Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Jameson, Fredric - Daniel T. O'Hara (review date Fall-Winter 1988-1989)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page

Daniel T. O'Hara (review date Fall-Winter 1988-1989)

SOURCE: A review of The Ideologies of Theory, in Journal of Modern Literature, Vol. 16, Nos. 2-3, Fall-Winter, 1988-1989, pp. 270-1.

[In the following review of The Ideologies of Theory, O'Hara acknowledges Jameson's important place in contemporary literary theory, though finds shortcomings in his assertions.]

Of the seventeen reprinted essays in this collection of occasional pieces of America’s leading neo-Marxist theorist [The Ideologies of Theory], only five—two essays in volume one and three in volume two—can be considered still important and undated. These are: “The Ideology of the Text,” “Imaginary and Symbolic in Lacan” (the best single explanation of this difficult revisionary psychoanalytic theorist), “The Politics of Theory: Ideological Positions in the Postmodernism Debate,” “Beyond the Cave: Demystifying the Ideology of Modernism,”...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Denis Donoghue (review date 16 November 1973)
   2. Jonathan Culler (review date July 1974)
   3. Brian J. Murray (review date Summer 1980)
   4. James Naremore (review date Fall 1980)
   5. Betty Abel (review date June 1981)
   6. David Punter (review date Fall 1981)
   7. Michael Wilding (review date October 1982)
   8. Patrick Parrinder (review date January 1985)
   9. Daniel T. O'Hara (review date Fall-Winter 1988-1989)
   10. David Bromwich (review date 19 February 1990)
   11. Michael Ferber (review date 15 October 1990)
   12. Stephen Howe (review date 15 March 1991)
   13. Reed Way Dasenbrock (review date Spring 1991)
   14. Michael Rosen (review date 24 May 1991)
   15. Reed Way Dasenbrock (review date Winter 1992)
   16. Susan E. Hawkins (review date Winter 1992)
   17. K. M. Newton (review date April 1992)
   18. Ralph Flores (review date Spring 1993)
   19. Stephen Regan (review date January 1994)
   20. Wendy Kozol (review date June 1994)
   21. Anders Stephanson (review date January 1995)
   22. Barry Schwabsky (review date 29 May 1995)
   23. Linda Hutcheon (review date Winter 1996)
   24. Geoffrey Galt Harpham (review date Summer 1996)
   25. Barbara Foley (review date February 1997)
   26. Richard Gott (review date 26 February 1999)
   27. Volker Gransow and Pia Kleber (review date Summer 1999)
   28. Peter Berger (review date 20 August 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright