This book is an attempt to make mod

This book is an attempt to make modern literary theory intelligible and Attractive to as wide a readership as possible. Since it first appeared in1983, I am gratified to report that it has been studied by lawyers as well as literary critics, anthropologists as well as cultural theorists. In one sense, perhaps, this isn't all that surprising. As the book itself tries to demonstrate, there is in fact no 'literary theory', in the sense of a body of theory which springs from, or is applicable to, literature alone. None of the approaches outline in this book, from phenomenology and semiotics to structuralism and psychoanalysis, is simply concerned with 'literary' writing. On the contrary, they all Emerged from other areas of the humanities, and have implications well beyond literature itself. This, I imagine, has been one reason for the book's popularity, and one reason which makes a new edition of it worthwhile. But I have also been struck by the number of non academic readers it has attracted. Unlike most such works, it has managed to reach a readership beyond academia, and this is especially interesting in the light of literary theory's so-call d elitism. If it is a difficult, even esoteric language, then it seems to be one which interests people who have never seen the inside of a university; and if this is so, then some of those inside universities who dismiss it for its esotericism ought to think again. It is encouraging, anyway, that in a post modern age in which meaning, like everything else, is expected to be instantly consumable, there are those who have found the lab our of acquiring new ways of speaking of literature to be worthwhile.