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An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory | 
| Authors: Andrew Bennett, Nicholas Royle
Publisher: Longman
Category: Book
List Price: £19.99
Buy New: £16.99
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New (38) Used (12) from £13.80
Avg. Customer Rating:  10 reviews
Sales Rank: 28868
Media: Paperback
Edition: 3
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 360
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0582822955
Dewey Decimal Number: 808
EAN: 9780582822955
ASIN: 0582822955
Publication Date: June 10, 2004
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Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
Easier to comprehend than most - odd lapses into pseudyness October 28, 2008
I like this book, it explains Eng Lit without indulging in too many nerdy 'Fry and Laurie' type "well I saw six levels", "oh well I saw eight levels" pseudy intellectual onanism type of 'inpenetetrable gobs***e' that is so often a problem with other self-indulgent textbooks.
The useful thing with this book is the authors provide further reading on each subject a glossary list of examined and novels. My only minus is it's a tad light on poetry coverage and sophocles/greek plays.
If you're a total beginner to eng lit get a more basics primer first and read this alongside as it's halfway between A level and degree level. Read it with a pencil for your margin notes too!
 Ten star rating and more March 22, 2007
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book achieves the impossible. It makes the difficult and obtuse polemical and theoretical debates of recent history easy to read. Yes, believe it or not! I cannot find enough congratulations to give for this excellent and learned book. The achievement of the age. Thank you for making clear sense of it all.My newly found bible for Literary Critical research.
 A worthy introduction but only goes so far March 8, 2007
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is a useful tool for students wishing to grasp the basics, and sample a broad range, of critical approaches to literature. However, if you wish to explore a particular approach to a higher level, then this book will not be adequate on its own. For example, the fact that only a few pages are dedicated to the concept of 'gender' goes to show that this really is only an introductory work, and it could be argued that literary theory is not something that can be 'summed up' in the form of brief, introductory chapters.
Having said this, each chapter provides reading lists for additional relevant material, and therefore it is a good way to break into the field. Just be prepared to get in the library and seek out other books if a particular approach interests you. Don't expect to rely entirely on this.
I love this book! November 10, 2006
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Whilst trying to write an essay about desire, I became so confused I just wanted a book that would explain the various theories in simple language so that I would understand it. This book did just that. It provides introductions to complex topics and establishes a foundation of knowledge that you can build on with the handily referenced further reading, or reading of your own. Its now become my first port of call when writing essays, so I don't become tangled up in complex criticism and theories.
 Superficial and condescending. February 18, 2006
20 out of 33 found this review helpful
In my first year as an UG philosophy and literature student, this book very nearly put me completely off literary theory: each of its chapters would be brilliant as an INTRODUCTION to an essay on each of the topics it pretends to discuss. Not only is the tone it takes insultingly condescending, but its authors have a real penchant for making seriously unsubstantiated statements. It's also stultifyingly politically correct, refusing to take any account of points of view that don't belong to the prevalent orthodoxy. It places excessive emphasis on 'close reading', which, even if intelligently and insightfully done (as it is here), is always prone to cause major lapses in the maintenance of a sense of perspective. Theory IS difficult, and it isin't by means of such reductionism that it will, lo and behold, be made entertaining and accessible to all.
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