This third edition of Hans Bertens' bestselling book is an essential guide to the often confusing and complicated world of literary theory. Exploring a broad range of topics from Marxist and feminist criticism to postmodernism and new historicism, Literary Theory: The Basics covers contemporary topics including: reception theory and reader response theory, the new criticism of postmodernism, the 'after theory' debate, post-humanism, biopolitics and animal studies aesthetics.

1. Reading for meaning: practical criticism and new criticism -- 2. Reading for form I: Formalism and early structuralism, 1914-60 -- 3. Reading for form II: French structuralism, 1950-75 -- 4. Political reading: the 1970s and 1980s -- 5. Poststructuralist revolution: Derrida, deconstruction, and postmodernism -- 6. Poststructuralism continued: Foucault, Lacan, and French feminism -- 7. Literature and culture: the new historicism and cultural materialism -- 8. Postcolonial criticism and theory -- 9. Sexuality, literature, and culture -- 10. Posthumanism, ecocriticism and animal studies.