Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History is the most comprehensive account of modern criticism and theory available in the English language. It provides a historical survey of the various modes of literary criticism developed in the twentieth century. It is distinguished from other texts in the field not only by providing the larger historical contexts of modern critical works, but also by engaging in close readings of some of the major and commonly taught texts, offering clear, detailed and philosophically informed explanations of difficult works. This broadly chronological narrative explores the works of a diverse group of twentieth-century writers, from Irving Babbitt and T.S. Eliot through Simone de Beauvoir and Martin Heidegger to Jacques Derrida, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Judith Butler, Slavoj Žižek and Elaine Scary. It stresses the continuity and connections between the various critical approaches of formalism, psychoanalysis, structuralism, deconstruction, Marxism, feminism, gender studies, reader-response and reception theory, historicism, cultural studies and film theory, as well as the new emphases on aestheticism and liberalism. An invaluable resource for students and teachers at all levels, this book will also appeal to anyone interested in modern literature and culture
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Formative Moments in the History of Literary Criticism
Historical Backgrounds of Modern Criticism and Theory
The Scope of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism
The First Decades: From Liberal Humanism to Formalism
Socially Conscious Criticism of the Earlier Twentieth Century
Criticism and Theory After the Second World War
The Era of Post structuralism (I): Later Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction
The Era of post structuralism (II): Postmodernism, Modern Feminism, Gender Studies
The Later Twentieth Century: New Historicism, Reader-Response Theory and Postcolonial Criticism
Cultural Studies and Film Theory
Contemporary Directions: The Return of the Public Intellectual
Index
