The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism Book

This book does offer a huge selection of important critics. It is nice and heavy, and has a cool dust cover. As an introduction to theory for students, however, it is a bit overwhelming and doesn't offer much in the way of engagement with texts that other lit crit anthologies, such as Shirley Staton's "Literary Theory in Praxis" do. The elephant in the room with this book is that the editors lean heavily toward the theory of Derrida and Stanley Fish. Derrida may have the most extensive selection in here, and Guyatri Spivak has an essay. It may be telling that a large number of professors from the University of Illinois @Chicago, where Stanley Fish was formerly the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, are featured (Lennard Davis, Walter Benn Michaels, and Gerald Graff) while the book omits some key critics from the last twenty years (Frank Kermode and Slavoj Zizek, for example). Compared with the Longman 20th century lit crit Anthology, this criticism anthology seems heavy on the white guys, doing little to dispel the "totalitarian tinkerbell" thing. On the other hand, the Norton does have bell hooks and some great feminist criticism. Many of the black theorists and critics, particularly the men, seem to be lumped into their own "identity" category, which can be problematic. The Norton isn't inventing this trend, which has been around for awhile; but it isn't resisting it either. In all, I think there is a great background in criticism here, but in some of the ways I mentioned, this book is a product of a certain time and certain networks of influence, not an objective account of what has been most important nor most forward-looking in criticism and theory.