Table of Contents

1: What is theory? 2: What is literature and does it matter? 3: Literature and cultural studies 4: Language, meaning, and interpretation 5: Rhetoric, poetics, and poetry 6: Narrative 7: Performative language 8: Identity, identification, and the subject 9: Ethics and aesthetics Appendix: Theoretical schools and movements References Further Reading Index

About the Author

Jonathan Culler taught at Cambridge University and Oxford University before moving to Cornell, where he is Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature. His Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature, won MLA's Lowell Prize and established his reputation as analyst and expositor of critical theory. He has published short introductions to Ferdinand de Saussure and to Roland Barthes, but he is known especially for On Deconstruction and Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, which has been translated into some 20 languages. He has been President of the American Comparative Literature Association and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2001 and to the American Philosophical Society in 2006.

Reviews

`Review from previous edition It is impossible to imagine a clearer treatment of the subject, or one that is, within the given limits of length, more comprehensive. Culler has always been remarkable for his expository skills, and here he has found exactly the right method and tone for his purposes.'
Sir Frank Kermode
`A must read for all literature students.'
Bookwise