, and its occasionally choppy narrative style, while making the text legitimately readable. It stays true to the text while still being accessible.

Likewise, Jeffrey Gantz's Early Irish Myths and Sagas is an excellent introduction to some of the more interesting, and important myths of early Ireland. The translations are very readable - though at times he has sacrificed the tone of Old Irish to do so.

On the other end of the spectrum, the Tales of the Elders of Ireland as translated by Ann Dooley and Harry Roe, has retained the Old Irish flavour, and is therefore occasionally difficult to understand.

In terms of secondary material, you'll have to be a little more specific as to what you're looking for. Miranda Green has a pretty good book, but she runs into the same issue that we all run into: we don't know how the myths that we have were perceived by or influenced the people who created them.

All of our stories, all of our information, really, is relayed to us through manuscripts that were created primarily in monasteries (though we have some created by laypeople and not monks, they're younger, and fairly well-removed from whatever paganism may be represented in the texts.) Few (if any) of them provide any commentary, or meta-analysis - and what we do have is pretty spare (ie. a note that the scribe doesn't believe any of what he's just written.)

The texts do tend to uphold the laws that we have, so I suppose you could argue either way: did the myths influence the laws, or the laws influence the myths?

But as I say, as we have no sources, really, from pre-Christian Ireland, only material that has been transmitted through a Christian lens, it's hard to know how the remaining texts were treated. Granted, their preservation does indicate that they were regarded with a certain level of reverence, but their actual influence is unknown. There is some literature that compares the ways in which the Christian authors follow some of the tropes of myth in their own writings of saints lives, but I'm not sure if that's what you're after.

>The grammar simplifies itself the more people use it.

How are you defining grammar? I would highly recommend cracking a textbook on historical linguistics (Introduction to Historical Linguistics by Crowley and Bowern is great, as is Historical Linguistics by R.L. Trask).

You seem to be specifically referring to the tendency of highly synthetic languages to become more analytic over time -- but seem to be forgetting (or are unaware of) the fact that analytic languages become agglutinating and then synthetic over time. The whole process is referred to as the grammaticalization cycle.

>Language carries with it a certain amount of entropy; if it's taught properly it can maintain itself, but most people don't have the time or need.

Again, I highly recommend consulting an introductory textbook for historical linguistics.

>So gradually people start playing fast and loose with the syntax and what not.

This is flat-out wrong. Either of the books I mention above will explain why.

>Lexical complexity is only the result of introducing more words though conquest or immigration which is common enough but it doesn't happen on it's own.

This is also wrong. Seriously, both of the above books are great -- both are very readable, and Trask has the excellent quality of being charmingly (and intentionally) hilarious.

You're clearly interested in language, otherwise you wouldn't be posting in this subreddit. I think you'll find the scientific study of language to be incredibly interesting and fun -- and more rewarding than just positing unsubstantiated suppositions.

For fairy tales, I recommend the following:

• The Victorian Fairy Tales Book
  
• Norton's The Classic Fairy Tales
  
• Norton's The Great Fairy Tale Tradition
  
• The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales
  
• My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
  
• Any and all of Andrew Lang's Colored Fairy Books (the first two focus on collections of well-known tales, but most of them are sort of themed/grouped geographically and have fairy tales from all over the world)
  
• The Complete Fairy Tales of George MacDonald
  
• The Names Upon the Harp: Irish Myth and Legend
  
• I'm a big fan of the various "Annotated" Fairy Tale collections, like the Annotated Brothers Grimm, Annotated Classic Fairy Tales, and Annotated Hans Christen Andersen, though I don't always agree with the editorializing. It's a whole series, so I'm only going to link to a couple.
  
• On that note, look for book collections put together and/or edited by Maria Tatar and Jack Zipes. They're the two most prominent fairy tale scholars at the moment and basically have an unofficial duopoly on the fairy tale academic criticism market.
  
• Also, a special shout-out to P.J. Lynch's illustrated version of East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and really all of the fairy tales books that Lynch illustrates. They're beautiful.
  
  
  For mythology and classical studies, there are a couple that are basically required reading for any Mythology or Classics class. Since several people have already recommended anthologies of Greek myths, I'm going to err more on the "Classics" side of the conversation:
  
  
• Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell
  
• The Odyssey, Homer (I recommend the Fagles translation due to its prominence in academia and its status as one of the best translations of the work)
  
• The Illiad, Homer (again, Fagles translation)
  
• The Aeneid, Virgil (again, Fagles has a translation that's very good). My bias as a Latin student, however, leads me to also recommend Pharr, which has no real use to you if you don't know Latin but it's the most popular all-time textbook version of the Aeneid)
  
• Metamorpheses, Ovid
  
• You also probably want to look at some Greek plays like the Sophoclean Tragedies/Three Thebian Plays

I'm a kind of casual reader these days, but Good Poems, selected by Garrison Keillor played a huge part in me getting into poetry ~10 years ago. Keillor grabs a good range of old classics and newer ones (though he kinda seems to favor beat era writers), and sorts the poems vaguely according to themes, like "Failure," "A Day's Work," "Sons and Daughters." I'd bet I've discovered 80% of my favorite writers due to this book. Props to u/JTK102 for also recommending this!



If that's too entry level, my other go-to anthology is The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry, but obviously that one sticks to contemporary American writers. I like this anthology because it also gives some background to the career and cultural significance of the featured writers.


Good luck on your hunt!

> early cosmology is highly speculative

Yes, but we still know there are other possibilities to consider. The answers science has at the moment, though tentative, are compatible with some interesting and very old philosophic ideas.

> to say that a vacuum state is eternal

I didn't say a given state was eternal, rather the field itself, in which the states exist. You're confusing a specific quantum state, which is transient, with the eternal quantum vacuum field itself.

> The vacuum state cannot be eternal because we obviously don't live in a quantum vacuum

Per inflationary cosmology, we do live in a quantum vacuum. We live in a universe that nucleated out of, and exists within, the eternal quantum vacuum. The matter in our universe is made of the energy of this vacuum.

Your argument is the equivalent of saying that outer space obviously doesn't exist, because we're not living in it. We are in it, but we have a bit of atmosphere between us and it. With the quantum vacuum, we have our atmosphere, plus a bunch of space between us and the interstitial quantum vacuum.

>but not a sudden emergence of reality from non-being.

Inflationary cosmology doesn't entail creation ex nihilo. I never said it did. That's sort of the point. You seem to be implicitly equating the word "ontology" with "explaining creation ex nihilo."

>You cannot force cosmology into being ontology.

Creation ex nihilo isn't the entirety of ontology. Ontology is the study of being, and you can discuss the nature of being in the context of modern inflationary cosmology. Many philosophers, and even some Christian theologians, believed in the principle of plenitude, by which all possible worlds exist. Giordano Bruno and Nicholas of Cusa both believed in some variant of this. Spinoza also believed in it, as did Leibniz, and it is compatible with the model of Democritus. The great book The Great Chain of Being discusses the history of the idea at length.

The ideas of the principle of plenitude, which go back at least to Plato, are compatible with inflationary cosmology. You can discuss the nature of being, of why the world exists as it does, without believing that "absolute philosophical nothingness" ever existed or could have existed.

Even contingency is not a given. In a universe where all possible worlds are realized, there would be no contingency. Every deal of the cards is actualized, and the one "we" see is just an artifact of our parochial point of view. Other instances of "we" in other locations saw other deals of the cards.

