"A theory must be more than a hypothesis: it can't be obvious; it involves complex relations of a systematic kind among a number of factors; and it is not easily confirmed or disproved." (3)

". . .theory is intimidating. One of the most dismaying features of theory today is that it is endless. It is not something that you could ever master, not a particular group of texts you could learn so as to 'know theory.'" (15)

"Literature is language that 'foregrounds' language itself: make it strange, thrusts it at you—'Look I'm language!'—so you can't forget that you are dealing with language shaped in odd ways." (23)

"Literature has been seen as a special kind of writing which, it was argued, could civilize not just the lower class but also the aristocrats and the middle class." (37)

"Literature is a paradoxical institution because to create literature is to...