This is a list of important and seminal works in the field of critical theory. *

Otto Maria Carpeaux Otto Maria Carpeaux (March 9, 1900 – February 3, 1978), born Otto Karpfen, was an Austrian-born Brazilian literary critic and multilingual scholar. Career overview Carpeaux was born Otto Karpfen in 1900 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, to a Jewish f ...

** ''História da Literatura Ocidental'', 8 vol. (Portuguese, 1959–66) *

M. H. Abrams Meyer Howard Abrams (July 23, 1912 – April 21, 2015), usually cited as M. H. Abrams, was an American literary critic, known for works on romanticism, in particular his book ''The Mirror and the Lamp''. Under Abrams's editorship, ''The Norton An ...

** ''The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition'' *

Angela Davis Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, philosopher, academic, scholar, and author. She is a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. A feminist and a Marxist, Davis was a longtime member of ...

**'' Women, Race, and Class'' **'' Are Prison's Obsolete?'' *

Theodor Adorno Theodor is a masculine given name. It is a German form of Theodore. It is also a variant of Teodor. List of people with the given name Theodor * Theodor Adorno, (1903–1969), German philosopher * Theodor Aman, Romanian painter * Theodor Blue ...

** ''Aesthetic Theory'' ** ''Negative Dialectics'' *

Max Horkheimer Max Horkheimer (; ; 14 February 1895 – 7 July 1973) was a German philosopher and sociologist who was famous for his work in critical theory as a member of the Frankfurt School of social research. Horkheimer addressed authoritarianism, militari ...

** ''

Dialectic of Enlightenment ''Dialectic of Enlightenment'' (german: Dialektik der Aufklärung) is a work of philosophy and social criticism written by Frankfurt School philosophers Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno. The text, published in 1947, is a revised version of w ...

'' * Louis Althusser ** ''For Marx'' ** ''Lenin and Philosophy'' *

Erich Auerbach Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 – October 13, 1957) was a German philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is '' Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'', a history of repres ...

** '' Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature'' *

Mikhail Bakhtin Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin ( ; rus, Михаи́л Миха́йлович Бахти́н, , mʲɪxɐˈil mʲɪˈxajləvʲɪdʑ bɐxˈtʲin; – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary critic and scholar who worked on literary theor ...

** ''Discourse in the Novel'' ** ''

Rabelais and his World ''Rabelais and His World'' (Russian: Творчество Франсуа Рабле и народная культура средневековья и Ренессанса, ''Tvorčestvo Fransua Rable i narodnaja kul'tura srednevekov'ja i Renessan ...

'' *

Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...

** ''Image, Music, Text'' ** ''

Mkk Mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (also known as MAP2K, MEK, MAPKK) is a dual-specificity kinase enzyme which phosphorylates mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK). MAP2K is classified as . There are seven genes: * (a.k.a. MEK1) * (a. ...

'' *

Jean Baudrillard Jean Baudrillard ( , , ; 27 July 1929 – 6 March 2007) was a French sociologist, philosopher and poet with interest in cultural studies. He is best known for his analyses of media, contemporary culture, and technological communication, as ...

**''The Perfect Crime'' ** ''Simulation and Simulacra'' *

Walter Benjamin Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (; ; 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist. An eclectic thinker, combining elements of German idealism, Romanticism, Western Marxism, and Jewish ...

** ''Illuminations'' **

The Origin of German Tragic Drama ''The Origin of German Tragic Drama'' (german: Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels) was the postdoctoral major academic work (habilitation) submitted by Walter Benjamin to the University of Frankfurt in 1925, and not published until 1928.''Intro ...

Homi K. Bhabha Homi Kharshedji Bhabha (; born 1 November 1949) is an Indian-British scholar and critical theorist. He is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary post ...

** ''The Location of Culture'' *

Pierre Bourdieu Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence ...

** '' La distinction'' *

Kenneth Burke Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory. As a literary theorist, Burk ...

