The Literary Theory Handbook

by Gregory Castle

The Literary Theory Handbook introduces students to the history and scope of literary theory, showing them how to perform literary analysis, and providing a greater understanding of the historical contexts for different theories.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Reference, Theory

444 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2012

Reviews

[libremilia · Rating 1 out of 5]

You don't get extra points because you put "PHALLUS" in all caps. But you did inspire me to make this meme, so I guess that did something:

[Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a complete theory textbook, but helpful in giving an overview, directions, important / influential figures, and showing a lineage between different schools of thought, philosophers, and so on. It's a helpful companion to any larger theory reader, and also a good graduate-level intro to theory on a broad spectrum.

[Pádraic · Rating 1 out of 5]

The worst lit theory I've ever read. Turgid, incomprehensible, pretentious. Everything that everybody hates about academic writing is present here, turned up to eleven. It also fails at its stated aim of being an introduction to literary theory, for if I hadn't already been familiar with a bunch of these terms and concepts and movements, I would have been completely lost. I was often lost anyway, thanks to Castle's inability to write a sentence that doesn't contain three quotes, two theorist namedrops, and a handful of jargon. Avoid this book at all costs.

[Mark · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hopelessly biased but sometimes helpful. Often the author erred on the side of namedropping and using terminology just a little too advanced for the newcomer and redunant for the experienced. The introduction was a fun read because I so violently disagreed with some of his partisan pretensions, but other than that I only jumped around to random parts, because, after all, this is a reference book.

The intro had some fun moments, like:

"let's destroy universals! ...wait why are there no universals? huh that's weird, guess we can't even define literature anymore! (because we might offend someone lol)"

&

"there's too many options at this buffet, might as well starve because I can't make up my mind! (about defining literature, genres, distinctions, all that gooey stuff)"

&

"let's prevent kids from reading the classics and indoctrinate them into thinking they're distant, boring, racist, sexist texts!"
"wait why is no one reading the classics? They must be un-accessable, boring, etc.! (even tho they're the most accessible literally because they're all free online you BOOBs)"

[Sao · Rating 1 out of 5]

So low rated, incomprehensible book still canbe put on university library's bookshelf??? I thought always it's my ability is unable to understand the book, but eventually is the bad writing of the book made it.