Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice

The book is ok, but it's poor when it comes to web references. It covers web citations, but shows no examples of web quotes. This is a prolific problem everywhere. Try looking up web quote examples, and you only get citation examples. Very frustrating and I feel that my money wasn't wisely spent when I got this book as I was trying to avoid having this problem in the first place.

Textbook was delivered as expected

It is a good book and a reliable secondary source that is useful to college students in short essays and research papers. However, it discusses theories in general and doesn't discuss the different branches of any critical theory.

The Good: Bressler provides great coverage of Deconstruction and excepts from Derrida that illuminate historical context and help to show the reader how the development and implementation of Deconstruction paved the way for later theories such as Feminist theory and Queer theory. (Unfortunately Bressler doesn't make this connection explicitly and it's left to the reader to make these connections.) Bressler also gives a fairly basic and easy to understand overview of Russian Formalism and New Criticism which seem to be the most commonly taught literary criticism techniques in high school English classes.The Bad: This book absolutely fails in its coverage of Feminist Theory and Queer Theory. While the previous chapters were composed of full pages of text, historical information, and suggestions for applying the particular theory at hand to a text, both the Feminist theory and Queer theory chapters have TWO AND A HALF pages of short quotes from a variety of figures rather than in depth coverage of the theory itself! These quotes are a collection that Bressler presumably thought applied to their respective theories but in no way help the reader to understand underlying assumptions of the theories or how to apply the theories.Conclusion: I was really looking forward to this text (despite the hefty price tag) because it included chapters on contemporary theoretical orientations such as Feminist theory, Queer theory, and Ecocriticism. However, these chapters offer at best cursory coverage providing a few historical sketches of important figures but do not delve into the underpinnings of the literary analysis techniques. And, in the case of Feminist theory and Queer theory, Bressler waste a full two and half pages on a smattering of quotes rather than using that space to more fully explain the theories.If you are looking for a full and more comprehensive coverage of literary theory that includes more contemporary theoretical orientations, this is NOT the book for you.

This is a really well written book and is very informative. It is worth reading. However, due to the absurd price tag, I am not sure it is worth the expense. Charging students this much is evil.

Good!

good condition

I quickly switched to this book several years ago after the textbook I was using proved itself to be not up to the job. The book is well-organized with succinct, to-the-point synopses of each critical school and its philosophy. I especially like the fact that key terms are bold-faced and that movements are followed by brief but useful discussions of each school's critical methodologies. If your overall thing is Critical Theory, you will be moving on to more complex and in-depth books on some or all of these schools. But if this is your first exploration into Theory, this book gives you a good rounded road map.

This book was exactly what I wanted and needed for the course I am taking.