2006-02-02 If you like that sort of thing

One of those books that crops up on every Eng. Lit. student's reading list at some stage during their degrees, and one of those books that will lurk on the bookshelf looking clever (and unread) until you at last tire of hankering after the bright college days.

Any anthology must deal with the fundamental challenge of being representative of the field it covers, and, given the range of fields contained within this book, that is an enormous challenge. Unfortunately, it doesn't really cope that well. On the one hand it does offer original source texts by most of the big names in the business, but those source texts are frequently too specialised or closely focussed to be of use to the reader of an anthology.

If you need to buy this book for your course, it will see you through most seminars pretty well and give you enough windy quotations during which your cappucino will go cold. However, a better approach to understanding literary and critical theory would be to buy a shorter overview and then go to the original books according to the area into which you wish to research.