With emphasis on the theoretical and methodological, the studies collected here serve a dual purpose: to explore the fault lines that mark various kinds of ahistorical literary studies from New Criticism to Poststructuralism; and to develop a fully elaborated socio-historical criticism for literary works. McGann moves toward his goal by means of four special sets of investigations: the relation between the so-called "autonomous" poem and its political/historical contexts; the relation of reception and history to literary interpretation; the problems of canon and the characterization of period; and the ideological dimensions of both literary works and criticism of such works. Central to his enquiry is the notion that, whether viewed as an experience or as an event, a literary work is a nexus of various concrete social determinations that can be specified as an aesthetic order.