English literature people..I have aquestion on recommended study guides s

[shadypines]

DDs uni have emailed the following guides below but have not advised whether one or all are required, at least to start with. Can anyone advise please?

A. Bennett and N. Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism and Theory (London, 1995);

Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Minneapolis, 1983);

Robert Eaglestone, Doing English (Routledge, 2009)

You will also notice I have accidentally created a new word in my title...ooops!

I absolutely would not call these study guides , Literary Criticism is a subject in itself . I am not sure which is the best textbook but ds A level English teacher lent him Doing English and it’s definitely a useful starting point .

I definitely had to buy several literary criticism books for my first year, so I suspect you need all three. Is the first one an anthology? Terry Eagleton is a key classic. The author of the third one, Bob Eaglestone, was my supervisor for my masters and I’d definitely recommend anything he writes.

ha! @thereinmadnesslies I was just about to say that anything written by Bob will be very readable (he's an old colleague). Of those 3, I'd start with Bob's Eaglestone's book, then go to Eagleton's. Don't

The Terry Eagleton text will be really interesting - he's probably one of the UK's leading literary theorists, and his book isn't a study guide or textbook, it's a bona fide piece of original thinking.

Thank you, useful replies, I cannot remember the exact wording of the email from the uni, perhaps it wasn't study guides, but certainly described them as aids to literature study.

Late to this, but universities don't follow a standardised curriculum, so it will depend on the university whether these are books that are recommended for buying or not. If they've sent out a list of recommended reading and haven't explained whether or not it all needs buying/reading right now, she should email to check - if she's meant (for example) to have read them before she starts the course, she'll want to start now.