Modern Criticism And Theory (3rd Edition)

This third edition of "Modern Criticism and Theory" represents a major expansion on its previous incarnations with some twenty five new pieces or essays included. This expansion has two principal purposes. Firstly, in keeping with the collection's aim to reflect contemporary preoccupations, the reader has expanded "forward" to include such newly emergent considerations as ecocriticism and post-theory.

Secondly, with the aim of presenting as broad an account of modern theory as possible, the reader expands "backwards" to to take in exemplary pieces by formative writers and thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries such as Marx, Freud and Virginia Woolf.. This radical expansion of content is prefaced by a wide-ranging introduction, which provides a rationale for the collection and demonstrates how connections can be made between competing theories and critical schools.

The purpose of the collection remains that of introducing the reader to the guiding concepts of contemporary literary and cultural debate. It does so by presenting substantial extracts from seminal thinkers and surrounding them with the contextual materials necessary to a full understanding. Each selection has a headnote, which gives biographical details of the author and provides suggestions for further reading, and footnotes that help explain difficult references. The collection is ordered both historically and thematically and readers are encouraged to draw for themselves connections between essays and theories.

"Modern Criticism and Theory "has long been regarded as a necessary collection. Now revised for the twenty first century it goes further and provides students and the general readerwith a wide-ranging survey of the complex landscape of modern theory and a critical assessment of the way we think - and live - in the world today.

David Lodge is Emeritus Professor of English Literatureat the University of Birmingham, where he taught from 1960 until 1987. He is well-known as one of the most significant British novelists and critics of recent times. His work, fiction and non-fiction, has been translated into some twenty-five languages

Nigel Wood is Professor of Literature at Loughborough University. Widely published as an editor and critic, Nigel is currently working on the Longman Annotated Edition of the poems of Alexander Pope.

'In our era, criticism is not merely a library of secondary aids to the understanding and appreciation of literary texts, but also a rapidly expanding body of knowledge in its own right.' David Lodge

This anthology uses extracts from the works of the leading thinkers in the field of literary criticism to introduce the main ideas at the centre of today's literary and cultural debates. Each extract begins with an introduction that places the writing in context and ends with suggestions for further reading that will help students research the subject further.

The new edition has been thoroughly updated and expanded to reflect the latest developments in the field, so there is now more coverage of post-colonialism, Queer theory and Ecocritical perspectives. There are improved references to web and electronic sources and a glossary of key terms to help students understand the subject.