There are tons of ways to look at ontology. You can write a short computer program whose instructions would, given enough power and memory to run, spit out the works of Shakespeare and every other possible book of any given length. Did the works of Shakespeare and all those other books already 'exist' in the short program? No, not directly, but in churning through all the possible values, the one containing the works of Shakespeare was included by necessity.(1)


These are ontological questions that touch directly on ideas of necessity and contingency. In Everett's many-worlds interpretation of QM, all possible worlds exist, so there is no contingency. No, this doesn't entail creation ex nihilo, but since we don't know that the world was created from nothing, or that absolute philosophical nothingness was even possible, we need to stop acting as if that's the one burning question everyone needs to talk about.

-----------------

(1)Mathematically, we're talking about a cartesian product of 6.8 million ASCII characters (the length of the works of Shakespeare, per a Project Gutenberg download). Much like an odometer, but one with all the printable ASCII characters instead of just 0-9 numerals, it would roll around until all the possibilities were exhausted. There are
95 printable ASCII characters. 95^16,800,000 is a staggeringly huge number, but any process that churned through all of those would come up not just with the works of Shakespeare, but the King James Bible, the works of Gibbon and Cervantes and Proust, and every possible book of that length or shorter that can be made up of ASCII characters. In an infinite universe, and/or on an infinite timeline, every possibility would be actualized, an infinite number of times. Without any authors needed.

This is an ontological discussion, because it touches on what it means for the books to "be," to "exist," in this set. They exist in this set of outcomes, without any authorial intent, without being hard-coded into the program, without being foreseen at all. It's an interesting discussion. I recommend the great book The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel for more philosophical and mathematical investigation of the idea. Sorry for the long post, and long tangent, but I find the subject fascinating unto itself. Contingency, necessity etc an be discussed quite apart from theological contexts.

The best way to get into Middle English is just to start reading it, using a book that has glosses of difficult words on the page. If you have the Norton Anthology of British Literature, I would start with some of the lyrics and then Chaucer, as those are the easiest to handle. It may seem tough at first, but it gets easier over time. Once you feel comfortable with that, you could read Sir Orfeo which is also in there, or move to The Book of Middle English by Burrow (I think Lutefish confused this book with the one by Bennett that was finished by Gray, which is a good book, but not an anthology). The Norton Middle English Romances would also fit in here (some of these are good and some are just ok).

After doing this, you should have a good knowledge of Middle English, even by the end of a few months of reading. You could probably begin to read Piers Plowman at this point, or some of the non-East Midlands texts in Burrow.

If you want to move from here into Old English, you could. If you understand how inflected languages work (have you taken Latin?), you could get a copy of Mitchell and Robinson's Guide to OE and start working through the texts on your own. Your best bet for learning OE, though, is to take a course in it.

After you've done all that, then you could try to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Middle English, maybe.

In one example in the medieval Irish tradition from the pseudo-historical Lebor Gabála Érenn, the tension between pre-Christian and Christianized lineages was dealt with by drawing distinctions between the descent of Christianized man and that of their predecessors on the Island. The text can be seen as a sort of reconciliation of pre-Christian religion and history into a framework patterned on Biblical narrative. Within the text the aforementioned distinction is drawn between humanity and the Tuatha Dé Danann who would reside beneath the earth after their defeat by the sons of Míl:

>Three days and three nights after that the sons of Míl defeated the demons, i.e. the Tuath Dé Donann, in the battle of Sliab Mis... From Bile and Míl all the Gaels are descended.^^1

Though it is not the specific topic of your question, you've touched on a fascinating and enigmatic broader theme; that of the Christian contextualisation of pre-Christian culture. If you'd permit a slight detour, there are some interesting textual demonstrations of the attitude in monastic Ireland towards Pagan tradition. Ireland had a very old and sophisticated oral tradition prior to the arrival of Christianity, and the integration of this tradition into a Christian context was by turns harmonious and discordant. Some expressions of this were a folk syncretism, neither entirely Pagan nor entirely Christian, as Don Yoder writes in his 1974 paper Towards a Definition of Folk Religion:

>Is folk religion, in the European context, as Charles G. Leland once defined it in the last century, "the old religion" (la vecchia religione), that is, survivals in the present of pre-Christian forms of religion? This is the evolutionist, survivalist, "gesunkenes Kulturgut" approach. According to this definition folk religion in Catholicism would be the acculturated elements from the pre-Christian religions...^^2

While the Lebor Gabála Érenn might make distinctions between the two, such stark divisions are not always the case. More permissive cultural amalgamation may be seen for example in the Acallam na Senórach, a compilation Fenian Cycle narratives. The framing device of the Acallam na Senórach is the recounting the exploits of the long-dead legendary Fianna by Fionn mac Cumhaill's son Oisín and his companion Caílte to an amazed but deeply conflicted Saint Patrick, who is uneasy over the role these Pagan heroes have within Christianity. As Ann Dooley writes in her introduction to her own translation of the text:

> Early in the great medieval compilation of Fenian lore called Tales of the Elders of Ireland...St. Patrick's guardian angels come to him to give him the heavenly advice he had sought. Ancient warriors, survivors from an older, more heroic and magnificent age, have presented themselves to him and he has been both fascinated and troubled by their appearance and their stories. The advice of the angels, given 'with one voice', is the following:
>> `Dear holy cleric, these old warriors tell you no more than a third of their stories because their memories are faulty. Have these stories written down on poets' tablets in refined language, so that the hearing of them will provide entertainment for the lords and commons of later times.'^^3

This permissive 'laundering' of pre-Christian tradition is not always so warmly encouraged; contrast the Book of Leinster's text of the Táin Bó Cúailnge which ends with a more antipathetic stipulation:

>Sed ego qui scripsi hanc historiam aut uerius fabulam quibusdam fidem in hac historia aut fabula non accommodo. Quaedam enim ibi sunt praestrigia demonum, quaedam autem figmenta poetica, quaedam similia uero, quaedam non, quaedam ad delectationem stultorum.

>

>I who have copied down this story, or more accurately fantasy, do not credit the details of the story, or fantasy. Some things in it are devilish lies, and some poetical figments; some seem possible and others not; some are for the enjoyment of idiots.^^4

Which perhaps might betray the monastic perception of pre-Christian tradition, though the medieval period was hardly unique in this editorialisation; "I left out a good deal I thought you would not care about for one reason or another,"^^5 as an uncomfortable Lady Gregory wrote of the omitted salacious detail in her translation over 700 years later.



^^1 ^(John Koch and John Carey. The Celtic Heroic Age. Literary Sources for Ancient Celtic Europe and Early Ireland and Wales. Aberystwyth, Wales: Center for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, 2009. pp. 266-269)

^^2 ^(Don Yoder. “Toward a Definition of Folk Religion”. Western Folklore 33, 1974. Western States Folklore Society: 2–15.)

^^3 ^(Ann Dooley. The Tales of the Elders of Ireland. New York, United States: Oxford University Press, 1999. p. VII)

^^4 ^(Thomas Kinsella. The Táin. New York, United States: Oxford University Press, 2002. p. 282)

^^5 ^(Ibid., p. XIV)

A few more come to mind, less literature but more about stylistic and analytic skills you'll require in your advanced years in the Humanities.

People say to read a good style guide like Strunk & White, which is just okay. But I'd highly recommend Pinker's A Sense of Style--he also unpacks some of the problems with Strunk & White's core edicts.

