Patricia Waugh

So far the best single guide I know. The Bennett and Royle is superb, but they to often resort to the suspended law of non-contradiction. Waugh, by contrast, gives us a great many voices and approaches, and, moreover, by combining both thematic sections and traditional review of schools, provides tools both for the usual intro to lit theory course and far more ambitious courses. Overall, the tendency in Waugh could be said to be typically that of the UK, in that its interests tend towards explorations of the possibilities of resisting capitalism. Oddly, though, for a book whose ultimate affinities may be to Marxism, it is generally resistant to historicism.

There are several essays that, missing the practical point of the book, attempt to shift whole critical discourses rather than providing an introduction to same, especially Paccaud-Huguet on 'Psychoanalysis After Freud,' Hamilton on 'Reconstructing Historicism,' and Punter on 'Anti-Canon Theory.' Some will work, if at all, only with strenuous classroom effort: Bandfield on I.A. Richards, Shereen on the Aristotelian Chicago critical approach, and Onega on Structuralism. Given the size of the book, however, it's no trouble at all to teach only what you think will work best.… (more)