** ''A Rhetoric of Motives'' ** ''A Grammar of Motives'' * John Brannigan ** ''New Historicism and Cultural Materialism'' *

Cleanth Brooks Cleanth Brooks ( ; October 16, 1906 – May 10, 1994) was an American literary critic and professor. He is best known for his contributions to New Criticism in the mid-20th century and for revolutionizing the teaching of poetry in American higher ...

** ''The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry'' *

Sean Burke Sean Burke (born January 29, 1967) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey goaltender and the current director of goaltending for the Vegas Golden Knights. He played 18 seasons in the National Hockey League (NHL) for the New Jersey Devils, H ...

** ''The Death and Return of the Author'' * Judith Butler ** ''Bodies That Matter'' ** ''Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity'' * Cathy Caruth ** ''Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History'' *

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Samuel Taylor Coleridge (; 21 October 177225 July 1834) was an English poet, literary critic, philosopher, and theologian who, with his friend William Wordsworth, was a founder of the Romantic Movement in England and a member of the Lake ...

**''Biographia Literaria'' * Jonathan Culler ** ''Structuralist Poetics'' ** ''The Pursuit of Signs'' ** ''Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction'' * Gilles Deleuze ** ''Difference and Repetition'' * Gilles Deleuze and

Félix Guattari Pierre-Félix Guattari ( , ; 30 April 1930 – 29 August 1992) was a French psychoanalyst, political philosopher, semiotician, social activist, and screenwriter. He co-founded schizoanalysis with Gilles Deleuze, and ecosophy with Arne Næs ...

** ''Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Anti-Oedipus'' (pt.1) and ''A Thousand Plateaus'' (pt.2) * Jacques Derrida ** '' Of Grammatology'' ** ''Writing and Difference'' * Peter Dews ** ''The Limits of Disenchantment'' ** ''The Logic of Disintigration'' *

Terry Eagleton Terence Francis Eagleton (born 22 February 1943) is an English literary theorist, critic, and public intellectual. He is currently Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University. Eagleton has published over forty books, ...

** ''Marxism and Literary Criticism'' ** ''The Idea of Culture'' * Antony Easthope ** ''The Unconscious'' *

William Empson Sir William Empson (27 September 1906 – 15 April 1984) was an English literary critic and poet, widely influential for his practice of closely reading literary works, a practice fundamental to New Criticism. His best-known work is his first ...

** ''Seven Types of Ambiguity'' ** ''Some Versions of Pastoral'' ** ''The Structure of Complex Words'' *

Norman Fairclough Norman Fairclough (; born 1941) is an emeritus Professor of Linguistics at Department of Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. He is one of the founders of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as applied to sociolinguistics. CDA ...

**''Language and Power'' **''Critical Discourse Analysis'' *

Frantz Fanon Frantz Omar Fanon (, ; ; 20 July 1925 – 6 December 1961), also known as Ibrahim Frantz Fanon, was a French West Indian psychiatrist, and political philosopher from the French colony of Martinique (today a French department). His works have b ...

** ''Black Skins, White Masks'' *

Stanley Fish Stanley Eugene Fish (born April 19, 1938) is an American literary theorist, legal scholar, author and public intellectual. He is currently the Floersheimer Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo Sc ...

** ''Is There a Text in this Class?'' *

Northrop Frye Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century. Frye gained international fame with his first book, '' Fearful Symm ...

** ''

Anatomy of Criticism ''Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays'' (Princeton University Press, 1957) is a book by Canadian literary critic and theorist Northrop Frye that attempts to formulate an overall view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary cr ...

'' *

Gerald Graff Gerald Graff (born 1937) is a professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1959 and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford Univers ...

** ''Literature Against Itself'' * Jürgen Habermas ** ''Legitimation Crisis'' ** ''The Theory of Communicative Action, volumes 1 & 2 ** ''The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity'' * Wolfgang Iser ** ''The Act of Reading: a Theory of Aesthetic Response'' *

Leonard Jackson Leonard Jackson (8 April 1848 – 21 March 1887) was an English cricketer who played for Derbyshire from 1877 to 1882. Jackson was born at Holme Hurst in Norton Woodseats, on the border of Yorkshire and Derbyshire. He first played cricket ...

