Contents: 1. The evolution of aesthetics : the general version. 2. The theories of the Beauty and the beautiful. 3. Introduction to modern literary theory. 4. An introduction to modernism. 5. Modernism. 6. Modernism in literature : another perspective. 7. From modernism to postmodernism. 8. Some attributes of post-modernist literature. 9. Postmodern novel and meta-narratives. 10. The genealogy of postmodernism: contemporary American poetry. 11. Conventional approach to structuralism. 12. Elements of structuralism and its application to literary theory. 13. Structuralism and literary criticism. 14. Post structuralism. 15. Language and the sign in post-structuralism. 16. Semiotics and the science of literature/art. 17. Deconstruction : a preview. 18. From Stanford presidential lectures : Jacques Derrida and schools of definitions. 19. Issues of the deconstructors. 20. The TEXT and the LOGOS: language debate in Jacques Derrida's deconstruction. 21. Beyond deconstruction. 22. After deconstruction. 23. What deconstruction is not. 24. Feminism, ideology, and deconstruction: a pragmatist view. Bibliography.

"This book attempts to see through the definitions, judgments and the characteristic features of the literary theories and the critical schools of literature, offering special emphasis on the concepts of beauty, aesthetics, modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, meta-narrative, semiotics, deconstruction and on the philosophical psyche of criticism itself that have swept the critical consciousness of the 20 century. The work is patterned in to be elaborate and explicit enough so as to reach both the target readers-students, research scholars, teachers and the readers in general, not frequenters to this discipline." (jacket)