Barry's Instructional Approach

The self-help instructional approach Peter Barry uses in "Beginning Theory" is pervasive throughout the literary and cultural theories presented. A casual reader can learn much about a school of literary criticism or cultural theory by simply reading through any chapter. Typically the first few pages of a chapter define and describe an historical period and comment on major concepts and writers within a literary theory. For example the second page of Chapter 4, Postmodernism states "The period of high modernism was the twenty years from 1910 to 1930 and some of the literary 'high priests' of the movement (writing in English) were T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Ezra Pound . . . ." and further on Barry writes "Some of the important characteristics of the literary modernism practiced by those writers include. . . ."

Second sections of a chapter generally present specific technical illustrations and more controversial issues associated with the chapter topic. For example...