Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: A Reader

This is quite a dry read, especially since you have make double-triple runs through sections to grasp the 19th century British English. But I found some of the papers quite interesting.. Mathew Arnold left me flabbergast, 'the raw and uncultivated masses of sunken people..' ie. the equivalent of pop culture today - this is coming from the man who coined the term 'culture', which was only at the time considered 'the best of what has been said and thought in society' Look at what it is now.

This volume is an excellent introduction to some of the most important trends of 20th century literary and cultural studies. Beginning with an excerpt from Matthew Arnold's "Culture and Anarchy", Storey takes the reader on an informative tour of some of the most important literary and cultural theorists of the past 150 years. CT & PC also represents a remarkably broad survey considering the amount of subject matter included. In this informative and balanced edition there are chapters on Culturalism, Structualism and Poststructuralism, Marxism, Feminism, Postmodernism and The Politics of the Popular, in which he attempts to illustrate the newest theoretical trends, and where they may be heading in the future. The way the book progresses is very helpful in allowing the reader to see just how different perspectives in theory are interconnected. Storey's edition gives the reader enough articles to gain some real understanding, without overwhelming one that may not be familiar with a particular theoretical perspective. The articles chosen generally range from 10 to 20 pages, and are tightly focused and helpful in giving a short, but rich intro. to the given theoretical perspective that they are represenative of. This book is a great guidebook for anyone intertested in the latest trends in literary and cultural theory, along with the so-called culture wars. The only drawbacks to this book is that a few of the articles take excerpts from a long work and then put them together in a way that makes them confusing and difficult to undertsatand. And secondly, although there are notes to each article, more are needed, especially in the area of terminology and background information. Besides these minor quibbles this is an excellent collection of articles; a great resource for the student, professor, or anyone else interested in literary and cultural theory.