Readers Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory - Softcover

Selden, Raman

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0745013635 ISBN 13: 9780745013633

Publisher: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993

Synopsis

Following the death of Raman Selden, Widdowson has substantially revised this text. New material has been added on key areas of literary theory, and there are now chapters on New Criticism, and Postmodernist and Postcolonialist theories. The chapter on feminist theories has been expanded.

About this title

From the Publisher:

This 4th edition aims to retain the valuable features of the original book; brevity, even coverage of the main literary theories and useful further readings and bibliographies. At the same time the new edition adds new material on 'contemporary' literary theories, such as: cultural materialism, post-colonial theory, feminist theory, Black British, African-American, Asian, Caribbean theory, and Gay and Lesbian theory.

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); Bohemia in 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’.

 

 

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvester Wheatsheaf
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0745013635
• ISBN 13: 9780745013633
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3