Books like Literary Theory: An Introduction

From Terry Eagleton’s Literary Theory for Toddlers: An Introduction. Phenomenology: Tigger tells Pooh that he must distinguish between the phenomena and noumena of a pot of honey. That his intentionality towards the honey is narrowing his awareness of his surroundings, pushing him into a false structure of consciousness where the honey is both a perpetual fantasy and an instrument of real-life fixation. He tells Pooh he must separate his intentionalities to avoid becoming corrupted and driven by his desire for honey. Hermeneutics: Tigger tells Winnie that he must forget about honey and concentrate on the Heideggerian being-with of bear relatedness. He must suppress the empirical evidence around the existence and necessity of honey as a thing-in-itself and take an antipositivist approach to his own need for honey in a godless and indifferent universe. Reception Theory: Tigger tells Winnie that the only reason he is so popular as a character is that readers can “relate” to his being orange and craving frequent honey. Their life experiences have shown them that things with orange bears and honey are an essential part of the human condition, and require enshrinement in the literary pantheon for almost entirely no other reason. Structuralism: Tigger tells Pooh that his preoccupation with honey is part of larger woodland structure dating back to the stone age, and that “honey” has always been a signifier triggering hunger and savagery in the heart of orange bears, long before Milne gave them the consciousness to understand the signified of “honey” as a delicious bee-made product popularly served in pots. Semiotics: Tigger tells Pooh that honey is merely a symbol for part of a larger racial and class struggle among woodland beings. Across the woodland culture, the word “honey” can symbolise the tyrannous oppression of the orange bears over beavers or squirrels, or the totalitarian confiscation of honey among the lower orders. To bees, “honey” is understood as a priceless trading commodity frequently being plundered by cuddly pirates, whose struggle remains unacknowledged among the wider woodland populace. Post-structuralism: Tigger tells Pooh that the destabilised meaning of his quest for honey is more significant for the reader, whose quest for honey will loom even larger once Pooh’s quest is complete. But more importantly, “honey” is a binary opposition which also means “Jacuzzi,” so Pooh’s system of language is under severe scrutiny. Psychoanalysis: Tigger tells Pooh that his craving for honey is merely a way of screwing his mother and killing his father and venerating his very curly and unseen penis. (From p12, p54, p87, p99, p123, and p149).