Literary Theory: The Basics

Now in its fourth edition, Literary Theory: The Basics is an essential guide to the complicated and often confusing world of literary theory. Readers will encounter a broad range of topics from Marxist and feminist criticism to postmodernism, queer studies and ecocriticism.

Introduction
Chapter 1 Reading for Meaning: Practical Criticism and New Criticism
Chapter 2 Reading for Form and Function: Formalism and Early Structuralism, 1914-1960
Chapter 3 Reading for Form II: French Structuralism, 1950-1975
Chapter 4 Political Reading: Class, Gender, and Race in the 1970s and 1980s
Chapter 5 The Poststructuralist Revolution
Chapter 6 Literature and Culture: Cultural Studies, the New Historicism, Cultural Materialism
Chapter 7 Postcolonial Criticism and Theory
Chapter 8 Sexuality, Literature, Culture and Queer Studies
Chapter 9 Decentring the Human: Posthumanism, Ecocriticism, New Materialism, Animal Studies
Chapter 10 'Theory', Post-Theory, New Challenges
Bibliography
Index