Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Must-Have for Anyone with an interest in Literary Criticism, May 17, 2001
Literary Criticism is one field of study that, no doubt, confuses most people with all the "-isms". Charles Bressler's book is a very useful tool in sorting out all these "-isms". This is a well-organized book: each chapter focuses on a different theory and discusses the theory's historical development, assumptions, methodology and even has questions for analysis (great help when writing a paper). The chapter culminates in two essays of application of that particular theory. This is the most popular and widely-circulated book among Lit Majors in my university. And this is one that you should definitely own.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent guide for beginners., April 2, 2005
4 years of English studies, and I never once sat down to read literary theory until I had to take a course in it. Bressler's book helped me immensely to sort out the confusing mass that is theory. He lists a dozen or so major movements, such as formalism, reader-response criticism, structuralism, and post-structuralism, and also includes "additional" chapters on individual theorists such as Barthes, Levi-Strauss, etc. The explanations are concise. I also like how this professor turned author looks at theory from the student's perspective: he breaks down complicated ideas into manageable parts, without losing the essential point of the theory.
Another book that I found helpful was *Literary Theory: An Anthology* ed. Julie Rivkin. Unlike Bressler's book, this one is HUGE and very heavy, but nonetheless useful.
Actually, after reading more about literary theory, I'm no longer scared of it. So, if you're like me, a "newbie" to literary theory, you'd do well to start with this book.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
too many typos in 4th edition, September 29, 2006
After looking at the third edition, I ordered this book for a class that I teach. The fourth edition contains many changes, all of them for the worse. The literary selections in the 4th edition are not as well chosen; the added paragraphs in the chapters on New Criticism and feminism are stylistically awkward and often confusing and repetitive, not to mention factually questionable (the claim that there were no voices in feminism between Pisan and Wollstonecraft!). Most distressing of all, this edition was apparently rushed to press in time for classes in fall 2006, for it contains typos about every five or six pages. The chapter on feminism alone has at least ten errors, e.g., "one in the same," "least" instead of "lest" (that mistake was carried over from the third edition), "lastest"!!!, inconsistency in verb number after "a variety of [plural nouns]," etc. The publisher should send an apology to all purchasers of this book, along with a list of errata. On the bright side: I tell my students that I can't penalize them too much for small errors, when the textbook contains so many!
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