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Learning Theory

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Beginning theory
An introduction to literary and cultural theory
Second edition Peter

Barry

© Peter Barry 1995, 2002
ISBN: 0719062683

Contents
Acknowledgements - page x
Preface to the second edition - xii
Introduction - 1
About this book - 1
Approaching theory - 6 Slop and think: reviewing your study of literature

to date - 8
My own 'stock-taking' - 9
1 Theory before 'theory' - liberal humanism - 11
The history of English studies - 11
Stop and think - 11
Ten tenets of liberal humanism - 16 Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis some key moments - 21
Liberal humanism in practice - 31
The transition to 'theory' - 32
Some recurrent ideas in critical theory - 34
Selected reading - 36
2 Structuralism - 39
Structuralist chickens and liberal humanist eggs
Signs of the fathers - Saussure - 41
Stop and think - 45
The scope of structuralism - 46
What structuralist critics do - 49
Structuralist criticism: examples - 50
Stop and think - 53

Stop and think - 55

39

Stop and think - 57
Selected reading - 60
3 Post-structuralism and deconstruction - 61
Some theoretical differences between structuralism and post-structuralism - 61
Post-structuralism - life on a decentred planet - 65
Stop and think - 68 Structuralism and post-structuralism - some practical differences - 70
What post-structuralist critics do - 73
Deconstruction: an example - 73
Selected reading - 79
4 Postmodernism - 81
What is postmodernism? What was modernism? - 81 'Landmarks' in postmodernism:
Habermas, Lyotard and Baudrillard - 85
Stop and think - 90
What postmodernist critics do - 91
Postmodernist criticism: an example - 91
Selected reading - 94
5 Psychoanalytic criticism - 96
Introduction - 96

How Freudian interpretation works - 98
Stop and think - 101
Freud and evidence - 102
What Freudian psychoanalytic critics do - 105
Freudian

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