Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for over two decades. This new and expanded fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-volume introduction to the field. The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unravell

Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for well over two decades now. This fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-volume introduction to the field.

The book has been updated with a new and expanded Introduction, which pays particular attention to the shifting titles of theoretical terms themselves, and offers extended treatments of some of the more current theories.

Two refreshed chapters on theory before and after ‘Theory’ top and tail this new edition, and the reading lists and bibliography throughout have been brought fully up to date.

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, Beginning theory allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped.

Liberal humanism
Structuralism
Post-structuralism and deconstruction
Postmodernism
Psychoanalytic criticism
Feminist criticism
Queer theory
Marxist criticism
New historicism and cultural materialism
Postcolonial criticism
Stylistics
Narratology
Ecocriticism
Presentism
New aestheticism
Historical formalism
Cognitive poetics
Consilience
Posthumanism

Beginning theory has been helping students navigate through the thickets of literary and cultural theory for over two decades. This new and expanded fourth edition continues to offer readers the best single-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, Beginning theory allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped.

The book has been updated for this edition and includes a new introduction, expanded chapters, and an overview of the subject ('Theory after "Theory"') which maps the arrival of new 'isms' since the second edition appeared in 2002 and the third edition in 2009.