Presented here are selected critical essays from five volumes of the Poetik und Hermeneutik series published in Germany by the Wilhelm Fink Verlag of Munich. These essays represent some of the newest and most advanced thinking of fifteen leading scholars in the German-American interdisciplinary school of literary criticism. Until now no single volume has provided such an extensive contemporary treatment of literatures, problems, and methodologies representative of European criticism. The book's significance rests in the potential this new interdisciplinary criticism has for increasing the interplay between the two major critical movements of our day, namely, the objective, pragmatic Anglo-American criticism and the more subjective, phenomenological Continental criticism. Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.