Abstract
Empowering Readers is for senior secondary and undergraduate students of literature and their teachers. This very accessible book offers ten approaches to reading based on literary theories that have succeeded and competed with each other since the 1950s.
Empowering Readers has the double appeal of giving an overview of theoretical and critical schools from New Criticism to Postmodernism as well as a fresh, insightful reading of important texts which are on a large number of reading lists, from Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, via Laclos' Dangerous Liaisons and Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Tim Winton's An Open Swimmer.