From Plato to Freud to ecocriticism, this helpful guide gives you everything you need to know to really understand literature, as well as references to and quotations from novels, stories, poems, plays, and more.

Includes index.

Basic ingredients and useful terms. It's just a theory ; What's the word for that, again? -- In theory, how do you read? New criticism looks very closely ; Russian formalism fixates on the machinery ; Reader-response criticism watches itself ; Aristotle and friends plot the course -- What is literature, anyway? Plato's fundamental gripe against literature ; The Romantics get defensive ; Marx sees through the material world ; Freud sees a symptom ; Saussure and science settle into a good read -- Hey, whose book is this? Feminist theories change the game ; Gender and queer theories read desire ; Ethnic studies changes the key ; Disability studies get physical -- Try to watch your language. Structuralism senses a pattern here ; Deconstruction says it's not what you think ; Psychology brings linguistics to the couch -- Into the world and of the world. Cultural studies tries to ruin a good time ; History gets literary ; Postcolonial criticism flaunts the fashions ; Ecocriticism offers a word from our sponsor.