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The Pooh Perplex

In this devastatingly funny classic, Frederick Crews skewers the ego-inflated pretensions of the schools and practitioners of literary criticism popular in the 1960s, including Freudians, Aristotelians, and New Critics. Modeled on the "casebooks" often used in freshman English classes at the time, The Pooh Perplex contains twelve essays written in different critical voices, complete with ridiculous footnotes, tongue-in-cheek "questions and study projects," and hilarious biographical notes on the contributors. This edition contains a new preface by the author that compares literary theory then and now and identifies some of the real-life critics who were spoofed in certain chapters.

164 pages | 9 line drawings | 5-1/4 x 8 | © 2003

Literature and Literary Criticism: General Criticism and Critical Theory, Humor

Table of Contents

Note to the 2003 Edition
Preface
Paradoxical Persona: The Hierarchy of Heroism in Winnie-the-Pooh
Harvey C. Window
A Bourgeois Writer’s Proletarian Fables
Martin Tempralis
The Theory and Practice of Bardic Verse: Notations of the Hums of Pooh
P.R. Honeycomb
Poisoned Paradise: The Underside of Pooh
Myron Masterson
O Felix Culpa! The Sacramental Meaning of Winnie-the-Pooh
C.J. L. Culpepper, D. Litt., Oxon.
Winnie and the Cultural Stream
Murphy A. Sweat
A la recherche du Pooh perdu
Woodbine Meadowlark
A Complete Analysis of Winnie-the-Pooh
Duns C. Penwiper
Another Book to Cross Off Your List
Simon Lacerous
The Style of Pooh: Sources, Analogues, and Influences
Benjamin Thumb
A.A. Milne’s Honey-Balloon-Pit-Gun-Tail-Bathtubcomplex
Karl Anschauung, M.D.
Prolegomena to Any Future Study of Winnie-the-Pooh
Smedley Force

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