A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory

Reflecting the continuing change and development in modern literacy theory, the key features of this book includes its clarity, brevity, equal coverage of the main literary theories and useful bibliographies of further reading.

Literature students will find its clearly defined sections easy to navigate and whilst avoiding over-simplification, it makes a complex subject accessible.

Features-Accesible, easy to use guide
C-onsiders 'New Aestheticism' and engages with the ideas of 'Post-Theory'
-Contains extensive guides to further reading, web and electronic resources to ensure the quality of students' research
-A glossary defines key theoretical and critical terms
-Contains a guide to relevant journals

New to this Edition-Coverage of 'new aestheticism'
-Updated and expanded Derrida section
-More historical context included in the introduction
-Marxism section to include updated material on Benjamin
-Postcolonial section updated and expanded
-Annotated reading lists, including web and electronic resources
-New glossary of terms
-Updated and expanded further reading section

READER'S GUIDE TO CONTEMPORARY LITERARY THEORY; NEW CRITICISM; MORAL FORMALISM; RUSSIAN FORMALISM; READER ORIENTED THEORIES; MARXIST THEORIES; STRUCTURALIST THEORIES; FEMINIST THEORIES; POSTMODERNIST THEORIES; GAY; LESBIAN;

Review
The best of the many guides to literary theory that are currently available. 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

From the Back Cover
The best of the many guides to literary theory that are currently available. 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