 "Thick!" | 2009-10-05 |
| - Reviewed By User: AX5UW6MGGJSTY |
| This is a textbook of philosophy. This is a kind of dictionary. You could find any philosopher throughout an index. If you are studying in Philosophy or Psychology, you should buy this book. |
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| "Philosophers on Literature Theory and Criticism" | 2009-09-17 |
| - Reviewed By User: A3ATCXU2CI3QAE |
This Anthology (bought for a graduate level literary criticism and theory class) provides detail on philosophers and their theories of literature from Plato to the Post-Modern movement. Excerpts of texts from the works of individual philosophers provide broad strokes and a general understanding of literature theory and criticism concepts and framework.
This book is an impetus to me to want to study more - we aren't getting to cover the entire text in a semester but I intend to not only read the entire text but I'd like to delve into it on a deeper level.
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 "Product description deceiving" | 2009-04-10 |
| - Reviewed By forestfary |
This product shipped very quickly (arrived much earlier than estimated), saving me from worrying whether or not it would arrive in time for my class to begin.
The negative comment I have to say is that, yes, I understand I purchased a used book; however, the product description didn't mention that it is without the cover jacket and had highlights and notes written w/in the text. |
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| "Overstuffed and overpriced" | 2009-02-16 |
| - Reviewed By tyro3 |
| This anthology is not very practical for in-class use, as it neglects some important thinkers and is top-heavy with a profusion of postmodern, Marxist, feminist, Frankfurt School, psychoanalytic critics, and postcolonial thinkers. There is an unsurprising political agenda here, but it's doubtful that any single class would include all this material, making the book too costly for its purpose. Thinkers who belong in the categories of cultural theory or pure philosophy or psychoanalysis (Lacan, Austin, Adorno, Baudrillard, Foucault etc.) are included. Apparently, though, the editors don't think Dryden's "Essay on Dramatic Poesy" is important enough to merit a substantial excerpt, prefacing it with snarky comments about Dryden's debt to Corneille. The translation of Horace is poor, a semi-colloquial English paraphrase that doesn't even try to reproduce the wit of the original. Many of the postmodern thinkers here are so widely taught that it hardly seems necessary to include them in an anthology of aesthetics. Instead of this bloated volume, try Critical Theory since Plato. |
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 "Typically Norton--Mostly Good" | 2007-09-02 |
| - Reviewed By User: AAW58LG72PG7I |
If one had to choose only one text to study literary theory, that would certainly be THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF THEORY AND CRITICISM. Its more than 2,500 pages cover the complete spectum of western literary theory from Plato to the present day. The editors Leitch, Cain, Finke, Johnson, McGowan, and Williams are both competent and lucid in their choices of authors and their introductions thereto. The Norton anthologies in general are written in the same massive style, which accentuates comprehensiveness at the cost of occasional lapses in structural integrity and reader involvement. This Norton is no different. First the good news. Whether a college professor wishes to cover the vast range of theory over the last two millennia, he has the option of selecting targeted theorists from classical antiquity to modern day. Now this is a good news bad news dilemma. The typical college theory course lasts but one semester of perhaps fifteen sessions. The vastness of this text is an illusion that dares the instructor to cover even a fraction of its contents. How does this instructor choose from such a bewildering array? Does he totally ignore the ancients like Plato, Aristotle, and Horace (which by the way occupy nearly the first 400 pages) or does he by necessity focus on 19th and 20th century theorists? This is no nitpicking question. Part of the problem in deciding how to structure a semester's syllabus lies in the typical strategy that most Norton editors follow. They try to include nearly everyone and everything with minimal follow up activities. The preliminary introductions are comprehensive although in this Norton, the editors chose to present a chronological listing of theorists. One simply follows the other with no attempt to place him in a cultural or paradigmatic context. By contrast, the Norton's chief anthology rival, LITERARY THEORY: AN ANTHOLOGY by Rivkin and Ryan arranges its selections by logical groupings based on their relevant school of criticism. Leitch et al clearly recognize this by trying to compensate by creating a multi-index approach. The first is a chronological listing of theorist, followed by an alternative table of contents, which is further subdivided by school, by genre, by historical period, and by issue and topic. The problem with this alternative index is that it is awkward to use in that one has to continually flip back and forth to track a targeted theorist or school of theory. There are other problems that I saw in this Norton. In my earlier review of THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE I lamented the omission of follow up questions and student-directed prompts that would facilitate their grasp of an arcane subject. The Norton editors seem unwilling to do what high school editors of literary texts have no problem doing--following each selection with thought-provoking essay questions that would require students to make a transcendental leap from abstractness to concretization. The reason for this lack is clear. Once the editors include their vast corpus of writer and work, there is no room remaining for follow-up topics. Now given that this text is designed (I think) mostly for a one semester course in theory, was it really necessary to include a wide range of ancient theorists like Quintilian, Augustine of Hippo, Macrobius, Hugh of St. Victor, Moses Maimonides, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Christine de Pizan, Giambattista Giraldi, and Giacopo Mazzoni? Now I can just hear professors of Greek, Roman, and Renaissance literature rushing to defend these insertions, but my point is one of priorities. To include these lesser lights is to exclude commentary and follow up questions on all others, including those classic writers with whom I have no objection.
There is plenty I like about this Norton. The Introduction to Theory and Criticism is exactly what the novice needs to self-acclimatize. The concluding Selected Bibliography of Theory and Criticism is enormously useful--probably more so for the graduate student than the undergraduate. I suspect that the text mirrors the field of literary theory itself; its vastness precludes anyone from a comprehensive ingestion of a complex web of vocabulary and an abstruseness of thought. When that course of literary theory is over, the real education of a student will begin when that student now has the basics straight and wishes to plow ahead on his own. For such a student, THE NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF THEORY AND CRITICISM will be an invaluable and lifelong companion. |
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| "Just some technical issues..." | 2007-01-15 |
| - Reviewed By meheeheeheehee |
| I'm not commenting on the content, just the book itself. The pages are so thin that when you read you can actually see the type on the opposite side of the page through the paper... I don't know about anybody else, but I personally find this incredibly distracting, especially since the font is already very small. I suppose it would have been too hard to make the book a little thicker so that it would actually be readable? If that sort of thing doesn't bother you, this is a great anthology. |
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