Providing a thorough and accessible guide to the major types of critical theories, this book uses everyday language and real-world examples to explain the premises, applications, implications and debates surrounding structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, feminist theory, queer theory, postcolonial theory and postmodernism. It presents with clarity and humor the ideas of such thinkers as Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jacques Derrida, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Héléne Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Louis Althusser, Mikhail Bakhtin, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. This book is designed for readers who have no prior knowledge of literary theory, but who want to understand and to use the concepts which have radically altered the way we think about literature, culture, and ourselves in the past twenty years.

What is 'literary theory?' -- Humanist literary theory : Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Bacon, Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold -- Structuralism : Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss and 'the structural study of myth', Interlude : Humanism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism -- Deconstruction : Binary opposition, The role of the center, Bricolage -- Psychoanalysis : Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Interlude : 'self' to 'subject' -- Feminism : 'Pre-poststructuralist' feminist literary theory, Poststructuralist feminist literary theory, Hélène Cixous and 'The laugh of the Medusa', Luce Irigaray and 'This sex which is not one' -- Queer theory : Flexible sexuality?, Gay/lesbian studies, Interlude : history to historicism, Humanist history, New historicism -- Ideology and discourse : Marxist theory : a few basics, Louis Althusser and ideology, Mikhail Bakhtin and 'Discourse in the novel', Michel Foucault : discourse, power/knowledge, and the author function -- Race and Postcolonialism : Colonialism and 'English', Henry Louis Gates, Jr and 'The signifying monkey', Postcolonialism and Orientalism, Homi Bhaba and 'The location of culture', Gloria Anzaldúa and 'Borderlands/La frontera' -- Postmodernism : Modernity, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Coda : what now?.