GREAT THEORIES IN LITERARY CRITICISM

by Ed. Backson ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

The only parrel one can have with Karl Beckson's collection is not what it includes, but what it excludes. Granted there are limitations both in space and editorial point of view, but can any ""great"" listing not offer in some shape, manner or form such influential continentals as Kant, lessing and Schopenhauer, or for that matter, not at least take note of such crucial 20th century revolutionaries as Eliot, Hulme, and the NRF boys? That aside, however, Beckson's three-pronged introductions, embracing Antiquity, Humanism and Rationalism, and the 19th century Romantic movements, are all succinct, suave and judicial. And to have, mostly in , marvelous Ars Poetica, Longinus on the Sublime, and Sidney's pathbreaking Apology, along with more easy-to-come-by master builders such as Aristotle on Tragedy, Dryden on Dramatic Poesy, Jonson's Shakespeare essay, and classical moralism, and Coleridge's gilded speculations, plus the middle ground worth of Wordsworth's ""manifesto"", a spattering of Keats' letters and Arnold's critic as elder statesman stand all these make the book rich, reliable, and rewarding, perfect for popular campus consumption, for which it seems most decidedly intended.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Cudahy

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1962

Categories: NONFICTION