作为“高等院校英语语言文学专业研究生系列教材”之一,本书选编了二十世纪以来四方文艺批评各流派的代表作,内容包括俄国形式主义批评、英美新批评、马克思主义文艺批评、心理分析批评、神话及原型批评、结构主义批评、读者批评、解构主义批评、女权主义批评、新历史主义批评、后殖民主义批评、性别研究、文化研究等流派的经典著作的篇段。每篇文章前有作者撰写的导论,简要介绍该流派的特征及其发展的渊源。 由于编者对西方文论有着较深的造诣,所选材料十分精到,所撰写的导论也简明扼要、详略得当,对于从事英美文学研究的读者很有裨益。

Introduction
Unit 1 Russian Formalism
1 Art as Technique
2 Standard Language and Potic Language
3 The Theory of the "Formal Method"
4 The Formalist School of Poetry and Maxism
Unit 2 Anglo-American New Criticism
1 Tradition and the Individual
2 The Intentional Fallacy
3 The Affective Fallacy
4 Irony as a Principle of Structure
5 Tension in Poetry
Unit 3 Marxist Criticism
1 Literature and History
2 Critical Realism and Socialist Realism
3 Determination
4 Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act
5 The Prison-House of Language
Unit 4 Psychoanalytical Criticism
1 The Structrues of the Mind
2 The Oedipus Complex
3 The Interpretation of Dreams
4 Creative Writers and Daydreaming
5 Freud and Literature
6 The Mirror Stage
Unit 5 Myth and Archetypal Criticism
1 The Principal Archetypes
2 The Concept of the Collective Unconscious
3 The Archetypes of Literature
Unit 6 Structuralism
……
Unit 7 Reader Criticism
Unit 8 Deconstruction
Unit 9 Feminist Criticism
Unit 10 New Historicism
Unit 11 Post-Colonial Studies
Unit 12 Gender Studies
Unit 13 Cultural Studies