Stanley Fish is just a great person to read in general. From his op-ed stuff in the NY Times to his class How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One. I'd also highly recommend reading the full introduction of the Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism or the introduction to Rifkin & Ryan's Literary Theory: An Anthology. When it comes to the lit theory stuff there are some good torrents with a lot of anthologies and canonical texts lumped together as PDFs. I also find a lot of good stuff with my Scribd membership.

As far as I know, the most popular introductory textbook is Fromkin's. You can get an older edition for cheaper. I studied with the 5th edition less than 3 years ago and it was fine. For something less unwieldy and more practical to carry around with you, Barry Blake's All About Language is really good. Less than 300 pages and manages to cover a huge amount of stuff clearly.

Personally, I think that historical linguistics is a really fun and relatively easy way to get into Linguistics as a whole so I'd recommend Trask's Historical Linguistics. I know that the Campbell and Crowley textbooks are also very popular, but I don't have personal experience with them. Maybe somebody else can weigh in on which is easiest for a beginner?

I have to plug my professor Kate Burridge here who has written some excellent pop-linguistics books: Gifts of the Gob, Weeds in the Garden of Words and Blooming English. Her more serious books are also written in a highly accessible manner and she is probably one of the world's experts on Euphemism and taboo. Here's a clip of her in action.

Some fun linguistics-related videos:

TED - The Uncanny Science of Linguistic Reconstruction

Pinker on Swearing

David Crystal on British tv

Another fun way to learn would be to listen to this song and look up all the terms used in it.

This website is rather painful to use on a modern web browser, but has clearly written and illustrative definitions of various types of critical theory, as well as descriptions of figures of interest and their work.

If you'd like an introductory overview of the primary genres of critical theory that goes into somewhat more depth and includes suggested readings, I can recommend Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide. Tyson makes it very accessible by repeatedly analyzing The Great Gatsby through the lens of each theory, which is extremely helpful for understanding the "big picture" of what each tends to focus on.

Welcome to the rabbit hole! :)

You might get some people here to read your manuscript, but its generally a lost cause to get visibility for personal writing unless you already have a reputation for good writing.

Anyways, I'll just recommend you some additional reading on socialism. Be sure to check out the suggested readings list from the sidebar, and in particular these two that I recommend:

• Albert Einstein's Why Socialism?
  
• Oscar Wilde's The Soul of Man Under Socialism
  
  Also, if you are up for some really heavy, but really well written books, I can't recommend Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction enough. The book is a brilliant narrative that shatters all illusions one might have about the monolithic/simplistic nature of Marxism and socialism, as well as the centrality of European philosophy and ideology in the grander schemes of the world. I think its a fantastic book to lay bare the complexities of ideology, the role that capitalism and colonialism have played in shaping the modern world, and the way that theory mixes with practice in the context of the anti-colonial struggles.

I'm so happy to hear that you enjoyed studying Latin so much. Where I live (Canada), classical studies are not valued at all; people honestly don't understand why it would be important to retain some cultural continuity with all of Europe's past, where until just two or three hundred years ago, going to university in Europe meant doing scholarship in Latin. It therefore warms my heart to hear you speaking so fondly of it, and to know that there's a place in the world where even engineers have heard of Vergil.

I do hope you're able to keep reading Latin in your free time. If you like poetry digestible in small chunks, you might enjoy the very user-friendly Catullus. There are other excellent small-scale poets like Propertius, but I find his language rather more difficult. If you can find a book with bite-size excerpts of Ovid, that would be a wonderful way to go as well; Ovid is just stellar.

If you're up for a larger-scale work at any point, there's a fabulous student edition of the first six books of the Aeneid in English where there's an index of the very most common words at the back, then all the other vocabulary is given, with grammatical notes as well, on the same page as the Latin; it saves very, very much time with a dictionary. The book was prepared by an early 20th-century schoolteacher named Clyde Pharr and is available both in paperback and hardback editions.

Isn't Joe Rogan a comedian? (Edit I was thinking of Seth Rogan, but turns out that this guy is, too).

>Dr. Jordan Peterson

I have heard some really bad things about this guy. You might want to stay clear.

>Derrida and Post-Modernism

Just to be clear, Derrida isn't a postmodern. He is most famous for developing "deconstruction," a way of reading texts he takes from Heidegger. He is also closely associated with "Post-Structuralism," a 20th century movement in French philosophy.

As for the difference between Derrida and Postmodernism, here's a thread where I've talked about this before:
https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/5ooiia/what_exactly_is_modernism_is_that_different_from/


Derrida is notoriously difficult. I would recommend having a strong understanding of Heidegger's project before working on Derrida, especially Heidegger's critique of metaphysics of presence and "destruction" of the history of ontology.

The best essay to read to figure out what Derrida is all about is "Differance."

http://projectlamar.com/media/Derrida-Differance.pdf

However, Derrida is incredibly difficult to read, so you might try listening to this relatively easy to follow lecture by him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7s8SSilNSXw&t=4s

Another good book to read for an introduction to Derrida's thought is Deconstruction in a Nutshell, an interview with Derrida by John Caputo followed by a commentary on the interview explaining Derrida's philosophy:

https://www.amazon.com/Deconstruction-Nutshell-Conversation-Perspectives-Continental/dp/0823217558

If you are really brave, you could try reading Derrida's Of Grammatology, his seminal work.

Another option would be to read Derrida reading someone else, just to watch him work and have an idea of how he reads texts. A good text to do this with might be "Plato's Pharmacy," Derrida's reading of Plato's Phaedrus.

http://www.ohio.edu/people/hartleyg/authors/derrida/PlatosPharmacy.pdf

P.S. Another highly accessible essay by Derrida that you might look at (especially with your interest in existentialism) is "The Ends of Man."

http://www2.hawaii.edu/~freeman/courses/phil360/20.%20Derrida%20-%20The%20Ends%20of%20Man.pdf

You could read this as Derrida's critique of Sartre and the existentialist reading of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. Towards the end of the essay, he identifies some of the central strategies of deconstruction.

Definitely have a working knowledge of Psychoanalytic theory as it pertains to literary criticism. This was a pretty important influence on Joyce as well as many other writers associated with Modernism.

Poststructuralism is probably the other most important school that comes to mind that would make for an ideal lens through which to discuss the book, particularly in light of how much it subverts received forms that were "permissible" for the novel. However, both Structuralism and Post- would yield worthwhile understandings of the text. When I say "ideal" however, you should understand that even more recent schools of literary theory that were developed long after "Ulysses" can be just as interesting to retroactively examine a book. (Structuralism would have been roughly contemporary, while Post- would have been a bit after and is usually associated with Postmodernism).

I think if you aren't especially versed in a particular theoretical approach, Rivkin and Ryan's "Literary Theory: An Anthology" is a great introduction to most of the fields of literary criticism, though it probably doesn't have much on the most recent developments. It ends at Hypertext Theory, with which you could probably do some interesting things on Ulysses.

Part of the difficulty of cherry-picking some of these is that it's a little easier to follow them if you're studying them chronologically, because many schools of thought are either evolutions of or reactions to those that came before. The Anthology I posted above covers them in chronological order in a way that I found very helpful when I was studying as an undergrad.

It might be a worthwhile exercise to read a chapter in Ulysses, then read a particular literary theory in the anthology and analyze the chapter through that, then move onto the next chapter and theory, etc.

Not sure what facility you’re referring to, but 34 is NOT too old! Consistency is your best friend; you don’t need to practice a lot everyday, but you DO need to practice everyday. I’ve been using Learn to Read Greek, but I’ve also heard good things about Athenaze. Good luck to you!

