A Critical and Cultural Theory Reader

The "death of literature" and the rise of post-structuralist theory has breached the traditional opposition between the literary canon and popular culture, both in principle and in academic practice. This reader contains essays and extracts for the study of high and popular culture, together with writing by Saussure, Barthes, Lacan, Kristeva, Foucault, Derrida and Cixous. For easy reference, the reader is divided into sections including: semiology, ideology, subjectivity, difference, gender and postmodernism. It concludes with a section of "cultural documents" with extracts from Leavis, Adorno, Williams and Tzara. With the concerns of students in mind, each section is introduced and each piece of writing summarized in the notes.