Literary Criticism: A New History - Softcover

Gary Day

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0748641424 ISBN 13: 9780748641420

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press, 2010

Synopsis

A THE Book of the Week How many people know that Aristotle thought the best tragedies were those which ended happily? Or that the first mention of the motor car in literature may have been in 1791 in Boswell's Life of Johnson? Or that it was not unknown in the nineteenth century for book reviews to be 30,000 words long! These are just a few of the fascinating facts to be found in this absorbing history of literary criticism. From the Ancient Greek period to the present day we learn about critics' lives, the times in which they lived and how the same problems of interpretation and valuation persist through the ages.

About this title

Product Description

An incisive, informative history of literary criticism from the Ancient Greek period to the present day.

Review

Day is exuberantly readable; his synthetic competence seems informed by the skills of a good teacher... He is impatient with designer theory, and his lightness of touch is heroic in the presence of hugely intractable and diverse material from the past. With these qualities he has constructed a book that will appeal to students and scholars alike, one that will make much visible that was previously shrouded in the occult art of telling the truth about the critical past -- as far as such truth can be told. --Philip Smallwood Times Higher Education

Literary Criticism is remarkably extensive in terms of its range... [It] makes the convincing case that the co-existing tendencies of rhetoric and grammar serve to structure the whole field of literary criticism. --18/1 Literature and History

Gary Day has made a thought-provoking and highly readable contribution to one of the most difficult categories of critical writing: a history of literary criticism... Day's personalised 'take' on the subject is highly instructive. For instance, the author embeds within his narrative the grand narratives of Darwinism, the rise of Protestantism, and the like, in order to draw out various attempts at the shaping of literary criticism in its social and intellectual contexts rather than to contain them... There is a great treasure trove of curiosities here, economically expressed, which really adds to the great pleasure of reading this book... A book lover's joy. --Daniel Cook Cambridge Quarterly

About this edition

• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0748641424
• ISBN 13: 9780748641420
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256