M.A.R. Habib is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. He received his D.Phil. in English from Oxford University, and is the author of five books, including A History of Literary Criticism and Theory: From Plato to the Present (Blackwell, 2005).

“Lucid, wide-ranging, erudite and packed with insights, Rafey Habib’s survey of modern criticism and theory has something for both the tenderfoot and the old-timer. Students everywhere will find it indispensable.”Terry Eagleton, University of Manchester"Those who want to know where literary critics may be going should have this." Times Higher Education Supplement

• 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.1. The First Decades: From Liberal Humanism to Formalism.The New Humanists, Neo-Romantics, and Precursors of Formalism.The Background of Modernism.The Poetics of Modernism: W.B. Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot.Formalism:.Russian Formalism:.Boris Eichenbaum (1886–1959).Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1895–1975).Roman Jakobson (1896–1982).The New Criticism:.John Crowe Ransom (1888–1974).William K. Wimsatt, Jr. (1907–1975) and Monroe C. Beardsley (1915–1985).2. Socially Conscious Criticism of the Earlier Twentieth Century.F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) and Scrutiny.Marxist and Left-Wing Criticism:.Socialist Criticism in Britain.The Fundamental Principles of Marxism.Marxist Literary Criticism: A Historical Overview.Early Feminist Criticism: Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir:.Virginia Woolf (1882–1941).Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986).3. Criticism and Theory After the Second World War.Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Phenomenology.Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Existentialism.Georges Bataille (1897–1962) and Heterology.Structuralism:.Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913).Roland Barthes (1915–1980).4. The Era of Poststructuralism (I): Later Marxism, Psychoanalysis, Deconstruction.Later Marxist Criticism:.Terry Eagleton (b. 1943).Psychoanalysis: Freud and Lacan:.Sigmund Freud (1856–1939).Jacques Lacan (1901–1981).Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) and Deconstruction.5. The Era of Poststructuralism (II): Postmodernism, Modern Feminism, Gender Studies.Postmodernism:.Jürgen Habermas (b. 1929).Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007).Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998).bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins; b. 1952).Modern Feminism:.French Feminism.American Feminism.British Feminism.Julia Kristeva (b. 1941).Hélène Cixous (b. 1937).Gender Studies:.Gayle Rubin (b. 1949).Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (b. 1950).Judith Butler (b. 1956).6. The Later Twentieth Century: New Historicism, Reader-Response Theory, and Postcolonial Criticism.New Historicism:.Michel Foucault (1926–1984).Reader-Response and Reception Theory:.Wolfgang Iser (b. 1926).Stanley Fish (b. 1938).Postcolonial Criticism:.Edward Said (1935–2004).Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (b. 1942).Homi K. Bhabha (b. 1949).Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (b. 1950).7. Cultural Studies and Film Theory.Cultural Studies:.Raymond Williams (1921–1988).Stuart Hall (b. 1932).Dick Hebdige (b. 1951).John Fiske.Susan Bordo (b. 1947).Film Theory:.Andrew Sarris (b. 1928) and Auteur Theory.Jim Kitses: The Study of Genre.Christian Metz (1931–1993): A Psychoanalytic Perspective.Laura Mulvey (b. 1941): Feminist Film Theory.8. Contemporary Directions: The Return of the Public Intellectual.The New Liberalism: Martha Nussbaum, Elaine Scarry, John Carey:.Martha Nussbaum (b. 1947).Elaine Scarry (b. 1946).John Carey (b. 1934).The New Aestheticism.The New Theorists of Revolution: Žižek, Hardt, Negri.Slavoj Žižek (b. 1949).Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri: The Concept of Empire.Epilogue: The Myth of Liberal Humanism.Index