Preface to the second edition Since the 1999 publication of Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, criti‑ cal theory has continued to grow in at least two ways: some critical theorists that students would have encountered only at the graduate level of literary studies have begun to appear in the undergraduate classroom, and some critical theories that students would have encountered primarily in other disciplines are becom‑ ing frequently used frameworks in literary studies. For these reasons, you will find in the second edition of Critical Theory Today a good deal of new material. A section on Lacanian psychoanalysis has been added to the chapter on psycho‑ analytic criticism. The chapter on feminist criticism now contains sections on gender studies and French feminism, the latter including discussions of both the very useful French materialist feminism and the more familiar psychoanalytic school of French feminism. And perhaps the biggest change of all, the chapter on postcolonial and African American criticism has been rewritten as two separate chapters. This last change allowed me to add to the chapter on African Ameri‑ can criticism a section on critical race theory and an African American reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925), which remains the novel used for the sample literary application in every chapter. Finally, the bibliographies for further reading that close each chapter have been expanded and updated. One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is the purpose of this book. It is still an introduction to critical theory written by a teacher of critical theory and lit‑ erature. And it is still intended for teachers and college-level students who want to learn about critical theory and its usefulness in helping us to achieve a bet‑ ter understanding of literature. Because I am a teacher writing for teachers and students, the second edition of Critical Theory Today also contains clarifications wherever my own students have had repeated difficulty, over the years, in under‑ standing a particular concept addressed in the book. Thus you’ll find, to cite just a few representative examples, an expanded explanation of rugged individualism in the chapter on Marxist criticism; a clarification of the concept of mimicry in the chapter on postcolonial criticism; and, in the chapter on African American criticism, an added example of the encoding of certain racial themes by African American writers. Indeed, my own copy of the first edition, which I’ve used in my classes, contains innumerable little page markers where a clarification, word
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