Literary Theory: An Introduction

Literature departments at colleges and universities recently have been the scene of battles between the prevailing practices of literary criticism and controversial new ideas imported from Europe with strange-sounding names like hermeneutics, semiotics, reception theory, structuralism, and deconstruction.

These ideas presuppose a knowledge of anthropology, linguistics, psychoanalysis, and Marxism and raise questions about the nature and status of “literature, “reading,” and “criticism.” Although these issues have far-ranging implications for the study of the humanities in general, they are complex and discussion has been confined to a small circle of specialists. A concise, witty, and entertaining introduction to the seemingly impenetrable world of modern literary theory.