As should be evident from the focus of the two critical articles dealing with postmodern criticism and from the critics I selected to be included in the individual author entry section, I have tried to emphasize critical thought that shares features of postmodern thought rather than focusing on criticism that deals with postmodern fiction. Indeed, it seems evident to me that many of the same principles and tendencies that were shaping the direction of postmodern fiction are central to the development of the most important critical schools of the past 25 years: structuralism, deconstruction, and Marxistoriented criticism. (For a good overview of this interaction, see Charles Caramello's Silverless Mirrors: Book, Self & Postmodern American Fiction.) For example, the Marxist and structuralist emphasis on the constructedness of human meaning is similar to postmodern fiction's sense that reality is not given and that our way of perceiving it is hardly natural...