The fourth edition of this classic beginner’s guide to literary studies has been fully updated throughout. Mario Klarer offers a concise and accessible discussion of central issues in English and world literature as well as film and television series. Starting with the basics of what constitutes a literary text, the book moves through an analysis of major genres, important periods, and key theoretical approaches to literature and film.

It also looks at the practicalities of finding and refe...

Lively, original and highly readable, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory is the essential guide to literary studies. Starting at The Beginning and concluding with The End, chapters range from the familiar, such as Character, Narrative and The Author, to the more unusual, such as Secrets, Pleasure and Ghosts. Now in its sixth edition, Bennett and Royles classic textbook successfully illuminates complex ideas by engaging directly with literary works, so that a reading of Jane E...

This thoroughly updated fourth edition of Critical Theory Today offers an accessible introduction to contemporary critical theory, providing in-depth coverage of the most common approaches to literary analysis today, including: feminism; psychoanalysis; Marxism; reader-response theory; New Criticism; structuralism and semiotics; deconstruction; new historicism and cultural criticism; lesbian, gay, and queer theory; African American criticism; and postcolonial criticism and ecocriticism. This ...