The sixteen essays in this volume form a series of related focuses upon various levels and areas of literary criticism. W.K. Wimsatt's assumption is that practice and theory of both the past and the present are integrally related-that there is a continuity in the materials of criticism-that a person who studies poetry today has a critical concern, not merely a historical interest, in what Aristotle or Plato said about poetry. He regards the great perennial problems of criticism as arising not by the whim of a tolerantly pluralist choice, but from the nature of language and reality. With profound learning and insight, Wimsatt treats almost the whole range of literary criticism. The first group of essays deals with fallacies he believes are involved in prevalent approaches to the literary object. The next two groups face the responsibilities of the critic who defends literature as a form of knowledge; they treat various problems of structure and style. The last group undertakes to examine the relation of literature to other arts, the relation of evaluative criticism to historical studies, and the relation of literature not only to morals, but more broadly to the whole complex of the Christian religious tradition.

An evaluation of the importance of textual criticism in evaluation of important literary works, based on his study of important American literary works by authors such as James, Crane, and Mailer.

The last half of the twentieth century has seen the emergence of literary theory as a new discipline. As with any body of scholarship, various schools of thought exist, and sometimes conflict, within it. I.R. Makaryk has compiled a welcome guide to the field. Accessible and jargon-free, the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Literary Theory provides lucid, concise explanations of myriad approaches to literature that have arisen over the past forty years. Some 170 scholars from around the world have contributed their expertise to this volume. Their work is organized into three parts. In Part I, forty evaluative essays examine the historical and cultural context out of which new schools of and approaches to literature arose. The essays also discuss the uses and limitations of the various schools, and the key issues they address. Part II focuses on individual theorists. It provides a more detailed picture of the network of scholars not always easily pigeonholed into the categories of Part I. This second section analyses the individual achievements, as well as the influence, of specific scholars, and places them in a larger critical context. Part III deals with the vocabulary of literary theory. It identifies significant, complex terms, places them in context, and explains their origins and use. Accessibility is a key feature of the work. By avoiding jargon, providing mini-bibliographies, and cross-referencing throughout, Makaryk has provided an indispensable tool for literary theorists and historians and for all scholars and students of contemporary criticism and culture.

These ten essays, written over a period from 1950 to 1962, are bound together by their common concern with questions of the meaning of criticism and the larger meaning of literature itself. These difficult questions W.K. Wimsatt treats with characteristic wit and penetration, ranging easily from a broad consideration of principles to incisive comment on individual writers and works. The first part of the book is devoted to a discussion of literary theory. Wimsatt reviews the development of critical dialectic from the German romanticism of Schelling and the Schlegels to the mythopeic bravura of Northrop Frye. Himself a classical ironist, he nevertheless exposes here some of the extravagances of the ironic principle as flourished by the systematic Prometheans. The second and third parts contain essays on more particular topics: the meaning of "symbolism," Aristotle's doctrines of the tragic plot and catharsis, the theory of comic laughter, and the objective reading of English meters. Here too are extended comment on particular writers—a study of the imagination of James Boswell, an analysis of the comedy of T. S. Eliot in The Cocktail Party, and a contrast in the handling of similar themes by Tennyson and Eliot. The fourth part is a comprehensive statement of the demands and opportunities confronting the critic in his or her role as teacher.