Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Preface to the Sixth Edition -- Introduction -- 1 New Criticism, moral formalism and F.R. Leavis -- Origins: Eliot, Richards, Empson -- The American New Critics -- Moral formalism: F.R. Leavis -- 2 Russian Formalism and the Bakhtin School -- Shklovsky, Mukařovský, Jakobson -- The Bakhtin School -- 3 Reader-oriented theories -- Phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer -- Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser -- Fish, Riffaterre, Bleich -- 4 Structuralism -- The linguistic background -- Structuralist narratology -- Metaphor and metonymy -- Structuralist poetics -- 5 Marxism -- Soviet Socialist Realism -- Lukács and Brecht -- The Frankfurt School and After: Adorno and Benjamin -- 'Structuralist' Marxism: Goldmann, Althusser, Macherey -- 'New Left' Marxism: Williams, Eagleton, Jameson -- 6 Psychoanalysis -- Sigmund Freud -- Jacques Lacan -- Deleuze and Guattari -- Slavoj Žižek: a note -- 7 Feminism -- First-wave feminist criticism: Woolf and de Beauvoir -- Second-wave feminist criticism -- Kate Millett: sexual politics -- Marxist feminism -- Elaine Showalter: gynocriticism -- French feminism: Kristeva, Cixous, Irigaray -- 8 Poststructuralism, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism -- Roland Barthes -- Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida -- American deconstruction -- Michel Foucault -- New Historicism and Cultural Materialism -- 9 Postmodernism -- Jean Baudrillard -- Jean-François Lyotard -- Postmodernism and Marxism -- Postmodern feminisms -- 10 Postcolonialism, race and ethnicity -- Edward Said -- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak -- Homi K. Bhabha -- Race and ethnicity -- 11 Gay, lesbian and queer theories -- Gay theory and criticism -- Lesbian feminist theory and criticism -- Queer theory and criticism -- 12 Post-theory -- 13 Ecocriticism, Animal Studies, Thing Theory -- Ecocriticism