Preface Acknowledgements 1 Literary Theory in Classical Times Rhetorical Criticisam Plato Aristotle Horace Longinus 2 Literary Theory in the Middle Ages Allegorical Exegesis 3 The Rise and Fall of Neoclassicism The Question of Language The Idealising Strain The Italian Aristotelians Neoclassicism and the Purification of language French Neoclassical Theory The British Version of Neoclassicism British Theory in the Age of Sensibility Vico,Diderot,Lessing 4 Romantic Literary Theory Herder and the Spirit of the Time The Influence of Kant The Organic Principle The Role of the Critic Some British Themes 5 Social Theories of the 19th Century Belinsky and the Three Radicals Matthew Arnold the Beginnings of Sociological Criticism:Taine and Marx 6 Naturalism, Symbolism and Modernism French Naturalists French Symbolists …… 7 New Developments in Theory 8 20th-Century Russian Theory 9 Anglo-American Criticism, 1900-60 10 Phenomenological Criticism in France and Germany 11 French Structuralism Epilogue: Into the Postmodernist Period