About the Book

Beginning Theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for well over a decade now. This new and expanded third edition continues to offer students and readers the best one-volume introduction to the field.

The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unravelled. Unlike many books which assume certain positions about the critics and the theories they represent, Peter Barry allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped.

The book has been updated and includes two new chapters one of which (Literary theory – a history in ten events) innovatively surveys the course of theory, while the other (Theory after ‘Theory’) maps the arrival of new ‘isms’ since the second edition appeared in 2002.

• Liberal humanism

• Structuralism

• Post-structuralism and deconstruction

• Postmodernism

• Psychoanalytic criticism

• Feminist criticism

• Lesbian/gay criticism

• Marxist criticism

• New historicism and cultural materialism

• Postcolonial criticism

• Stylistics

• Narratology

• Ecocriticism

• Presentism

• New aestheticism

• Historical formalism

• Cognitive poetics.

About the Author

Peter Berry is Professor of English at Aberystwyth University.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements • Preface to the second edition • Preface to the third edition • Introduction • About this book • Approaching theory • My own ‘stock-taking’ • Theory before ‘theory’ — liberal humanism • The history of English studies • Ten tenets of liberal humanism • Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis some key moments • Liberal humanism in practice • The transition to ‘theory’ • Some recurrent ideas in critical theory • Selected reading • Structuralism • Structuralist chickens and liberal humanist eggs • Signs of the fathers — Saussure • The scope of structuralism • What structuralist critics do • Structuralist criticism: examples • Selected reading • Post-structuralism and deconstruction • Some theoretical differences between structuralism and post-structuralism • Post—structuralism — life on a decentred planet • Structuralism and post—structuralism – some practical differences • What post—structuralist critics do • Deconstruction: an example • Selected reading • Postmodernism • What is postmodernism? What was modernism? • ‘Landmarks’ in postmodernism — Habermas, Lyotard and Baudrillard • What postmodernist critics do • Postmodernist criticism: an example • Selected reading • Psychoanalytic criticism • Introduction • How Freudian interpretation works • Freud and evidence • What Freudian psychoanalytic critics do • Freudian psychoanalytic criticism: examples • Lacan • What Lacanian critics do • Lacanian criticism: an example • Selected reading • Feminist criticism • Feminism and feminist criticism • Feminist criticism and the role of theory • Feminist criticism and language • Feminist criticism and psychoanalysis • What feminist critics do • Feminist criticism: an example • Selected reading • Lesbian/gay criticism • Lesbian and gay theory • Lesbian feminism • Queer theory • What lesbian/gay critics do • Lesbian/gay criticism: an example • Selected reading • Marxist criticism • Beginnings and basics of Marxism • Marxist literary criticism: general • ‘Leninist’ Marxist criticism • ‘Engelsian’ Marxist criticism • The present: the influence of Althusser • What Marxist critics do • Marxist criticism: an example • Selected reading • New historicism and cultural materialism • New historicism • New and old historicisms — some differences • New historicism and Foucault • Advantages and disadvantages of new historicism • What new historicists do • New historicism: an example • Cultural materialism • How is cultural n different from new historicism? • What cultural materialist critics do • Cultural materialism: an example • Selected reading • Postcolonial criticism • Background • Postcolonial reading • What postcolonial critics do • Postcolonial criticism: an example • Selected reading • Stylistics • Stylistics: a theory or a practice? • A brief historical account: from rhetoric, to philology, to linguistics, to stylistics, to new stylistics • How does stylistics differ from standard close reading? • The ambitions of stylistics • What stylistic critics do • Stylistics: examples • Note • Selected reading • Narratology • Telling stories • Aristotle • Vladimir Propp • Gerard Genette • ‘Joined-up’ narratology • What narratologists do • Narratology: an example • Selected reading • Ecocriticism • Ecocriticism or green studies? • Culture and nature • Turning criticism inside out • What ecocritics do • Ecocriticism: an example • Selected reading • Literary theory — a history in ten events • The Indiana University ‘Conference on Style’, 1958 • The Johns Hopkins University international symposium, 1966 • The publication of Deconstruction and Criticism, 1979 • The MacCabe Affair, 1981 • The publication of Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction, 1983 • J. Hillis Miller’s MLA presidential address, 1986 • The Strathclyde University ‘Linguistics of Writing’ conference, 1986 • The scandal over Paul de Man’s wartime writings, 1987—88 • Jean Baudrillard and ‘The Gulf War never happened’, 1991 • The Sokal Affair, 1996 • Theory after ‘Theory’ • Legacies of theory • Presentism • Presentism in practice • New aestheticism • New aestheticism in practice • What to read on new aestheticism • Cognitive poetics • Cognitive poetics in practice • What to read on cognitive poetics • Appendices • Appendix I Edgar Allan Poe, ‘The Oval Portrait’ • Appendix 2 Dylan Thomas, ‘A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London’ • Appendix 3 William Cowper, ‘The Castaway’ • Where do we go from here? Further reading • General guides • Reference books • General readers • Applying critical theory: twelve early examples • Against theory • Index