Language, Literature and Critical Practice: Ways of Analysing Text

by David Birch

Using a wide-ranging variety of texts the author reviews and evaluates a broad range of approaches to textual commentary, introducing the reader to the fundamental distinction between actual' and virtual' worlds in critical practice.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415029414
• ISBN13: 9780415029414
• Release Date: February 1989
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A broad-ranging dip into a deep lake

Trying to figure out how to analyze language? In literature? Wonder how to structure your thoughts? What questions to ask? I felt obliged to add this review precisely because I found this book, which I first saw on the university library shelf, so engaging and informative. I had to have a copy for myself. Open it anywhere: you'll have a wonderful lesson in reading poetry and literature. Birch covers the great critical analysts of the last century, and it's brimming with good clear context provided by him. I don't find him proselytizing in the least. A "discourse-based approach to language" pretty much sums up the current approach, with all its necessary "messiness and fuzzy edges." Birch deftly dissects the early 20th centuries' critical players and then provides examples of their approaches. Nice work. I really like this book. Nice to skim, to read, and to use to help you get a hand (and a pen) into the world of academic lit crit, yourself, which is how I used it: one of several items I used to help me prepare to write a thesis on poetic technique.

Challenging, Unique, Worth It

As an undergraduate student of linguistics and literature, I found Birch's overview of the interplay between the two disciplines thorough, readable, and entirely unique. I would perhaps not recommend the book as an introduction to literary theory, critical theory, or stylistics. But for the reader already somewhat familiar with these fields, Birch offers an exciting (and provocative) way of thinking about how they interrelate. I didn't always agree with him, but he introduced many concepts (such as his proposition that I. A. Richards was engaged in a sort of proto-reader-response) that I found not only novel but useful. In short: Birch ties together alot of ideas from a lot of traditions in a coherent framework that makes for good reading.