It's hard to suggest a single text, but there are many histories of the different strands of literary criticism available. There are some written by practicing specialists, and others by historians of literature. There is a multi volume work published by Cambridge UP that deals with the history of lit-crit that is very valuable, but not easily accessible, or very concise.

My suggestion would be to break down your time-frame to maybe 50 year chunks and read some of the seminal works on the major movements in lit crit during those times. This is one that's used a lot in Universities, though I must admit it wouldn't be one of my favourites (though I can absolutely support it as an introductory work). http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beginning-theory-third-introduction-Beginnings/dp/0719079276/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-8&keywords=literary+criticism

Otherwise, there's the text based approach--where you read different texts from the history of lit crit, using an anthology. The uber-bible of this sort is the http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-4&keywords=literary+criticism. There are smaller, more specific (and probably overall more helpful in a non-reference way) ones too, like this one: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Criticism-Theory-A-Reader/dp/0582784549/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1410136722&sr=8-11&keywords=literary+criticism.

Hope that might be of some help.
M_G

Hey OP, hope this doesn't get lost in the thread...this is a great collection of American poetry that I've used both in and out of the classroom. Amazing variety of styles and content, all in one neat little package. If you ever want advice on poetry appreciation/interpretation, just let me know - I'd be happy to help!

edit: Thought I'd tell you to check out Howard Nemerov ("Storm Windows" is a favorite). Bump for Roethke too ("Root Cellar" is breathtaking).

If you want really excellent intro books then I definitely recommend Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today. This has all the really important schools that are important right now, except eco-criticism, which is kind of a bummer. But I think the latter edition hits a little bit on it under postcolonial theory. This is a good intro text that has overview of what's going on.

Norton Anthology of Critical Theory was mentioned, and while this is an excellent anthology, it's huge and can be a bit complicated to read the actual source material without knowing about it before hand, but it's pretty nice being able to read the actual texts of different theorists. Similar to this is Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan's Literary Theory: An Anthology. While Norton's goes chronologically all the way back to Plato, Rivkin's text groups all the texts under the major schools so you get a comprehensive view of each one. It's worth mentioning though that Norton does have a secondary Table of Contents where they group the readings under school as well.

You mentioned wanting to know postmodernism, and that's another thing that Tyson's text doesn't include, as it's more of a movement instead of a criticism. An intro text similar to Tyson's that does include eco-criticism and postmodernism though is Peter Barry's Beginning Theory.

If you have very little knowledge of theory and criticism, I'd really recommend picking up Tyson's book and reading that so you get an overview of the text before moving on to an anthology. Like I said, the texts can be incredibly dense and difficult to read, and if you've never been exposed to them before it'll just make it even more difficult. Tyson's text also has suggested readings under each school as well to expand what you're reading.

It depends on where you think meaning is located. If you think the author/director/etc. is the creator of the meaning in a text, (and movies are texts) then you may just want to read interviews with the creators. But, if you're like me, and don't believe that the author is the authority on meaning in a text, then you might be better served by reading up on critical theory.

This is an introductory book on the topic. It's really easy to understand and shows many contemporary (and out of fasion) lenses that critical theorists use to examine texts. Tyson applies all of them to The Great Gatsby so you can see how they work on the same primary source, which is really helpful.

It really opens up a lot of movies/books/graphic novels to meaning that isn't exactly obvious. You become a bit of a detective of texts. For example, there are compelling arguments that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is about racial gentrification. How cool is that? What seems like a mostly fun, not too deep movie, has these really mature and relevant topics under the surface.

Sure. Stop me when this gets boring!

The History of Middle-earth.

The History of the Hobbit.

The Road to Middle-earth, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century and Roots and Branches, all by Tom Shippey

You should read Tolkien's Letters, too.

Other books to consider:

The LOTR reader's Companion

J.R.R. Tolkien and His Literary Resonances

Perilous Realms: Celtic and Norse in Tolkien's Middle-earth

The Keys of Middle-Earth: Discovering Medieval Literature through the Fiction of J.R.R. Tolkien

Understanding The Lord of the Rings: The Best of Tolkien Criticism

J.R.R. Tolkien Companion and Guide

If you're feeling rich, you could try to find a copy of Songs For The Philologists, a collection of poems, mostly in Old English, written by Tolkien and E.V. Gordon (I only have a .pdf copy).

I'd also read Tolkien's Beowulf criticism.

and just for fun, read Ents, Elves, and Eriador: The Environmental Vision of J.R.R. Tolkien, which is nothing to do with philology but which was cowritten by my major professor :)

Let's see, what else? Anything by Douglas A. Anderson, Verlyn Flieger or Michael Drout (especially Drout's Beowulf and the Critics and How Tradition Works: A Meme-Based Cultural Poetics of the Anglo-Saxon Tenth Century.

That's pretty much all that leaps immediately to mind, just glancing over my bookshelves, but if you search for "Tolkien scholarship and criticism" you will find much, much more. Hope this helps!

I can only speak for hist ling, but I've loved Trask's - detailed and the exercises can be challenging. I used Crowley/Bowern's in a class and found it a bit slower with not all the information you might want, though there are tons of examples from non-IE languages which is nice. Judging by Amazon another favorite seems to be Campbell's, though I don't have experience with it. I think all of these books would require some prior work in phonology/phonetics, though nothing you couldn't pick soon enough (they might even have a refresher sections, I can't recall).

It's not so much a return to religion as it is the evolution and adaptation of Marx and Feuerbach to today's left. Additional analysis and review is always beneficial, though it's clearly not the religious analysis of its forefathers. In my mind, religion in communist thought can be broken into three basic streams:

• Marx/Feuerbach's religion. Emancipation from illusory and psychological oppression is a prerequisite for our emancipation from real oppression:
  
  > Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
  
  AND
  
  > My only wish is to transform friends of God into friends of man,
  > believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work,
  > candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians
  > who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half
  > angel" into persons, into whole persons.
  
  
• Zizek's interpretation: Religion, devoid of the supernatural, is essentially communist in that most religions tend toward peace/equality.
  
  
• Eagleton's interpretation: Communism is only possible through religious thought. Left to the devices of man, corruption is rampant. (Insert anti-Stalin remarks here.)
  
  Basically what I'm saying is that the new analyses of religion in communist thought exist to add more options so as not to exclude the religious and agnostic.
  
  NOTE -- I don't know why I wrote anything after this point. It's basically a book/theme review. I spent time on it, so I left it here. Maybe someone will enjoy it.
  
  Eagleton's flops around quite a bit. Literary Theory spends the majority of its time bashing postmodernism but his later After Theory narrows the argument to defining absolutes (the human body) and a need for an objective morality that sounds an awful lot like humanism. As far as contributing to communist studies, I don't consider Eagleton an authority on the subject. For example, Why Marx was Right makes no rational or coherent economic arguments for communism. His communism is a result of his faith, not the other way around. Obviously there's a strong moral argument to be made for communism but if that argument is to be made from any other standpoint than humanism I would count it as counterproductive.
  
  As for Zizek, he's clearly not religious and enjoys adapting the Marx/Feuerbach analyses to (post)modern thought. He's sort of the anti-Eagleton in that regard. His work on religion in particular ranges from interesting to absolutely fantastic.
  
