This edition of the bestselling guide retains the strong features of the original book; offering a comprehensive coverage of the main literary theories, further readings and... more
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Widdowson and Brooker chart a clear and comprehensively documented path through the full range of what is best in contemporary literary theory... indispensable for all students of literature... An impressive achievement! - John Drakakis Stirling University. This Guide is as stimulating and instructive an introduction to literary theory as any reader might wish for. - John Kenny Centre for the Study of Human Settlement and Historical Change National University of Ireland Galway. A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory is a classic introduction to the ever-evolving field of modern literary theory now expanded and updated in its fifth edition. This book presents the full range of positions and movements in contemporary literary theory. It organises the theories into clearly defined sections and presents them in an accessible and lucid style.Students are introduced through succinct but incisive expositions to New Criticism Reader-Response Theory Marxist Criticism Structuralism Post-Structuralism Post-Modernism and Feminism as well as to Cultural Materialism and New Historicism Postcolonialism and Gay Lesbian and Queer Theory. This new edition also considers the 'New Aestheticism' and engages with the idea of 'Post-Theory'. This comprehensive book also contains extensively revised Further Reading lists including web and electronic resources and two appendices which recommend glossaries of key theoretical and critical terms and relevant journals. Raman Selden is late Professor of English at the University of Sunderland. Peter Widdowson is Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. His most recent books include: Literature (1999); The Palgrave Guide to English Literature and its Contexts 1500-2000 (2004); and Graham Swift (2005). Peter Brooker is Professor of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Nottingham.He is the author most recently of Modernity and Metropolis: Literature Film and Urban Formations (2002); Bohemiain London: The Social Scene of Early Modernism: (2004); and A Glossary of Cultural Theory (second edition 2002). He is co-editor of Geographies of Modernism (2005) and co-founder of 'The Modernist Magazines Project'.
A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory - Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson
Main specs
Author: Raman Selden; Peter Widdowson
Title: A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory
Subgenre: Literary Criticism & Theory
Genre: Arts & Music
Type: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 0134919521; 0582894107
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Listed on Ciao since : 17/07/2000
Manufacturer's product description
This edition of the bestselling guide retains the strong features of the original book; offering a comprehensive coverage of the main literary theories, further readings and bibliographies. At the same time, the new edition adds material on contemporary literary theories, such as: cultural materialism, post-colonial theory, feminist theory, black British, Afro-American, Asian, Caribbean theory, and gay, lesbian and queer theory. The book can be used in conjunction with "Practising Theory and Reading Literature." See all Product Description
Advantages: Made me realise the madness of literary theory Disadvantages: I'm not sure he realised
...Peter Barry deserves a lot of credit. I was walking along thinking that critical theory is a valid field of enquiry ("it's about how we think about culture, and is of profound importance to just about everything!"). I didn't think much more about it. Until I chanced across Barry's book.
The book discusses in each chapter the basic interpretations one can make on literature. He covers a wide variety of topics. Starting with liberal humanism, progressing through postmodernism, feminism, structuralism, postimperialism, Marxism (or historical materialism, as they prefer to call it), all the way up to neo-muffin-eating-ology.
For each type of theory, there is a lengthy explanation followed by some examples of how the theory is applied to criticism. Although I'm not sure that barry intended to do so, but my only reaction was one of pure...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Great beginning to the topics Disadvantages: none
...This book is a fabulous introduction to the can of worms which is LiteraryTheory! It was an absolute life-saver.
Each theoreticsl discipline is set out neatly in short digestable sections. Each has a lttle about the history of the theories, major writers and critics who used it, a worked example of the application of the theory to literature, a checklist of points about what the critics do and a section of further reading.
The book is a good starting point for research and background for theoretical essays and is written in a way which is easy to understand (even the most complicated aspects of Marxism were made clear).
This is a staple addition to any English student's bookshelf, at any level. I am a degree student myself but I think that GCSE and A-Level student will also find this book a golden pillar for their studies....
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Ciao members have rated this review on average somewhat helpful
Advantages: Thorough, detailed, easy to understand Disadvantages: Doesn't go far enough
...This book was recomended to me by an English teacher when I was trying to decide whether to do an English degree. I have since thanked that teacher a thousand times in my head as Peter Barry's book has bailed me out whenever the study has seemed too hard.
The book goes through various theories of reading - liberal humanism, structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, feminism, psychoanalytic criticism, Marxism, new historicism, postcolonialism, in a series of chapters which contain an amazing amount of detail given the whole book is only 320 pages.
There are other books which give an introduction to theory, but the advantage of this book is that Peter Barry seems to have an understanding of an ordinary person and how to tell them things. He seems like an amazing teacher that can get your head round ideas without you being too...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
helpful 12.01.2006
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