Recent years have seen a remarkable growth of interest in critical and cultural theory, with a wealth of books and articles being published in the field. To evaluate this work, Blackwell has produced a major annual publication, The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory. In 1981 the new compendium's parent volume, The Year's Work in English Studies, first began to cover literary theory in a separate section - embracing such areas as poetics, semiotics, hermeneutics, structuralism and poststructuralism, Marxism and feminism. In the years that followed the critical debate in literary studies broadened considerably and there are now several areas of theory, including postmodernism and post-colonial discourse, which are not reviewed in The Year's Work in English Studies. The new book therefore covers an area that continues to grow and expand, and it has been designed to appeal to readers in many other disciplines - such as media studies and cultural studies. Many of the works reviewed fall outside the traditional boundaries of "English studies".
