Considering the great popularity of the first four editions of the book, Twentieth Century Literary Criticism, and keeping in mind the valuable suggestions received from several quarters, the present sixth edition has been revised and enlarged by an addition of five new chapters. It now contains 55 chapters in all, organized into three parts. Part I of the book lays emphasis on various schools of criticism that are prevalent in India and the West. Each chapter contains an analysis of the theory in question and shows the trend and development as well as the methodology of literary criticism in the 20th century. Part II of the book contains discussions on a large number of critical essays and critics such as Eliot, Richards, Leavis, Barthes, Foucault and the Postcolonial Critics. The seminal critical essays included in this section have influenced the critical trends in the twentieth century and changed the general perception of criticism. These chapters, apart from giving a comprehensive idea of the critical concepts, also provide an analytical study of the critical works. Part III contains five new chapters that explain the meanings of terms like textuality, intertextuality, hypertextuality; study the application of cultural studies to literary tests; capture the important changes that have taken place in cultural studies in the present age of globalization; and give a brief historical perspective of literary theory. The theories and the texts have been explained with clarity and precision in a lucid language. This is an invaluable reference book for anyone interested in the field of literary criticism in the twentieth century.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements; Preface—PART I—1. Pioneers: T.S. Eliot, I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis; 2. Trends in Twentieth Century Criticism; 3. Basic Tenets of New Criticism; 4. Structuralism: A Note; 5. The Theory of Deconstruction: An Appraisal; 6. Theory of Deconstruction: Retrospect and Prospect; 7. The Validity of Reader-Response Criticism; 8. The Reader and the Death of the Author; 9. A Critique of Russian Formalism; 10. Myth Criticism: A Note; 11. Feminist Literary Criticism: An Overview; 12. A Critique of Marxist Criticism; 13. Psychoanalytic Criticism; 14. Semiotics and Postsemiotics; 15. New Historicism: An Appraisal; 16. Cultural Criticism: An Overview; 17. A Critique of Postcolonial Theory; 18. Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism: A Note; 19. Gender Studies: Gay and Lesbian Criticism and Queer Theory; 20. A Critique of Translation Theories; 21. The Identity of a Literary Text: Problems and Responses; 22. Critical Theories and Literary Texts: A Correlation; 23. A Critique of Postmodernism; 24. Issues in Twentieth Century Criticism; 25. Beyond Twentieth Century Literary Criticism and Literary Theory—PART II—26. T.S. Eliot and Sri Aurobindo on Poets and Poetry; 27. A Critique of Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”; 28. Eliot’s ‘Objective Correlative’: A Note; 29. T.S. Eliot’s “To Criticize the Critic”: A Note; 30. I.A. Richards’: “The Imagination”; 31. I.A. Richards’s “Metaphor”: A Note; 32. F.R. Leavis’s “Keats”: A Note; 33. F.R. Leavis’ “Literary Criticism and Philosophy”: A Note; 34. Ransom’s Poetry: A Note on Ontology; 35. Cleanth Brooks’s “The Language of Paradox”: An Evaluation; 36. “How Many Children had Lady Macbeth”: An Analysis; 37. J.W. Krutch’s “The Tragic Fallacy”: An Overview; 38. Realism and the Contemporary Novel: An Analysis; 39. “The Archetypes of Literature”: A Note; 40. Tzvetan Todorov’s “Definition of Poetics”: An Analysis; 41. Roland Barthes’ “Criticism as Language”: A Note; 42. Roland Barthes’ “From Work to Text”: An Analysis; 43. Roland Barthes’ “Authors and Writers”: A Note; 44. Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”: A Note; 45. Michel Foucault’s “What’s an Author?”: An Evaluation; 46. Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ and Postcolonial Theory; 47. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s “Poststructuralism, Marginality, Postcoloniality and Value”: A Note; 48. Homi K. Bhabha and Postcolonial Criticism; 49. Homi K. Bhabha: “The Other Question: The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse”: A Note; 50. Aijaz Ahmad’s “‘Indian Literature’: Notes Towards the Definition of a Category”: An Overview—PART III—51. Textuality, Intertextuality and Hypertextuality: Ways of Reading a Literary Text; 52. Reconfiguring Cultural Studies and Postcolonialism; 53. Interrogating, Historicizing and Theorizing Diaspora; 54. Critiquing Globalization Theory; 55. The Resurrection of Literary Theory; Bibliography; Index