Customer Reviews

Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

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Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today transformed the 200-level Intro to Literary Studies class that I teach at Aquinas College. Other texts have frustrated and silenced students, but Tyson's book has made my class come alive. Tyson assumes that her readers are intelligent and capable people who need information, examples, and guidance (whereas other texts assume that readers should be crushed and abandoned), and she gives them all that they need in friendly prose. The clear explanations and applications made my students lively and willing to try new ideas. They not only understood the methodologies but also could apply them. I didn't change my teaching style; the credit for the improvement in my class goes to Tyson's excellent text. Please read it.

I teach an undergraduate course in critical theory. Tyson's is the single most useful introduction to that subject that I have encountered -- and I've looked at many, many introductions to theory. Tyson's book is clear and practical, setting forth the principles of each critical theory and then applying those principles in analyzing F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, "The Great Gatsby." If I could, I would not merely give this book five stars, but also "flag" it for teachers and students searching Amazon for the best introduction to literary theory: this is the one that you should buy.

Prof. Tyson's text is a worthy companion to Mcluhan, Chomsky and even Joseph Campbell. The idea that one can find a "skeleton key" for literature is certainly not a new one, but forging your own key has become deliciously less difficult now that Lois Tyson's book is available. Don't like The Great Gatsby, that's okay, apply lit. theory to any available piece of writing, music, art...anything. That's the beauty of the whole process of critical discernment. The question of "what makes good art?" is always relevant, and now a substantial answer may be esier to come by. I return to this book every time I encounter a new concept in psych., sociology, philosophy...it applies to everything. Literature is only the begining.

This work is true to its sub-title: "a User-Friendly Guide." Most textbooks on critical theory are exercises in jargon and (self-) mystification. Little is made clear except the notion that talk about literature is the preserve of an initiate community. Tyson's book is a refreshing break with usual practices. First, because the author knows that to understand something means that one can restate it in other terms, terms that make difficult concepts available to a large audience. Second, because the author is a superb practical critic who ends each chapter of the book with an application of the theory considered to Fitzgerald's THE GREAT GATSBY. Each interpretation is illustrative, original, and provocative. Two purposes are thereby served: (1) readers get a clear sense of how each theory under discussion "works" when theories are joined with careful, sensitive reading rather than dogmatic application (as is so often the case); (2) a larger understanding of Fitzgerald's novel is evolved and through it an understanding of how a variety of critical theories might be usefully combined. Again, this is a nice contrast to the usual practice in the profession--where most professors latch onto one theory, use it dogmatically to generate "interpretations," and then oppose their theory to other theories. Tyson's book patiently constructs another posssibility: that competence in many theories is desirable because it offers us the possibility of developing an understanding of literature that builds toward a genuine community of interpreters. I should add that a further quality of the book is the number and range of theories that Tyson presents--14. Most texts offer at best 4 or 5. The energy and work that has gone into this text is remarkable. Tyson has read widely--and sympathetically. She is never taken in by jargon or guilty of it. What we have here is a work of uncommon clarity--the best introductory text of its kind, a work suitable for a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses in theory and its applications.

From teacher to teacher: Gretchen S. Cline, Muskegon Community College professor of English. I've used Tyson's book for the introduction to literature and composition course that I teach at an open admissions community college in Michigan.

Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide (1999) is a godsend. Professor Tyson's book is the answer to what I've long envisioned as the ideal reference book for teachers wanting to introduce their students to critical theory, to increase their repertoire of literary "readings," and to implement diversity issues in the college classroom. This much needed reference guide has helped me to better understand and apply different critical approaches to literature, as I prepare, create, and develop meaningful classroom activities and writing assignments involving analysis and reading comprehension for both new and seasoned students. Indeed, Tyson's succinct overview of the different issues each theory raises along with the extremely helpful questions at the end of each chapter is truly user-friendly. Specifically, her book has helped me to raise issues and create questions for such works of literature as Ibsen's A Doll's House, Miller's Death of a Salesman, Wilson's The Piano Lesson, Bambara's "The Lesson," Le Guin's "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," and Chopin's "Desiree's Baby" to name a few.

While some of my colleagues might think that "this critical theory stuff" goes over the heads of community college students, frequently I encounter students who are curious and want to know more about "those critical essays" that already appear in their "introduction to literature" anthologies. In fact, most of the "introduction to literature" anthologies that I've reviewed contain cursory, vague, and overly complicated excerpts from a wide range of "established" academic critics. Tyson's book helps students and teachers create a "cultural" context for the different theories with language that is accessible to those new to theory. Furthermore, as a pedagogical tool, Tyson's book helps teachers help students to make connections between different kinds of value/belief systems that underlie the way they interpret literature and, more importantly, how they think about the world.

Honest and straightforward, the tone of Tyson's book reflects a teacher who loves teaching and is thoroughly dedicated to her students; I will be forever grateful to her for sharing this huge and extremely important undertaking. Any community college, university, and even high school instructor wishing to incorporate lively discussions, multicultural/diversity sensitivity, and creative assignments into the classroom will benefit from Tyson's phenomenal book. You owe it to your students to read this one.

