Literary theory : a guide for the perplexed

What is 'literary theory?'

Humanist literary theory : Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Francis Bacon, Joseph Addison, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Keats, Edgar Allan Poe, Matthew Arnold

Structuralism : Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss and 'the structural study of myth', Interlude: Humanism, Structuralism, Poststructuralism

Deconstruction : Binary opposition, The role of the center, Bricolage

Psychoanalysis : Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Interlude: 'self' to 'subject'

Feminism : 'Pre-poststructuralist' feminist literary theory, Poststructuralist feminist literary theory, Hélène Cixous and 'The laugh of the Medusa', Luce Irigaray and 'This sex which is not one'

Queer theory : Flexible sexuality?, Gay/lesbian studies, Interlude: history to historicism, Humanist history, New historicism

Ideology and discourse : Marxist theory: a few basics, Louis Althusser and ideology, Mikhail Bakhtin and 'Discourse in the novel', Michel Foucault: discourse, power/knowledge, and the author function

Race and Postcolonialism : Colonialism and 'English', Henry Louis Gates, Jr and 'The signifying monkey', Postcolonialism and Orientalism, Homi Bhaba and 'The location of culture', Gloria Anzaldúa and 'Borderlands/La frontera'

Postmodernism : Modernity, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Coda: what now?