** ''The Poverty of Structuralism'' *

Fredric Jameson Fredric Jameson (born April 14, 1934) is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jam ...

** ''The Political Unconscious'' ** ''

Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism ''Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism'' is a 1991 book by Fredric Jameson, in which the author offers a critique of modernism and postmodernism from a Marxist perspective. The book began as a 1984 article in the ''New Left Re ...

'' ** ''The Prison-House of Language'' *

Frank Kermode Sir John Frank Kermode, FBA (29 November 1919 – 17 August 2010) was a British literary critic best known for his 1967 work '' The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction'' and for his extensive book-reviewing and editing. He was ...

** ''Romantic Image'' * Julia Kristeva ** ''Desire in Language'' ** ''Powers of Horror'' * Jacques Lacan ** ''Ecrits'' ** The Seminars *

F.R. Leavis Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis (14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York. Leavis ra ...

** ''The Great Tradition'' * Ania Loomba ** ''Colonialism/Postcolonialism'' * Herbert Marcuse ** ''Reason and Revolution. Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory'' ** ''

Eros and Civilization ''Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud'' (1955; second edition, 1966) is a book by the German philosopher and social critic Herbert Marcuse, in which the author proposes a non-repressive society, attempts a synthesis of the t ...

'' ** ''Soviet Marxism. A Critical Analysis'' ** ''

One-Dimensional Man ''One-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society'' is a 1964 book by the philosopher and critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, in which the author offers a wide-ranging critique of both contemporary capitalism and the ...

'' *

Toril Moi Toril Moi (born 28 November 1953 in Farsund, Norway) is James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies and Professor of English, Philosophy and Theatre Studies at Duke University. Moi is also the Director of the Center for Philosophy, ...

** ''Sexual/Textual Politics'' * I.A. Richards ** ''Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgement'' ** ''Principles of Literary Criticism'' * K.K. Ruthven ** ''Critical Assumptions'' *

Edward Said Edward Wadie Said (; , ; 1 November 1935 – 24 September 2003) was a Palestinian-American professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies.Robert Young, ''Whit ...

** ''Culture and Imperialism'' ** '' Orientalism'' (1978) *

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was one of the key figures in the philosophy of existentialism (and phenomenology), a French playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and lit ...

** '' What Is Literature?'' (1947) * Ferdinand de Saussure ** ''Cours de linguistique générale'' (posthumously 1916) * Alfred Schmidt ** ''

The Concept of Nature in Marx ''The Concept of Nature in Marx'' (german: Der Begriff der Natur in der Lehre von Marx) is a 1962 book by the philosopher Alfred Schmidt. First published in English in 1971, it is a classic account of Karl Marx's ideas about nature. Summary T ...

'' (1962) ** ''Zur Idee der Kritischen Theorie'' (German, 1974) * Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick ** ''Between Men'' ** ''Epistemology of the Closet'' * Susan Sontag ** ''Against Interpretation'' ** ''Styles of Radical Will'' ** ''Under the Sign of Saturn'' ** ''Where The Stress Falls'' * Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak ** "Can the Subaltern Speak?" ** ''In Other Worlds'' *

Raymond Tallis Raymond C. Tallis (born 10 October 1946) is a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic and a retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist. Specialising in geriatrics, Tallis served on several UK commissions on medical care of the ...

** ''Not Saussure'' * Scott Wilson ** ''Cultural Materialism'' * W.K. Wimsatt ** ''The Verbal Icon'' *

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

** ''A Room of One's Own'' * Slavoj Žižek ** ''

The Sublime Object of Ideology ''The Sublime Object of Ideology'' is a 1989 book by the Slovenian philosopher and cultural theorist Slavoj Žižek. The work is widely considered his masterpiece. Summary Žižek thematizes the Kantian notion of the sublime in order to liken i ...

'' ** ''The Ticklish Subject: The Absent Centre of Political Ontology''

See also