THE PHILOSOPHY OF MODERN LITERARY THEORY

The Philosophy of Modern Literary Theory presents a short introduction to the problems, theories and concepts of literary criticism, from the Anglo-American New Criticism to Deconstruction to Postmodernism. The book argues that modern theories can only be properly understood when placed in the philosophical and aesthetic context in which they originated and evolved.

The book ranges across not just the philosophical underpinnings of English Literature but also the critical literatures of Eastern Europe, France, Germany, Italy and North America. For the first time, the major schools of literary theory ? from Marxism to Psychoanalysis to Critical Theory ? are set within their philosophical context. The theorists discussed include Adorno, Bakhtin, Barthes, Benjamin, Croce, Derrida, Eco, Fish, Gadamer, Goldmann, Greimas, Hegel, Heidegger, Jakobson, Jameson, Jauss, Kant, Luk?cs, Lyotard, de Man, Mannheim, Marx and Nietzsche.

Contents

1. The Philosophical and Aesthetic Foundations of Literary Theories

2. Anglo-American New Criticism and Russian Formalism

3. Czech Structuralism Between Kant, Hegel, and The Avant-Garde

4. Problems of Reader-Response Criticism: From Hermeneutics to Phenomenology

5. From Marxism to Critical Theory and Postmodernism

6. The Aesthetics of Semiotics: Greimas, Eco, Barthes

7. The Nietzschean Aesthetics of Deconstruction

8. Lyotard?s Postmodern Aesthetics and Kant?s Notion of The Sublime
9. Towards A Critical Theory of Literature