POETRY AND CRITICISM: Four Revolutions in Literary Taste

This is an academic and rather arbitrary discussion of poetry and criticism by a Professor at Bennington College. In these four essays, delivered originally as lectures at Wayne State University, Professor Hyman analyses, within a stiff framework, (""standard"" poetical works, subsequent ""poetics"" based upon them; ""challenge"" to the original work, and critical ""sanctions"" of this challenge) four periods of literature- the Greek, the Shakespearean, the Augustan with the following Romantic reaction, and the modern. It is as though he were following some Toynbeean formula of challenge and response. While it is undoubtedly true that literature swings from the extreme classic to the extreme romantic in a natural systole and diastole of correction, it is impossible to confine it in these exact bounds- and the attempt to do so is dogmatic and, in broader terms, unsatisfying.