title: Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide
author: Patricia Waugh
description: <br /><strong>Patricia Waugh</strong> has published extensively in the field of modern fiction and criticism. She is the author of <em>The Harvest of the Sixties: English Literature and its Backgrounds</em> (1995) and <em>Revolutions of the Word: Intellectual Contexts for the Study of Modern Literature</em> (1997). She has also edited a number of collections and anthologies of modern literary theory and postmodernism, most recently <em>The Arts and Sciences of Criticism</em> (with David Fuller).<br />
zlib_text:  
  
  Literary Theory and Criticism
   
  
  Literary Theory 
  and Criticism
  Edited by
  Patricia Waugh
  
   
  
  Foreword
  The aim of this Oxford Guide is to provide an accessible,
  comprehensive account of modern literary criticism and theory for
  students and teachers often overwhelmed and bemused by the sheer
  diversity, volume, and heterogeneity of the intellectual sources of
  modern literary critical practice. Rather than presenting modern
  theories as a thoroughgoing break in thought, however, the volume
  seeks to place modern criticism and theory within the context of a
  broader intellectual history. Collectively, the essays gathered here
  explore 
  the 
  various 
  currents, 
  pressures, 
  and 
  directions 
  in
  contemporary criticism and theory as aspects of the cultural present
  and as an ongoing conversation with intellectual precursors and
  earlier traditions of literary study.
  There are numerous anthologies, readers, and textbooks on theory
  now available. However, pressures on the academic curriculum often
  co