  From The Puppet and the Dwarf:
  
  > It is possible today to redeem this core of Christianity only in the
  > gesture of abandoning the shell of its institutional organization (and
  > even more so, of its specific religious experience). The gap here is
  > irreducible: either one drops the religious form, or one maintains the
  > form but lose the essence. This is the ultimate heroic gesture that
  > awaits Christianity: in order to save its treasure, it has to sacrifice
  > itself -- like Christ, who had to die so that Christianity could emerge.
  
  Zizek's analysis of religion isn't always directly from a communist standpoint, though Freud/Lacan are acceptable substitutes in a pinch.
  
  As for Vattimo, I've yet to read Hermeneutic Communism even though I've had it sitting around for a while. His previous work on religion has been very solid. That being said, if you're not one for postmodernism it really isn't something you'll enjoy.
  
  BONUS: If you're interested in reading any of the material listed by these authors, please PM me. I have PDF/MOBI copies available. If I don't have it, I'll help you find it.
  
  I'll post a comment in reply to this one with links to all the files I upload as not to have duplicates.

Oh I envy you being able to read Patrick O'Brian for the first time. I firmly believe that the Aubrey/Maturin series is the greatest work of modern English literature.

I do know that the movie is actually based on the plot of The Far Side of the World, which is actually the tenth novel, and that the stole some of the best anecdotes from various novels. For example, the "lesser of two weevils" gag is from The Fortune of War, which is the sixth book.

Not sure what advice to give you before you embark on your journey but there's two major paths: using references to understand everything, and learning along with Maturin (PO'B uses Maturin to explain some of the more esoteric concepts and terms of square-rigged sailing). I wrote the following in a previous Reddit post:
>In Master and Commander, the first of Patrick O'Brian's brilliant Aubrey/Maturin series (which may very well be the best-written English-language books post-WWII), we are introduced to Stephen Maturin, the perpetual land-lubber who acts as a guide for the reader to the more obscure jargon used by sailors -- especially that of the Royal Navy during the heights of the Age of Sail.

>When Maturin is being given a tour of the HMS Sophie, his first ship deployment, he becomes perplexed by the language being tossed at him and asks, "You could not explain this maze of ropes and wood and canvas without using sea-terms, I suppose? No, it would not be possible. ... No; for it is by those names alone that they are known."

>And that is how it is with the language of sailing; like learning a foreign language, one must become familiar with its terms and jargon for there is no other language to define it.

As for references, there are two major ones: "A Sea of Words", which is a dictionary and general reference for sailing/nautical, naturalism, medicine, politics, and sometimes foreign-language dictionary, though sometimes it comes woefully short on obvious terms; and "Harbors and High Seas", an atlas which maps out the various locations and journeys of Aubrey's missions.

Enjoy! And feel free to ask me any questions regarding the series. I've got whole passages memorized lol

EDIT: I forgot to mention my favorite fact: Patrick O'Brian never stepped aboard a sailing vessel...

A few thoughts:

At one point Lewis and Tolkien were going to write companion novels about space and time. You can see echoes of this in the last chapter of Out of the Silent Planet, the first book in CSL's Space Trilogy when he mentions that space has been cut off from human travel and now any future voyages would be through time. There's also echoes of what might have been in JRRT's Notion Club Papers, which has a time-travel element, but was never published.

In addition, JRRT did not care for the Narnia series because he felt it lacked a coherent theme. However, in the controversial Planet Narnia, Michael Ward posits that CSL actually did have a theme: the medieval view of the planets (The Seven Heavens). There are definitely intriguing arguments made in the book, especially as he combines information from Narnia and the Space Trilogy into his thesis. I wouldn't say it's iron-clad, but if I was still in education, or had the luxury to write papers, this is an area I'd love to explore in depth - specifically the influence of Charles Williams on the evolution of CSL's thought.

If you're interested in aspects of their backgrounds that influenced their worldviews, I would recommend The Discarded Image from CSL (on medieval literature - my favorite CSL book) and The Road to Middle-Earth by Tom Shippey (on the philological undergirding of Middle-Earth). The Humprey Carpenter books are also good (JRRT Letters, Tolkien bio, Inklings bio) as are CSL's letters.

I'm sure you'll get a number of recommendations for primary sources, but I'll just throw in my two cents on some quality secondary sources introducing the field.

Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, by Robert Young is excellent for a broad overview that looks at postcolonialism from a long historical perspective and across geographical boundaries (not just the narrow theoretical flourishing of the 80s and 90s).

Postcolonial Theory: Contexts, Practices, Politics, by Bart Moore-Gilbert is the best introduction to the "trinity" of Bhabha, Said, and Spivak.

Colonialism/Postcolonialism, by Ania Loomba takes a good activist and materialist approach to the subject.

Postcolonial Theory: A Critical Introduction, by Leela Gandhi focuses, as its title indicates, on the theory boom of the 80s and 90s, offering a look at its strengths and weaknesses as they seemed from an insider at the time.

> First in good fiction there are no coincidences...


I 95% agree with this, and I think it's a very, very good point.

But, there's one realm this is actually good, and it's important. What connects the dots in a lot of fiction is intentionality. There's a book by a theorist named Lisa Zunshine focused on this: https://www.amazon.com/Why-Read-Fiction-Interpretation-Narrative/dp/081425151X

The idea is, fiction is satisfying "empathy play" because there aren't coincidences. You have insight to perspectives you wouldn't normally have, and you get to see the results of people's intentions in a way that you can't get in the real world. This is important because it encourages and facilitates empathy. It increases and feed people's curiosity about other people's minds. Yes, you can go too far and start seeing patterns where there aren't any, but most people aren't in danger of that. Most people need to perspective-take MORE.

Consider the fundamental attribution error... the tendency to assume other people do things just because "that's how they are." Most of the time, that's the reason for an action in a story, you've just written a shitty story. It's more complicated, and the motivations come from somewhere and are leading somewhere. Teaching people that it can be intellectually rewarding to consider that can intervene in people just assuming others are simple and one-dimensional.

Hello! I am not OSP but figure I might be able to help a little bit (at least with the first question). For me, at least, when I hear "Fae folk" the first thing I think of is what became of the Irish's "Tuatha Dé Danann". This is not to say that other countries don't have their own "fae" or "spirit" beings (domovoi, hobgoblins, etc), but if I were you I'd start by reading up on Irish mythology. So you could probably check out books like, Tales of the Elders of Ireland or The Tain. If not that, then there are more general books like Fairies: A Dangerous History (I've never read it, but did a quick check on the author and they're a lecturer of Renaissance Literature so it at least sounds decently founded). Besides that, if you're in school and have access to a scholarly database or library you could always try looking up journals/articles relating to them within history or religion and culture. Hope that assists you. :)

Borges doesn't really talk about math so much. The only time (I can think of) where he says something explicit about math is that line, a brief mention in The Book of Sand and his discussion about the size of the Library. He likes infinity a lot-- it's a difficult thing to conceptualize-- but he doesn't say anything terribly "deep" about infinity per se, more about the human mind's conception of it.

That being said, there's a book The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Libary of Babel, which "mathematizes" certain things which Borges talks about; in it the author shows how to understand certain questions which Borges' stories bring up, has some fun abusing Borges' stories to make for more interesting math, and shows that one or two ideas from Borges don't make mathematical sense.

edit: Oh, and by the way, don't let inaccuracy prevent you from reading good literature. Borges was not trying to teach anything, so whether the math works or not should be irrelevant.

