Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Jameson, Fredric - Patrick Parrinder (review date January 1985)

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Patrick Parrinder (review date January 1985)

SOURCE: A review of The Political Unconscious, in Modern Language Review, Vol. 80, No. 1, January, 1985, pp. 106-08.

[In the following unfavorable review of The Political Unconscious, Parrinder calls Jameson's writing pedantic and his literary analysis unconvincing.]

If I were to name a single work of commanding distinction in the field of literary theory published in America in the 1970s it would be Fredric Jameson’s Marxism and Form (1971). Its author combined a majestic overview of the twentieth-century Marxist tradition, focusing on the Frankfurt school, Lukács, and Sartre, with a concluding hundred-page essay in theoretical polemic entitled ‘Towards Dialectical Criticism’. Professor Jameson’s Hegelian advocacy of dialectical thinking and ‘metacommentary’ was of a piece with the lofty elegance of his manner, and with an adroitness and subtlety of argument...

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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