Chart 1: Traditional Literary Criticism (Plato → F. R. Leavis)

Thinker / Writer	Period	Main Ideas / Focus	Major Contributions / Works
Plato	427–347 BCE	Literature as imitation (mimesis), moral and philosophical impact	Republic – critique of poetry and drama
Aristotle	384–322 BCE	Structured art, catharsis, tragedy, plot, character	Poetics
Sir Philip Sidney	1554–1586	Defense of poetry, moral purpose, imaginative creation	An Apology for Poetry
John Dryden	1631–1700	Neoclassical principles, decorum, wit, literary rules	Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Alexander Pope	1688–1744	Didactic poetry, universal truths, satire	An Essay on Criticism
Samuel Johnson	1709–1784	Moral and aesthetic judgment, diction, lexicography	Preface to Shakespeare, Dictionary of the English Language
Coleridge	1772–1834	Imagination, organic form, supernatural, theory of poetry	Biographia Literaria
William Wordsworth	1770–1850	Romantic emphasis on emotion, nature, and simplicity	Preface to Lyrical Ballads
Percy Bysshe Shelley	1792–1822	Poetic imagination as moral force, revolutionary ideals	A Defence of Poetry
John Keats	1795–1821	Negative capability, sensuous imagination, aesthetic experience	Letters, poems (Ode on a Grecian Urn)
Matthew Arnold	1822–1888	Culture, criticism as moral and intellectual guidance	The Study of Poetry
T. S. Eliot	1888–1965	Tradition and individual talent, impersonal criticism	The Sacred Wood
F. R. Leavis	1895–1978	Moral seriousness, cultural criticism, literary judgment

Chart 2: Modern Literary Theories (Structuralism → Postmodernism and Beyond)

Theory / School	Period	Main Ideas / Focus	Key Thinkers / Works
Formalism / Russian Formalism	1910s–1930s	Defamiliarization, literariness, autonomous text	Viktor Shklovsky (Art as Technique), Roman Jakobson
New Criticism	1930s–1960s	Close reading, text-centered, intentional fallacy	Cleanth Brooks (The Well Wrought Urn), W. K. Wimsatt
Structuralism	1950s–1970s	Language as system, narrative structures, binary oppositions	Claude Lévi-Strauss (Mythologiques), Roland Barthes (Elements of Semiology)
Post-Structuralism / Deconstruction	1960s–1980s	Indeterminacy, textual instability, différance	Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology), Roland Barthes (Death of the Author)
Psychoanalytic Criticism	20th century	Subconscious, desire, repression, symbolic analysis	Sigmund Freud (Interpretation of Dreams), Jacques Lacan
Marxist Criticism	20th century	Literature and ideology, class struggle, materialist approach	Karl Marx (The German Ideology), Terry Eagleton (Literary Theory)
Feminist Criticism	1960s–present	Gender, patriarchy, representation, identity	Elaine Showalter (A Literature of Their Own), Simone de Beauvoir
Postcolonial Criticism	1970s–present	Colonial legacy, cultural identity, hybridity	Edward Said (Orientalism), Gayatri Spivak
Reader-Response Criticism	1960s–present	Meaning arises from reader interpretation	Stanley Fish (Is There a Text in This Class?)
New Historicism	1980s–present	Texts in cultural and historical context, power/knowledge	Stephen Greenblatt (Renaissance Self-Fashioning)
Postmodernism / Meta-Criticism	1970s–present	Skepticism toward grand narratives, intertextuality, play of meaning	Jean-François Lyotard (The Postmodern Condition), Fredric Jameson
Cultural Studies / Interdisciplinary Approaches	1980s–present	Popular culture, ideology, media, society	Stuart Hall, Raymond Williams