This anthology of critical writing (2624 pp. + XXXVIII) ranges from Gorgias and Plato to Sigmund Freud and Mikhail Bakhtin. Each of the 147 contributions has a headnote introducing the writer and making connections to other critics, theorists and movements. An introduction surveys the history of theory and criticism.
The turn toward "dis-course" and away from "literature" has led to a resurgence of cultural criticism, a mode of analysis revitalized and reformed by the arrival of "theory." Leitch illustrates the weak points of influential predecessors, showing how poststructuralism offers useful advances over reigning modes of critical inquiry.Leitch develops positions on key topics: social formations and cultural critique; authorship and intention; "poetic" discourse and the social text; literary genre and cultural convention; minority literatures and "general poetics"; textual theory and analysis; and poststructuralism. He draws on the work of Barthes, Deleuze, de Man, Derrida, Foucault, Jameson, Kristeva, Lentricchia, Lyotard, Said, and Scholes.