This book has been helping students navigate through the thickest of literary and cultural theory for well over a decade now. This new and expanded third edition continues to offer students and readers the best one-volume introduction to the field.

The bewildering variety of approaches, theorists and technical language is lucidly and expertly unravelled. Unlike many books which assume certain positions about the critics and the theories they represent, Peter Barry allows readers to develop their own ideas once first principles and concepts have been grasped.

The book has been updated and includes two new chapters, one of which (Literary theory -- a history in ten events) innovatively surveys the course of theory, while  the other (Theory after ‘Theory’) maps the arrival of new 'isms' since the second edition appeared in 2002.