Aim

• These pages are a guide to studying Critical Theory, firstly for those taking option 3d. 'Elements of Critical Theory', for Oxford University Honour Moderations, and secondly for anyone else who finds them useful. 
• What they don't contain is 
• pages for every topic: there's no queer theory, no hermeneutics, no reader-reponse, no stylistics, etc, because I don't know enough about them,
• my own explanations of each topic: there are already too many explanations of Critical Theory to choose from. I recommend general introductions below, and introductions to specific topics on the relevant pages.

Content

• These pages are also written in response to the fact that most students have trouble with Critical Theory (from now on I'll call it 'theory'). I don't blame them: I blame the theory and the way it's explained. I explain why in Theory Trouble section (click on the menu above).
• You can also get more details of the texts I mention by clicking on the blue, underlined titles. These links will take you to the appropriate pages of my bibliography. At their most informative, the details will include publishing information and cataloguing details for Oxford's Bodleian and English Faculty Libraries. Remember that if you do this you'll need to go back using the browser button at the top left of the screen to return to the page you started from.
• In Nice Quotes (again, click the menu) I give a few of the more memorable summaries of postmodern theory or the postmodern condition (which came first is debatable). Some have been widely quoted before, some are my own peculiar preferences, but all help to give a taste of what postmodern theorists seem to think the postmodern condition is. 
• The other pages deal with each of the aspects of theory that I know something about. Each page has the same structure: for each theory topic I deal with 
• the important texts, then 
• the issues which seem to me the most important, and then 
• the sorts of questions examiners like to ask about the topics.
• Important texts consist of 
• the primary sources for the theory - the essays and books in which it was first or most famously expounded...the texts you should refer to in exams -,
•  introductions to the theory - secondary texts -,
•  and critiques of the theory or texts which could be used to critique the theory...with a little imagination.
• It is very important that you don't read the primary texts first. They are almost all very difficult and in many cases very badly written. Read the introductions first, to find out what they should be saying. Then read the primary texts to see if that's really what they say.


Issues is divided into two sections, 'External' and 'Internal'. 

• 'External' concerns the role of the theory in literary criticism as a whole: what it has been used for, what it leaves out, etc.
• 'Internal' concerns how the theory works as an argument: are its assumptions and the conclusions it draws from those assumptions justified?.
• In practice it is probably better to concentrate on the logic of the theory itself ('internal' issues) than its wider relevance ('external' issues) since it is much easier to focus an essay on a few texts dealing with one theory than it is to relate that theory to the whole field of literary criticism. Focus is especially important for theory essays, because it is tempting to let them spiral out of control so that they become a series of generalisations about 'how things are' rather than an analysis of a particular method of interpreting texts. 
• The questions don't all refer to specific topics: they are rather the questions which I think could be answered with reference to the topics. It's important to remember when answering exam questions that they can be answered in more than one way, and using more than one lot of information, and I hope the questions I've selected for each topic indicate this.
• I also think it's important to work through the topics in a particular order. The only topic which can reasonably come before Saussure is Formalism. Otherwise, you should do Saussure first, then Structuralism, then Deconstruction, then ideally Pyschoanalysis. This is because theory works like domino-toppling: Structuralism relies on Saussure, Deconstruction relies on (and critiques) Structuralism, as does Lacanian Psychoanalysis. Almost everything else - such as Feminism, Marxism, or Postcolonialism - relies on (and critiques) Saussure + Structuralism + Deconstruction + Psychoanalysis. Once you have understood these four, then, you'll have the basis of understanding the rest (and you can take your pick which you do)

Introductory Books

• You should read at least one general introduction to theory before you start a course, and also browse through David Lodge's Reader:
• There are many general introductory books about Critical Theory, or Literary Theory, or just Theory. If you want to buy one, browse before you choose, since personal taste will define what kind of explanations you go for. I like Peter Barry's 
• Two very popular books from the 1980s are the Ann Jefferson and David Robey edited Literary Theory: A Comparative Introduction, and Terry Eagleton's . You might also look at Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson and Peter Brooker's A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory.
• There are also many 'Readers' for Theory. The most standard is David Lodge's Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. I would buy this.
• Two other useful books you might want to consider buying are Jeremy Hawthorn's A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory and Stuart Sim's A-Z Guide to Modern Literary and Cultural Theorists 
• I think that the most helpful explanations of theories of any kind are often found in critiques of those theories. Writers are much happier to simplify when they are criticising something than when they are arguing in its favour. Of course the critique has to be based on a good understanding of the theory. Two books of this kind, though with completely different points of view, are Valentine Cunningham's In the Reading Gaol, and Robert Young'sWhite Mythologies. Neither claims to be an introduction to theory, but their accounts of the theories they deal with are more lucid, better informed, and altogether more useful, than most self-professed 'introductions'. You will probably learn more about Saussure, and about which books to read for Saussure, from the first chapter of In the Reading Gaol than you will from Saussure or from any book explicitly about his theory. You might also try Stanley Fish's essay 'Commentary: The Young and the Restless', which highlights the problems with using deconstruction for any political purpose, and then offers a pragmatic solution (Fish is talking about New Historicism, but his remarks count for feminism, postcolonialism, etc). His essay is a triumph of straightforward prose.