Language, Literature and Critical Practice: Ways of Analysing Text

Contemporary, philosophical, cultural, political and sociological influences have had a crucial impact on the way in which we approach and understand texts. Language, Literature and Critical Practice examines the major consequences of these influences on textual analysis and the role of language within it, and provides an overview of developments in language-centered criticism in the twentieth century.

Using a wide-ranging variety of texts, the author reviews and evaluates an equally wide-ranging variety of approaches to textual commentary, introducing the reader to the fundamental distinction between "actual" and "virtual" words in critical practice and theories of language, and elucidating the critically important practice of how texts mean.