Instead of an anthology of countless philosophical texts which may seem almost impossible to read, Tyson introduces the major literary theories in clear and simple English. Even the chapter on deconstructive criticism is easy to follow! And she also cites excellent primary sources for those who are interested in a more advanced study of literary theory. All major theoretical approaches--psychoanalysis, Marxist, feminist, new criticism, structuralist, deconstructive, new historicism, reader-response, lesbian/gay/queer, postcolonial, and African-American--are thoroughly covered in Tyson's book. And to make things better, Tyson applies each of these theories to F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby." So not only to we get to read about a theory, but we also get to see literary theory put into practice. A must read for any introductory course on literary theory; however, this book would also be a helpful guide post for the advanced study of literary theory.

This is an amazing work. Prof. Tyson brings together, in one volume, the many seemingly conflicting currents in the difficult field of critical theory and shows, more often than not, how each can complement others and deepen our reading of a work of art. This approach is brilliantly illustrated by use of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. I will certainly use this book the next time I teach a course in philosophy and literature. It is written in a style accessible to undergraduates as well as graduate students and, quite honestly, most faculty I know could benefit from reading it carefully. I recommend it unreservedly to anyone interested in this field--and that, I think, is a lot of people.

Literary theory is one of the more challenging college courses even for graduate students. Typically, the instructor will assign a complex tome as the primary source and when that happens, the often bemused student needs a supplemental text. CRITICAL THEORY TODAY by Lois Tyson fills this void better than nearly every other choice. The problem with most critical theory books is that the authors assume that if the subject matter is heavy going in both matter and style, then any explanatory book must be similarly constructed. Lois Tyson stands out as one of a handful of writers who remembers to write first as a student-friendly professor than a jargon-heavy theorist.

In her introduction, Tyson issues a stern warning that critical theory is an evolving and very nearly living and breathing field that involves a series of "overlapping, competing, quarrelling visions of the world rather than as tidy categories." (page 9) Tyson introduces each school of critical theory in roughly historical chronology, beginning with Psychoanalytic criticism, and following with Marxist, Feminist, New Critical, Reader-Response, Structuralist, Deconstructionist, New Historicist, Queer theory, African-American, and finishing with Post-Colonialist. In each case, Tyson provides an historical context, which leads into a close analysis of that particular school's underlying premises. Tyson "fleshes out" each school with a close reading of THE GREAT GATSBY, a novel which invites a spectrum of divergent analyses. She also includes a helpful list of questions that one might ask to connect that specific theory to a designated text. This list has potential for the interested student to practice writing his or her own analyses of standard literary works that invite interpretation under that critical lens.

There is a warning of my own that I wish to issue. There are a number of theories that are based on gender-race-class bases, all of which assume a basic hostility with and animus toward conventional Western-based attitudes of perceived patriarchy, economic dislocation, and victim ideology. Tyson is squarely in this camp of viewing pre-Deconstructionist literature as desperately needing to expose the hidden victims who, in her opinion, have been silenced by the stifling hand of that collective patriarchy. Still, despite this at times annoying bias, Tyson's text is solid and reliable and ought to occupy a space on the shelf of those who seek to use literature as a lens to shed light on why those who read a book or those who are in that book act the way they do.

The book's introduction includes a valid argument for students to learn about literary theory: although it can be intimidating at the beginning, we will be able to see the world in a new and pluralistic way. The author explains in individual chapters, and in this order, the following theoretical approaches: psychoanalytic criticism, Marxist criticism, feminist criticism, New Criticism, reader-response criticism, structuralist criticism, deconstructive criticism, new historical and cultural criticism, lesbian/gay/queer criticism, African American criticism, and Postcolonial criticism. At the end of each chapter the respective criticism is illustrated in a reading of Fitzgerald's novel _The Great Gatsby_, which helps students see how the same text can be understood by different approaches.

This book is very useful for undergraduate students, but also for those students thinking about going to graduate school. It is well organized and provides good examples of questions to brainstorm about topics for papers. The author is very objective discussing the different theoretical approaches to writing about literature. Although students who are new to critical theory may find some of the concepts difficult, the author is sensitive to the needs of this audience and explains them carefully and clearly. She also includes a meaningful bibliography for further exploration. The book is mainly intended for English literature classes, but film studies, cultural studies and literature courses other than English can also benefit from it. I teach Spanish in an undergraduate liberal arts college and will seriously consider this title for my advanced literature courses and independent research projects.

I think that most undergraduate students will appreciate being wisely and gently shepherded into the wild fields of literary theory by professor Tyson's 1999 study. In fact, so will most lay reader lambs who innocently venture into what they thought were safe fields of, say, the Times Literary Supplement in hopes of deepening their appreciation of the classics and literary creativity. So many "academic" surveys cloak in academic wool their lupine ideological teeth, Tyson keeps a strong, healthy overview of the various schools (packs?) of critics. She appreciates the concerns and contributions of the various critical approaches without being co-opted; she shares their thoughtful contributions in "user-friendly" fashion without resorting to the cutesy "for dummie sheep" approach.

An excellent guide through the tangled weavings of modern critical writings, analyzing with respect, exploring with optimistic skepticism. GENERAL READERS: Don't leave this "textbook" in the classroom; it is a most comfortable armour for venturing forth into the 21st Century literary world. If you were not fortunate enough to be one of Tyson's students, study with her here!