Contents -- Preface -- 1. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839±1914) and Semiotics -- 2. The New Criticism -- 3. The Chicago School -- 4. Northrop Frye (1912±1991) -- 5. The Encounter with Structuralism and the Invention of Poststructuralism -- 6. Reception Theory and Reader-Response: Norman Holland (1927±), Stanley Fish (1938±) and David Bleich (1940±) -- 7. The Yale Critics? J. Hillis Miller (1928±), Geoffrey Hartman (1929±), Harold Bloom (1930±), Paul de Man (1919±1983) -- 8. Deconstruction in America -- 9. Fredric Jameson (1934±) and Marxist Literary and Cultural Criticism -- 10. Edward W. Said (1935±2003) -- 11. American Feminisms: Images of Women and Gynocriticism -- 12. Feminisms in the 1980s and 1990s: The Encounter with Poststructuralism and Gender Studies -- 13. Psychoanalysis and Literary Criticism -- 14. Feminists of Colour -- 15. Stephen Greenblatt (1943±) and the New Historicism -- 16. Lesbian and Gay Studies/Queer Theory -- 17. Postcolonial Studies -- 18. Cultural Studies and Multiculturalism -- 19. African-American Studies -- 20. Chicano/a Literature -- 21. Film Studies -- 22. Feminist Film Studies and Film Theory -- 23. Ethical Criticism -- 24. Postmodernism -- 25. The Role of Journals in Theoretical Debate -- 26. Whiteness Studies -- 27. Masculinity and Cultural Studies -- 28. Comics Studies -- 29. Anglophone Canadian Literary Studies -- 30. Francophone Canadian Literature -- Contributors -- Index.