Literary Theory: An Introduction (Anniversary Edition)
by Terry Eagleton
Survey running from phenomenology and structuralism through psychoanalysis and post-structuralism, arguing that no reading is politically neutral. Readers finish able to place each school historically and to see the assumptions buried inside any interpretive method. The single most-assigned survey in the field, and it does something the Yale lectures do not: it makes an argument about why theory exists and what interests it serves, which is the analytical skill the topic is about.
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