An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory

Citation

Bennett, A., & Royle, N. (2023). An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (6th ed.). Routledge.

Chapter Summary

The sixth edition has forty-one short chapters with brief titles, running from "The Beginning" to "The End". Routledge lists the book at 540 pages. Before the chapters come a conventional contents list, an "Alternative Table of Contents", a section called "How to Read This Book" and a "Trigger Warning and Spoiler Alert"; after them a glossary, a note on texts used, a list of literary works discussed and a bibliography of critical and theoretical works. According to the publisher, each chapter ends with a further reading section, and the book works by engaging directly with literary works, so that, for example, a reading of Jane Eyre opens up questions of racial difference. Four chapters are new to this edition: "Literature", "Loss", "Human" and "Migrant". The book is not organised by school of theory; the groupings below follow the order of the contents.

Chapters 1–5: The Beginning; Literature; Readers and Reading; The Author; The Text and the World

The opening chapters set out the basic terms of literary study: beginnings, the idea of literature itself (a new chapter), the activity of reading, the figure of the author, and the relation between texts and the world they belong to.

Chapters 6–12: The Uncanny; Monuments; Narrative; Character; Voice; Figures and Tropes; Creative Writing

A sequence on the materials and effects of literary texts. The publisher contrasts familiar topics such as "Character" and "Narrative" with less expected ones; this group also includes the uncanny, the literary work as monument, narrative voice, figurative language and creative writing.

Chapters 13–17: Feelings; Loss; Laughter; The Tragic; Wounds

Chapters on emotion and affect, including the new chapter on loss. Routledge cites the chapter on laughter, which draws on Chaucer, Monty Python and Hilary Mantel, as an example of the book's range of reference.

Chapters 18–25: History; Me; Eco; Animals; Human; Ghosts; Body; Moving Pictures

These chapters move outward to history, the self, ecology, animals and the human (the last new to this edition), and then to ghosts, the body and film.

Chapters 26–36: Sexual Difference; God; Ideology; Love; Desire; Queer; Suspense; Racial Difference; Migrant; The Colony; Mutant

Titles such as "Sexual Difference", "Ideology", "Desire", "Queer", "Racial Difference" and "The Colony" name concerns that other introductions treat as separate schools of criticism; the group also includes suspense, the new chapter "Migrant" and "Mutant". The Jane Eyre reading mentioned by the publisher belongs to the theme of racial difference.

Chapters 37–41: The Performative; Secrets; Pleasure; War; The End

The last group covers the performative dimension of language, secrets and pleasure (singled out by the publisher among the more unusual chapter topics), war, and finally "The End".

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–12: Reading, Authorship and Form

• Literature: the category itself, the subject of the new second chapter.
• The author: the figure of the author, given a chapter of its own.
• The uncanny: the strangely familiar, one of the less obvious topics the book treats as central to reading.
• Figures and tropes: figurative language as a subject of analysis in its own right.

Chapters 13–25: Feeling, History and the Human

• Affect and loss: emotion and mourning treated as subjects for criticism.
• Eco and Animals: ecological and animal studies, chapters first added in the fourth edition.
• The human: the boundaries of the human, the subject of a chapter new to the sixth edition.

Chapters 26–41: Difference, Power and Performance

• Sexual and racial difference: categories through which, as the Jane Eyre example shows, familiar texts can be reread.
• Migrant and the colony: migration and colonialism as literary and critical concerns.
• The performative: language that does something rather than only describing.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• Theory through reading. The publisher stresses that complex ideas are approached through literary works, not abstract summaries. A student review of the fourth edition in Times Higher Education (February 2010) made the same point: the authors avoid potted summaries of "isms" in favour of concise essays with canonical and contemporary examples.
• Short, self-contained chapters. Forty-one chapters in about 540 pages makes each one short enough to read before a seminar, and each ends with further reading.
• Kept up to date. Successive editions have added chapters: "Eco" and "Animals" in the fourth edition, and "Literature", "Loss", "Human" and "Migrant" in the sixth.
• Well equipped. A glossary of key terms, a list of the literary works discussed and a bibliography of critical and theoretical works support independent study.
• Widely recommended by critics. The publisher reprints praise for earlier editions from Derek Attridge, Jonathan Culler, J. Hillis Miller and others, several of whom describe it as unusually readable.

Limitations

• Not a map of theoretical schools. Because the chapters are organised by topic, students who need a systematic account of structuralism, Marxism or psychoanalysis will have to assemble it themselves or turn to another book. The Times Higher Education reviewer also noted that the book does not claim to be exhaustive and will not provide sufficient theoretical knowledge on its own.
• Brevity demands follow-up. The same reviewer observed that the short essays require readers to extend them through the further reading.
• A distinctive voice. The informal, sometimes playful register that reviewers praise will not suit every reader or every course.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the introductory literary studies course, this book is the conceptual guide that sits alongside the anthologies. The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Bedford Introduction to Literature and Literature: A Portable Anthology supply the poems, stories and plays with genre-based guidance on reading and writing, while Bennett and Royle provide the questions to bring to them. Critical Terms for Literary Study, edited by Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin, takes a similar keyword approach but in longer essays by individual critics, and is a natural next step. Rivkin and Ryan's Literary Theory: An Anthology collects the primary theoretical texts arranged by school and is best read once students have the vocabulary that this book introduces.

How to Use This Book

The book suits first-year undergraduates and anyone beginning literary study; no previous study of theory is needed, though some experience of reading novels, poems and plays helps.

• Start with the frame. Read "How to Read This Book" and the first five chapters, which set up the questions about literature, reading, authors and context that the rest of the book develops.
• Choose chapters by need. After that, chapters can be read in any order. Pair them with course texts: "Narrative", "Character" and "Voice" with a novel, "Figures and Tropes" with poetry, "The Tragic" with a play.
• Use the alternative contents. The book offers a second table of contents; use it to find a different route through the chapters.
• Follow the further reading. Treat each chapter as a starting point and follow its reading list into the critics it discusses.
• Keep the glossary at hand. Learn the key terms as they arise, and use the list of literary works discussed to find chapters relevant to a set text.