Hans Bertens is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, the Netherlands.

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

Literary Theory: The Basics helps readers to approach the many theories and debates in this field with confidence. Now with updated case studies and further reading this is an essential purchase for anyone who strives to understand literary theory today.

Introduction  1. Reading for meaning: practical criticism and New Criticism  2. Reading for Form I: Formulism and easy structuralism, 1914-60  3. Reading for form II: French Structuralism, 1950-75  4. Political Reading: the 1970s and 1980s  5. The Postructuralist revolution: Derrida, deconstruction, and postmodernism  6.Postructuralism 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. Ecocriticism  11. New Directions  Conclusion

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

Literary Theory: The Basics helps readers to approach the many theories and debates in this field with confidence. Now with updated case studies and further reading this is an essential purchase for anyone who strives to understand literary theory today.