Beginning Theory (A Workbook and Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory) - Peter Barry > Reviews > Theory in the buff

Author's product rating:   

Degree of Information	High
How interesting was the book?	Mildly stimulating
How useful was it?	Pretty useful
Would you read it again?	Probably not
Value for money	Satisfactory

Advantages:	Made me realise the madness of literary theory
Disadvantages:	I'm not sure he realised

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

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 laughter. The problems of literary theory are simple.

The types can be roughly divided up in to two camps: descriptive and prescriptive. Liberal humanism falls in to the former, and postimperialism just about does too. Most of the rest of them fall in to the latter. If you try hard enough, you can argue that anything is 'postmodern' or that it feeds the fire of the feminists. Although they are not scientific theories, one can't help but wish Occam's Razor would literally come and put the proponents of these theories out of their misery.

These theories become gravy trains for the academic left. "Gender studies" courses now teach students that science and "women's ways of knowing" are profoundly incompatible; male scientists are just imposing their hegemony on the rest of the world.

The postmodernists see the world as comprising hundreds of individual 'narratives' and no absolute truths.

Barry, for me, has exposed the madness of these theories. His simple and direct style shoots straight through the dust storm that the theoriests like to kick up around themselves.