Volume 8 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism deals with the most influential and hotly debated areas of literary theory: those developing in Europe but having their main impact in the Anglo-American world of academic literary studies, whose course they have fundamentally redirected. The structuralism, poststructuralism, Russian formalism, semiotics, narratology, hermeneutics, phenomenology, reception theory, and speech act theory associated with European writers including Barthes, Todorov, Derrida, and Iser, are here described in the context of their original development, but with an eye also to their eventual influence; and the volume includes a reflective chapter by Richard Rorty on deconstruction. Incorporating full bibliographies, this volume engages systematically with the history of the twentieth century's most profound and extensive set of cross-cultural intellectual movements.

The history of the most hotly debated areas of literary theory, including structuralism and deconstruction.

Volume 8 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (the second to be published) deals with the most hotly debated areas of literary theory, including Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Semiotics, and Hermeneutics. Also incorporating a reflective chapter by Richard Rorty on Deconstruction, and culminating in accounts of the reader-oriented criticism of critics such as Stanley Fish, this is the first book to engage systematically with the history of the twentieth century's most profound and extensive set of cross-cultural intellectual movements.

Volume 8 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism (the second to be published) deals with the most hotly debated areas of literary theory, including Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Semiotics, and Hermeneutics. Also incorporating a reflective chapter by Richard Rorty on Deconstruction, and culminating in accounts of the reader-oriented criticism of critics such as Stanley Fish, this is the first book to engage systematically with the history of the twentieth century's most profound and extensive set of cross-cultural intellectual movements.

Exploring the works of a diverse group of 20th century writers including D.H. Lawrence, H.L. Mencken, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Jacques Derrida, this book provides an accessible scholarly introduction to modern literary theory and criticism, placing various modes of criticism in their historical and intellectual contexts.

Unsurpassed as a text for upper-division and beginning graduate students, Raman Selden's classic text is the liveliest, most readable and most reliable guide to contemporary literary theory. Includes applications of theory, cross-referenced to Selden's companion volume, Practicing Theory and Reading Literature.

Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature, fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting new agendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history of feminist literary criticism, leading scholars chart the development of the practice from the Middle Ages to the present. The first section of the book explores protofeminist thought from the Middle Ages onwards, and analyses the work of pioneers such as Wollstonecraft and Woolf. The second section examines the rise of second-wave feminism and maps its interventions across the twentieth century. A final section examines the impact of postmodernism on feminist thought and practice. This book offers a comprehensive guide to the history and development of feminist literary criticism and a lively reassessment of the main issues and authors in the field. It is essential reading for all students and scholars of feminist writing and literary criticism.