In my experience, thinkers like Derrida can really throw you for a loop on your first few tries. One professor described the process as being re-reading over and over until you figure out the questions they're asking, at which point you're ready to read them. For me, the thing that smooths out the process is secondary sources. They explain terms, themes and ideas, as well as contextualizing them in the thinkers larger context. Oxford Very Short Introductions are cheap, accessible, well-written, and have "For further reading" sections that will help you go deeper. I've got a growing collection of them, and it's generally my favorite place to start when trying to learn about something new. I'd also recommend John Caputo's Deconstruction in a Nutshell, which is a Q/A session with Derrida, followed by commentary by Caputo explaining Derrida's answers and pointing towards where in Derrida's work particular ideas and themes can be found.

The Children of Hurin is the easiest read and tells the closest to a self-contained story with some -- albeit limited -- expansion from the version in The Silmarillion.

Unfinished Tales is worth it for the history of Galadriel alone but the whole thing is worth a read and gives an interesting look at the scope of Tolkien's thoughts without being as overwhelming as the histories.

I'd also throw in Tom Shippey's The Road to Middle Earth. It's highly readable and quite insightful. Overall a great expansion to Tolkien's own writings.

As an English major in college, I've been inundated with fiction for years. Now I'm on a big non-fiction and essay kick.

At present I would recommend Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo, a marvelous piece of literary non-fiction set in the slums of Mumbai, and a tidy selection of Foucault that I like to take chunks out of between other books.

Sturrock does a very good job, he's been recommended to me as a secondary source quite a few times. I'd consider grabbing a book on 'deconstruction,' however - as it is an interesting response to structuralism. Deconstruction in a Nutshell, edited and annotated by John Caputo, is a pretty good place to begin.

If you believe your words are gospel, then just accept the feedback and move on with your life. If you want to start down the road of legitimately writing poetry that someone who actually reads poetry can appreciate, it's time to get to fucking work.

Of course, you think your "words" are special, but they aren't. This is the same thing every beginner churns out. It's cliché abstraction and it's not worth sharing with anyone. You can call it "poetry" and say it's your "art" and that poetry can't be "defined" -- whatever.

But anyone who actually reads poetry will recognize your "words" immediately for what they are and turn the page.

Read some poetry, man. Read some books about writing poetry and the tools poets use to craft their poems. If you need recommendations, I can give you some, but you'll have to do some fucking work. You might have missed the memo, but writing poetry is hard work.

***

Edit: Here some recommendations to get you started.

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
  
• The Poetry Home Repair Manual by Ted Kooser
  
• In the Palm of Your Hand by Steve Kowit
  
• The Poet's Companion by Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux
  
  And if you insist on trying to use end rhymes:
  
  
• Rules for the Dance by Mary Oliver
  
  And please, please pick up a good book of poems from multiple authors so you can get some exposure, such as the Norton Anthology of Poetry or the compilation Good Poems by Garrison Keillor. One of my favorites is A Book of Luminous Things by Czeslaw Milosz.

I would highly recommend buying a copy of this book.

This is a great tool for beginners and pros alike. It provides structured exercises that help to get your creative juices flowing.

That's Clyde Pharr's edition (usually known as the Purple Vergil). It's a great help. The old Ad Usum Delphini are great, too. They usually have a prose rewording of the text, so you can decode the poetry without going into English too much (this site has some Ovid, Horace, and Lucretius editions)

If one starts reading those novels, I'd recommend getting some guides to aid in the lubber's understanding:

• A Sea of Words, lexical guide. Trust me, even if you're something of a sailor, you won't understand a good bit of what goes on in the books. Well, you'll probably get the general idea, but there's a lot of nautical nuance that will be utterly lost. Good even for seasoned fans of the series.
  
  
• Harbors and High Seas, geographical guide.
  
  C.S. Forester's Hornblower series is also great.
  
  I haven't tried the sci-fi RCN series, which was influenced by O'Brian, but I should give it a shot.

I'm currently in an English literature MA program, while working towards a teaching diploma at the same time. I agree with everything above.

Concerning becoming a writer: the program helped me a little bit to understand what has been written and why it was written that way, no more no less. I'd say just read the important stuff by yourself, you don't need a professor for that.

Besides guides on creative writing, read some introductory stuff on literature and literature theories to widen your horizon. The ones I liked are:

• http://www.amazon.com/Literary-Theory-Introduction-Terry-Eagleton/dp/0816654476
  
• http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Poetry-Introduction-Tom-Furniss/dp/0582894204/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427309411&sr=1-7&keywords=reading+poetry
  
  Edit: I'm at a pretty good university in Europe, if that matters.

I'm pretty sure my copy of Gawain had Pearl and Patience in it too. I'll dig around when I get home. No wait, it's on Amazon, https://www.amazon.co.uk/Gawain-Cleanness-Patience-Everymans-Library/dp/0460875108, but very out-of-print looking.

This was my Middle English text book at university - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Book-Middle-English-J-Burrow/dp/1405117095 - along with support from https://www.amazon.co.uk/Early-Middle-English-Verse-Prose/dp/0198711018 (which also looks horribly out of print). I think you get The Owl and the Nightingale in the latter.

Not sure with any of those links whether they'll speak to your desire to follow the word into modern spelling - generally they're more interested in the meaning. But one of the details I loved while studying was watching the same word find a new definition; here's people arguing over whether beer (sorry, beor) is cider or not. http://www.tha-engliscan-gesithas.org.uk/gegaderung/index.php?topic=391.0

I took a course on him in college (I was a French major), and our professor thankfully suggested that we ready this book alongside the many Foucaults we were studying. It helps put everything in context and explain a bit better what he's talking about.

If you're into postmodernism then Baudrillard's 'Simulacra and Simulation' which questions reality and its representation.
Also, Shklovsky's 'Art as a Technique', which focuses on how art / literature 'defamiliarises' the habitual nature of life, it is really interesting.
You can get course books on literary theory, I used this one for my undergrad:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Literary-Theory-Anthology-Blackwell-Anthologies/dp/1405106964/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368545296&sr=8-1&keywords=julie+rivkin+and+michael+ryan
They use excerpts from useful theory to make it easier to read, might be worth a look into.

For one of my literary theory classes in undergrad, we used this book. The author analyzes 'The Great Gatsby' through the lens of 10 or 12 critical frameworks. It was really illuminating, clear, and enjoyable to read. Lit theory is the focus, but it also provided a lot of insight into the fundamental ideas of the various critical perspectives that were highlighted. Definitely recommended.

Critical theory does tend to be cryptic, deliberately so in a lot of cases. You might enjoy Baudrillard's America. It's fairly accessible as far as his stuff goes, if you have a rudimentary understanding of his Hyperreal idea.

You already have two of the books I own and BillWeld suggested the other! You could also pick up Musical Evenings with the Captain. It's a collection of cello and fiddle music which are all pieces that were mentioned in the series. I love listening to it while reading.

EDIT: I just realized, it's not the Illustrated Companion that I have. I've got Harbors and High Seas. They look a lot alike, so I'm not sure what the difference is. This book was great for checking maps while reading though.

Here is the textbook I used for my Critical Theory Class at UCLA. It's called the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory. While this is a good introduction to many theorists, I also suggest you to research supplemental materials on databases - ie. JSTOR - to understand movements/concepts.

There is also a comic book series that's descent depending on what you pick. While I enjoyed Foucault for Beginners, I hated Derrida for Beginners.

Lastly, Jonathan Culler's Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction is an excellent entry point. I actually met Culler when I visited Cornell. He's an awesome guy. Anyways, I think Critical Theory: A Very Short Introduction should also be an excellent resource, although I haven't read it myself.

