Description
This is the first history of English criticism by a British scholar since Saintsbury’s, which is now over fifty years old. It is also highly original in approach. The author, who is a Cambridge lecturer in English, sees the development of criticism as a dynamic and uneven process. He dissociates himself from what he calls the ‘Tidy School’ of critical historians, which takes for granted a steady evolution of doctrine. Instead he traces a pattern broken up by sudden disturbances. The great critics refuse to accept obsolescent critical assumptions: they interrupt the commonplace literary debates of the day with their forcefully new ideas.
The Literary Critics forms a detailed illustration and development of this theme. It deals with English descriptive criticism – the analysis of literary works – from its origins in Dryden through the writings of the Augustans, Johnson, the Romantic critics, Arnold, and Henry James, to T. S. Elliot and the contemporary scene. The book’s fresh approach to a valuable aspect of literary studies makes it equally stimulating for the student or layman.
First Edition Paperback, 249 pages. In very good preloved condition with the exception of minor age related colour change to pages, a blue ink mark to front cover and a crease on the back cover.