Introducing Criticism at the 21st Century (Hardcover)

This study provides a wide-ranging guide to current directions in literary criticism. The book develops out of continental thinking and insights from poststructuralism, feminism, deconstruction and psychoanalysis and introduces new modes of "hybrid" criticism which are emerging at the beginning of the 21st century. The chapters provide thought-provoking overviews of critical thinking at the cutting edge. Each of the authors explains in lucid terms the various contours of their discourses while bringing these into sharp relief for the student reader through readings of canonical novels, poems, plays, films and websites. The text is organized into five areas of critical concern: "Identities", "Dialogues", "Space and Place", "Critical Voices" and "Materiality and the Immaterial". These orientations reflect the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of critical and cultural studies. The book's structure resembles that of a textbook: each chapter explores and explains aspects of the theory it addresses, provides a brief three-to-four page reading of a literary text, film text or website and concludes with questions for further consideration.