This companion to literary theory includes an introductory chapter providing an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism. From there, it includes separate chapters surveying theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century.

For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches. The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.