An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory

The new edition has been thoroughly revised but retains the same winning characteristics of its predecessor: presenting the key critical concepts in literary studies today, avoiding the jargonistic, abstract nature of much 'theory'. The authors then apply these concepts through readings of a range of literary texts from Chaucer to Achebe and from Milton to Morrison.*explores emerging areas of literary studies - postcolonial theory, queer theory including a reading of works by writers including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jeanette Winterson*considers works by T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Toni Morrison, looking at questions of influence, intertextuality and the ghostly*offers a reading of Kafka's 'The Penal Colony', alongside the critical work of Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young and Gayatri Spivak*examines current debates about the canon