More comprehensive and up-to-date than ever before The gold standard anthology for anyone who wants to understand the development and current state of literary theory. Offering 191 pieces by 157 authors, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Third Edition, is more comprehensive and more varied in its selection than any other anthology. Forty-eight NEW selections–concentrated mostly on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries–make the book not only the best overview of the history of theory, but also a remarkably up-to-date portrait of the state of theory today.

The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism presents a staggeringly varied collection of the most influential critical statements from the classical era to the present day. Edited by scholars and teachers whose interests range from the history of poetics to postmodernism, from classical rhetoric to eriture feminine, and from the social construction of gender to the machinery of academic superstardom, The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism promises to become the standard anthology in its field.