Plato's discussion of his disdain for the poet and poetry in his work "The Republic" and Aristotle's counterargument found in his work "Poetics" are the stepping stones of literary criticism. Both men noted the power of poetry, but they argued over whether it was socially responsible or harmful. Aristotle's work is seen as some of the first literary criticism because it also deals with cataloging and identifying different types of poetry, the elements within them, and their effects. Other noted ancient critics include Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian.
The Medieval period had little to offer the history of literary criticism. The expansion of Christianity and the disdain for the ancient world meant the only sources available at the time were considered pagan and largely ignored. All criticism done at the time could only be analyzed within the narrow scope of Christian theology.
During the Renaissance, the revival of the classical texts as well as the extensive translations done at the time and the extreme interest in literature in general served literary criticism well. The Italian- and French-centered Renaissance focused its expansion on literary criticism again on Aristotle's "Poetics," but the ideas eventually spread to England as well, where the first literary criticism was written in English by George Gascoigne.
The trend toward Neoclassicism that began in the Renaissance continued into the 17th and 18th centuries, when literary genres became distinct and strictly adhered to. This trend was broken, however, in England with the works of William Shakespeare, which did not always follow these strict neoclassicist guidelines. With the advent of the novel in the 18th century, neoclassicism was seeing its decline. The rise of nationalism as a critical trait also saw the beginning of a new age. Famous critics of the time were Diderot of France and Herder, Goethe, and Schiller of Germany.
The 19th century saw the rise of romanticism as the literary movement dismissed neoclassicism entirely for a new philosophy on literature closely tied to the philosophical transcendental movement. Goethe, con Schlegel, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Hugo, Manzon, Emerson, and Poe all are considered writers of the romantic era, who considered poetry a way of finding meaning in the world.
Literature in the late 19th century became a reaction to the romanticism of the first half of the century as writers began to favor realism at a time of industrial revolution and the rise of a new bourgeoisie. Literary criticism moved toward a strictly academic discipline, while intellectuals studied literature through the lenses of race, class, nationalism, and history.
Modern criticism expanded exponentially in the 20th century as schools of study continued to be born and writers as well as anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists all seemed to have a say in literary criticism. The wave of new criticism suggests that perhaps the 20th century went too far and literature should only be examined autonomously of these extraneous details.