I really loved Literary Theory: An Introduction By Terry Eagleton. Definitely worth a look.

I've yet to see that title, though I'll check it out. Gonna drop these here for posterity, as the're generally regarded as wonderful books on the various forms, mechanics and techniques of writing poetry. The more resources, the better, aye?

The Poet's Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, Kim Addonizio

The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within, Stephen Fry

A Poetry Hanbook, Mary Oliver

Mounce's Basics of Biblical Greek + its workbook is kind of a standard at seminaries, and the one I used. I think its okay, but I don't really like the limited number of sentence translations.

Athenaze is one I'm currently trying out to better my Greek skillz. So far I really like this one, it teaches you Greek by making you read through it, along with a continuous story.

The unabridged Norton Anthology of Poetry has been my poetry bible since I bought it probably a decade ago.

The Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry is a great collection if you're more interested in "newer" (post-WWII) poetry.

also ..
http://www.amazon.com/Sailing-Ships-War-1400-1860/dp/0831776560/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405749703&sr=8-1&keywords=sailing+ships+of+war+1400-1860

http://www.amazon.com/Harbors-High-Seas-Edition-Aubrey-Maturin/dp/0805066144/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405749730&sr=8-2&keywords=patrick+o%27brian+reference

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/081297722X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405749757&sr=8-1&keywords=under+the+black+flag

all three good places to start. The second one is fantastic to have open and waiting while reading the O'Brian Books

My opinion, which is not supported by facts or any real statistical findings, is that it is considered a sign of an experienced reader to visualize fully and deliberately, so many serious readers aspire to do it. On the other hand, light readers, who often take no particularly pronounced pride in their hobby (and are unlikely to participate in these kind of polls or at all post on /r/books, by the way), seem to tend to dislike descriptions and learn to skip or skim them. Specifically, some readers of romance novels told me they do, and numerous teenage readers said they hate description and often skip it.

One comparatively less anecdotal source of the sentiment that I can remember at the moment is narratologist Liza Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction, where she claims that one of the most pleasing things for readers in general is perceiving the workings of a simulated human mind (understanding what characters are thinking), for which reason pure description is much less engaging to light, young or inexperienced readers, because they are less likely to link a description of bad weather, for example, to a character's current state of mind. Zunshine actually recounts experience with students very similar to mine: light or amateur readers tend to dislike and skip descriptions, which she herself admits to have been doing when she was younger.

So, my opinion is a combination of personal experience and some admittedly mild theoretical insight into the nature of literature as a form of art (as mentioned in passing in my initial post). It's not supported by any meaningful statistics. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that description is ineffectual, taxing, unpopular with light readers and likely—in my opinion—forced on dedicated readers.

My best advice is to try the Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (it's expensive but you can get it from the library or buy it used - https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923). It takes the most important canonical excerpts from the most important canonical texts of theory and criticism starting basically with Plato. One advantage, as well, is that it has succinct, practical introductions to each author and text, contextualizing them, and also providing a decent bibliography for further reading. One really helpful thing for beginners is that it provides several ways of indexing/organizing the texts -- chronologically, but also by area of inquiry. Most theory beginners use this in their first Problems and Methods course.

As a follow-up to this, I found this 17 minutes long video to be a great introduction to his thought. It certainly helped me when I started reading Deconstruction in a Nutshell

not relevant, but all the "funniest/saddest __ stories/jokes" do have relevancy in intellectuality. They are stories imperative to our ability to empathize with others, even if it's characters imagined.

Edit: see
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Read-Fiction-Interpretation-Narrative/dp/081425151X
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/books/01lit.html?pagewanted=all

The closest thing to that (and it's pretty close) is The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion by Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull. It's essentially the annotations in a separate volume. (An annotated version of *The Lord of the Rings would be pretty fat.)

It's a pretty good book.

Mark Durie and Malcolm Ross' book on the comparative method is good, and Trask's Historical Linguistics is a good intro text.

Pharr's commentary on the first 6 books of the Aeneid is a classic go-to for intermediate students. The best part is that the comprehensive vocab notes and commentary are at the bottom of the page so there's no constant flipping back and forth. The only bad thing is that Pharr wrote this essentially as a job application and got the job so he never wrote a second edition for the rest of the Aeneid lol.


https://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Latin-English/dp/0865164215

More stuff that is closer to the 21st century, and reflective analysis of more contemporary revolutionary movements and popular struggles; more stuff related to the Third World

If there is one single book I would recommend it would be this:

• Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (2001)
  
  No other single book I've read so completely broke my Eurocentric thinking, and gave me a run-down of the vibrant, radical movements that have sprung up across the globe during the 20th century, and the global importance of Marxism
  
  Other recs:
  
  
• Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism (1999)
  
• Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (2013)
  
• Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times (2011)
  
• We Created Chavez: A People's History of the Venezuelan Revolution (2012)

I like Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today. Also, if you're interested in online resources, this professor's website for a critical theory class has tons and tons of links to interesting stuff - even though the website is hard to navigate sometimes. Check out the syllabus and online resources (linked at the bottom.)

Gotta give credit where credit is due.

Thank you (-:
But Again about a guide, do you know anything about this one? https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Readers-Companion/dp/0618642676

A Book of Middle English by J.A. Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre is a great resource if you're looking for a book.

The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges' Library of Babel by William Bloch.

The original story hints at but doesn't explore some fascinating mathematical consequences of its premise, and this book is an attempt to unpack them, but it's aimed at intelligent non-mathematicians.

I was very surprised to find out this book existed, since it's such an odd Venn diagram -- fans of the Argentinian fantasist Jorge Luis Borges who want to learn more about mathematics.

Thumbs up!

Are you reading an annotated text or just straight Latin? If you don't already have a copy I highly recommend [Pharr's version](Vergil's Aeneid, Books I-VI (Latin Edition) (Bks. 1-6) (English and Latin Edition) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0865164215/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_RcStDb8RST3Z9) for its grammar notes!

English major here- I have found Lois Tyson's textbook Critical Theory Today very clear and helpful!

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Theory-Today-User-Friendly-Guide/dp/0415974100

I was assigned The Foucault Reader in a class last year - it is a collection of chapters from his books along with some other sources (an interview, for example), which gives a good overview of his work.

Edit: https://www.amazon.ca/Foucault-Reader-Michel/dp/0394713400
Link to the book on Amazon. I forgot that it was edited by Rabinow!

There are two standard texts that most universities use to teach literary theory to undergrads, there is a lot of overlap between the two so you really only need one or the other, but they are the most comprehensive books you will find on the subject if you want to get a broad but complete overview.

1.) The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism

2.) Critical Theory Since 1965

You can get a used copy of the latter for only a couple bucks.

Edit: In case this matters, I teach theory at an R1 university.

Two really good companion books: Splintered Light and The Road to Middle Earth.

The purpose of the modern state is to promote and manage life as to provide human resources for capitalism to thrive. Drugs like MDMA/LSD/Shrooms deconstruct the disciplinary/regulatory mental constructs that keep us working hard and docile. Widespread use of these drugs are would lead to a downturn in the economy and/or political revolt, so they are illegal.

It's not a conspiracy, its just how our system works. Focault's a smart dude, he figured out these techniques of power by charting their development in the 17th and 18th century.

In The Road to Middle Earth it was mentioned that Tolkien admitted he was too kind to his characters, as he cared about them so much. He even let Sam's pony make it back to the Shire after they left him behind at Moria

This site provides a decent overview of the grammar, pronunciation, and some vocabulary.

