Modern European Criticism and Theory offers the reader a comprehensive critical overview of the widespread and profound contest of ideas within European ‘theory’. The book focuses primarily on the thought of major voices in poetics, philosophy, linguistics, and psychoanalysis, as well as in literary and cultural studies from the Enlightenment to the present day. Examining how conceptions of subjectivity, identity and gender have been questioned, the more than 50 essays written by acknowledged experts in their fields critically assess the ways in which we think, see, and act in the world, as well as the ways in which we represent such thought psychologically, politically, and culturally.A further reading list accompanies each chapter.Key Features* Breadth of coverage from Descartes and Spinoza to Derrida, Lyotard and Zizek; from Phenomenology to French Feminisms and Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism.* Focus on the history of modern criticism.* Accessibly written.* Theoretical debates are set in full historical, cultural and philosophical contexts. ; This volume offers the reader a comprehensive critical overview of the widespread and profound contest of ideas within European ‘theory’. ; Preface; 1. Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza: Beginnings, Warren Montag; 2. Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Jacques Lazra; 3. Johann Christian Friedrich Hölderlin, Véronique M. Fóti; 4. Karl Marx, Robert C. Holub; 5. Charles Baudelaire and Stéphane Mallarmé, Elizabeth Constable; 6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Robert C. Holub; 7. Sigmund Freud, Juliet Flower MacCannell; 8. Ferdinand de Saussure and Structural Linguistics, Kenneth Womack; 9. Edmund Husserl, Claire Colebrook; 10. Phenomenology, Ullrich Michael Haase; 11. Gaston Bachelard and George Canguilhem: Epistemology in France, Alison Ross and Amir Ahmadi; 12. Jean Paulhan and/versus Francis Ponge, Jan Baetens; 13. György Lukács, Mitchell R. Lewis; 14. Russian Formalism, the Moscow Linguistics Circle, and Prague Structuralism: Boris Eichenbaum, Jan Mukarovsky, Victor Shklovsky, Yuri Tynyanov, Roman Jakobson, Kenneth Womack; 15. Ludwig Wittgenstein, William Flesch; 16. Martin Heidegger, Claire Colebrook; 17. Antonio Gramsci, Stephen Shapiro; 18. Walter Benjamin, Jeremy Tambling; 19. Reception Theory: Roman Ingarden, Hans-Georg Gadamer and the Geneva School, Luke Ferretter; 20. The Frankfurt School, the Marxist Tradition, Culture and Critical Thinking: Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Jürgen Habermas, Kenneth Surin; 21. Mikhail Bakhtin, R. Brandon Kershner; 22. Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, Arkady Plotnitsky; 23. Bertolt Brecht, Loren Kruger; 24. Jacques Lacan, Juliet Flower MacCannell; 25. The Reception of Hegel and Heidegger in France: Alexandre Kojève, John Hyppolite, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean Michel Rabaté; 26. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Existentialism, Mark Currie; 27. Emmanuel Levinas, Kevin Hart; 28. Simone de Beauvoir and French Feminism, Karen Green; 29. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Boris Wiseman; 30. Jean Genet, Alain-Michel Rocheleau; 31. Paul Ricoeur, Martin McQuillan; 32. Roland Barthes, Nick Mansfield; 33. French Structuralism: A. J. Greimas, Tzvetan Todorov and Gérard Genette, Dirk de Geest; 34. Louis Althusser and his Circle, Warren Montag; 35. Reception Theory and Reader-Response: Hans-Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, and the School of Konstanz, Jeremy Lane; 36. Jean-François Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard: The Suspicion of Metanarratives, Garry Leonard; 37. The Social and the Cultural: Michel de Certeau, Pierre Bourdieu and Louis Marin, Brian Niro; 38. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Claire Colebrook; 39. Michel Foucault, John Brannigan; 40. Jacques Derrida, Kevin Hart; 41. Luce Irigaray, Ewa Ziarek; 42. Christian Metz, Marcia Butzel; 43. Guy Debord and the Situationist International, Lynn A. Higgins; 44. Umberto Eco, SunHee Kim Gertz; 45. Modernities: Paul Virilio, Gianni Vattimo, Giorgio Agamben, David Punter; 46. Hélène Cixous, Juliet Flower MacCannell; 47. Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, Heesok Chang; 48. Julia Kristeva, Joan Brandt; 49. Slavoj Zizek, Michael Walsh; 50. Cahiers du Cinéma, Maureen Turim; 51. Critical Fictions: Experiments in Writing from Le Noveau Roman to the Oulipo, Jean Baetens; 52. Tel Quel, Jean-Michel Rabaté; 53. Other French Feminisms: Sarah Kofman, Monique Wittig, Michèle Le Doeuff, Nicole Fluhr; 54. Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism in France, Nicholas T. Rand; Contributors; Index.