My history professor recommended what I believe was this title, but I never followed through with her advice, so I can't speak to its usefulness or quality.

First of all, books=/=literature. Are all the books in your room fiction? I'm a bit confused. I'll assume you are referring to fiction only.

While I don't believe there is anything wrong with escapism or relaxation (stress will kill you), actually it's unlikely that's all we get out of reading literature.

One view is that we read because evolution has taught us that it helps us to be better social creatures and that benefits our survival.

A related view is that fiction help us practice understanding others

Or maybe reading helps us think about puzzles.

Then again, those are all links to "books," so if you insist on feeling sick over it, I can't stop you :)

There's some interesting reading in Literary Theory: An Anthology.

David Day has a bad reputation for just making things up without any basis in Tolkien's work. I tend to not recommend them.

If you want an atlas the gold standard is The Atlas of Middle-earth by Karen-Anne Fonstad


If you want to enhance his reading of LotR, Hammond and Scull's LotR Reader's Companion is the way to go.

If you want an encyclopedia style book, Forster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth is best.

I'll always recommend the far better alternatives where they exist.

https://www.amazon.com/Vintage-Book-Contemporary-American-Poetry/dp/1400030935

You could just go with an anthology and see what you like.

aww, see above i sent the three of them :(

but i have that book on peotry i can send you if you like. it's this one

Is this the second book you mentioned? How do you like it? I have a Norton Anthology of literature, but I haven't used it much.

Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer page has a lot of good, but dated resources for Middle English. There are also YouTube videos of varying quality. I have picked up this book but haven't gotten past the first few chapters yet: A Book of Middle English, Third Edition

I second this; very, very good book. Amazon link for the lazy.

Oooh, I've never seen the 2nd UK version! Those are beautiful.

And I totally get it, I have a Tolkien problem. I have the green book version of the Hobbit, along with the paperback set of the Hobbit and LotR together, then I've been searching for the red book of Westmarch LotR to go along with my green bound version, but that one is infinitely harder to find. I've got two versions of the Silmarillion and countless other Tolkien writings, but my latest big acquisition is the Reader's Companion, a line-by-line guide to LotR that explains plot, trivia, and linguistics behind everything in the book. Even I realize that's a bit excessive at that point...

Okay, fair point, I have not seen any actual data on the portion of radical vs non-radical feminists (though the word "radical" itself implies that group is the minority). That impression comes from the fact that, out of all the people who claim to be feminists, and all the websites claiming to be about feminism (either predominantly or incidentally), nearly all of the ones I've come across (via random links, StumbleUpon, and school research, over the course of 5+ years) are strongly pro-equality, and are vocal about not just women's rights, but men's rights, LGBT rights, and racial equality.

That's not to say those groups aren't without flaws. They're often very quick to shut down dissent and can be hostile towards honest questions (usually on the basis that they get asked the same questions all the time and the person asking should just google it). They also frequently seem to prefer only talking about men's issues independently and don't always react well when they're brought up in an existing discussion on women's issues, even though in most cases addressing minority and LGBT issues is always welcome/expected (any failure to acknowledge the existence of gay or transgender people--for instance, by talking about pregnancy as a women's issue without mentioning that trans men can also get pregnant--is usually quickly corrected, not always nicely).

But they do talk about things that affect men pretty regularly, especially traditional gender roles and how they relate to stay-at-home dads and men and boys who like traditionally "female" things, media portrayal (like the "bumbling husband" stereotype you see in almost every sitcom and commercial), child custody, and the idea that men as more suited to dangerous jobs and how this makes them seem expendable.

The only strongly anti-male feminists I've come across that were in any position of influence were the authors of the essays we read in a class on literary criticism, and those were from the 1960s. I wasn't alive then, so I have no idea what mainstream feminism was like at the time, but every example of feminist literature in the book we used (or at least every one we read, but the professor didn't seem like the type of guy to cherry pick those) was like that.

That is purely based on my own experience, though. It could be that the percentage who are anti-men is larger than it seems, but I haven't seen them because I haven't ventured to that portion of the internet.

I'm reading Postcolonialism: A Historical Introduction right now and have thought about posting excerpts here; there's tons of awesome paragraphs that can stand alone, which discuss history and describe theory and struggle and whatnot.

Online, nothing else springs to mind that specifically deals with postcolonialism, but I do see relevant articles on socialist/communist blogs and journals that I occaissonally look at.

Whichever you choose just try and find a "reader" style book that includes vocab and notes on the same page. It's a huge quality of life boost. E.g. for Vergil ( https://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Latin-English/dp/0865164215 ) and the Vulgate (a quick search gave me this: https://www.amazon.com/Vulgate-Old-Testament-Reader/dp/1593332157 ). Vergil is going to be more complicated though, so if you go for Classical Latin, as others have suggested, go with Caesar's Gallic Wars.

Hello, French person. You might want to try reading up on another French person named Michel Foucault. His academic career has been dissecting power structures and the effects institutions have on society.

https://www.amazon.com/Foucault-Reader-Michel/dp/0394713400

Read The Road to Middle-earth by Tom Shippey.

Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction

Rebekah's Journey: an historical novel

I suggest this.

Get yourself a purple Virgil. Industry standard for students at your level.

John Berger's Ways of Seeing (absolutely brilliant)

Ron Carlson Writes a Story

Critical Theory Today

Wilhelm Reich-The Mass Psychology of Fascism

Amy Bloom-Normal

Tom Stoppard-Arcadia

Sara Marcus-Girls to the Front

Might be Pharr's Aeneid-- I used it too.

http://www.amazon.com/Vergils-Aeneid-Books-Edition-English/dp/0865164215

Seconded, though a more easy-going introduction might be Terry Eagleton's Literary Theory: An Introduction.

Check out The Unimaginable Mathematics of Borges’ Library of Babel!.

Everything I would advise against in poetry you use in this piece.

If you can't find a creative writing class to take, check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Palm-Your-Hand-Portable-Workshop/dp/0884481492

There were nine ships. Seven of them had a palantír on board, and these ships also flew the banner of the Lords of Andúnië, the last of which was Elendil. They flew the banner of their house on each ship carrying a palantír. (Notable addition I had originally missed - the charge on the arms is a star.)

This information is, though, apocryphal. Possibly mentioned in Hammond & Scull "Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion" based on the index of the 1966 2nd edition of the Lord of the Rings. The trick is, Tolkien didn't finish the revision of the index in time, and I don't think it has been ever became available to the general public.

I do not have access to the companion book - instead, I noted the explanation from the Barrow Downs forums.

I actually just started by reading a textbook that covered most major critical theories http://www.amazon.com/Critical-Theory-Today-User-Friendly-Guide/dp/0415974100

Starter texts! Here's several in a book. An overview of the Critical Theory game.

Paul Fry's OYC lecture series: https://oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300#sessions

Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism: https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923

Can get an used copy of the above for 15 bucks or so.

'The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism' is my go-to as an introductory anthology source. I think that warrants inclusion.

https://www.amazon.com/Norton-Anthology-Theory-Criticism/dp/0393932923

Maybe not what you're looking for, but the Norton Anthology of Critical Theory has an alternate table of contents within it that categorizes the readings not chronologically but by field.

The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion, by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull, is an exhaustive, scholarly, 900-page annotation of the trilogy. It includes, but is by no means limited to, cross-references to The Silmarillion.