A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present

This comprehensive guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day provides an authoritative overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, as well as surveying their cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts. Supplies the cultural, historical and philosophical background to the literary criticism of each era Enables students to see the development of literary criticism in context Organised chronologically, from classical literary criticism through to deconstruction Considers a wide range of thinkers and events from the French Revolution to Freud’s views on civilization Can be used alongside any anthology of literary criticism or as a coherent stand-alone introduction

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments viii Abbreviations of Frequently Cited Works ix Introduction 1 Part I Ancient Greek Criticism 7 Classical Literary Criticism: Intellectual and Political Backgrounds 9 1 Plato (428–ca. 347 bc) 19 2 Aristotle (384–322 bc) 41 Part II The Traditions of Rhetoric 63 3 Greek Rhetoric 65 Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle 4 The Hellenistic Period and Roman Rhetoric 80 Rhetorica, Cicero, Quintilian Part III Greek and Latin Criticism During the Roman Empire 103 5 Horace (65–8 bc) 105 6 Longinus (First Century ad) 118 7 Neo-Platonism 129 Plotinus, Macrobius, Boethius Part IV The Medieval Era 149 8 The Early Middle Ages 151 St. Augustine 9 The Later Middle Ages 166 Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), St. Thomas Aquinas 10 Transitions: Medieval Humanism 215 Giovanni Boccaccio, Christine de Pisan Part V The Early Modern Period to the Enlightenment 227 11 The Early Modern Period 229 Giambattista Giraldi, Lodovico Castelvetro, Giacopo Mazzoni, Torquato Tasso, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Sir Philip Sidney, George Gascoigne, George Puttenham 12 Neoclassical Literary Criticism 273 Pierre Corneille, Nicolas Boileau, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Samuel Johnson 13 The Enlightenment 311 John Locke, Joseph Addison, Giambattista Vico, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft Part VI The Earlier Nineteenth Century and Romanticism 347 Introduction to the Modern Period 349 14 The Kantian System and Kant’s Aesthetics 357 15 G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) 382 16 Romanticism (I): Germany and France 408 Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Germaine de Staël 17 Romanticism (II): England and America 428 William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan Poe Part VII The Later Nineteenth Century 467 18 Realism and Naturalism 469 George Eliot, Émile Zola, William Dean Howells, Henry James 19 Symbolism and Aestheticism 489 Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde 20 The Heterological Thinkers 502 Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Matthew Arnold 21 Marxism 527 Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, György Lukács, Terry Eagleton Part VIII The Twentieth Century 555 The Twentieth Century: Backgrounds and Perspectives 557 22 Psychoanalytic Criticism 571 Freud and Lacan 23 Formalisms 602 Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson, John Crowe Ransom, William K. Wimsatt, Monroe C. Beardsley, T. S. Eliot 24 Structuralism 631 Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes 25 Deconstruction 649 Jacques Derrida 26 Feminist Criticism 667 Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Michèle Barrett, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous 27 Reader-Response and Reception Theory 708 Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish 28 Postcolonial Criticism 737 Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. 29 New Historicism 760 Stephen Greenblatt, Michel Foucault Epilogue 772 Selective Bibliography 777 Index 791

About the Author :
M.A.R. Habib is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. He received his D.Phil. in English from Oxford University, and is the author of five books, including Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History (Blackwell, 2007).

Review :
Winner of a 2006 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award “[A] magnificently comprehensive history of literary criticism. Authoritative, formidable, generous and compassionate … Habib's achievements are many, but two stand out. The first is the putting of theory into historical perspective and the second is to make connections between criticism and philosophy.” Times Higher Education Supplement "This is a book to be read cover to cover, and those who undertake that happy task will be better informed. They will understand the twin pillars of Western civilization, Hellenism and the Judaic Christian ethic. They will understand the intersections of philosophy, literature, and religion. They will understand Plato, Aristotle, the Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the three great thinkers who forever shifted thought at the beginning of the 20th century: Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Dividing the discussion into eight chronological sections, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Habib (English, Rutgers Univ.) discusses each period in detail, exploring major critical figures and their works in a way that illuminates, rather than exhausts, the issues they are concerned with. His explorations entice one to read more, and that is the best kind of criticism. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels." CHOICE "Philosophically sophisticated and full of fascinating connections and distinctions ...a monumental achievement." Ron Bush, University of Oxford “Rafey Habib's History of Literary Criticism, with its substantial grounding in classical texts and its excellent coverage of contemporary criticism and theory, is certain to be as highly regarded as Wimsatt and Brooks' Literary Criticism: A Short History. Habib's lucidity and wit will also make his book highly teachable.” Michael Payne, Bucknell University "This huge undertaking offers a comprehensive, expository and lucid account - including close readings of selected formative texts - of the history of literary criticism and theory from the earliest western classics to influential contemporary movements, while also embedding these in their broader social, cultural and philosophical contexts. A major resource - as narrative or as compendium - for students at all levels." Peter Widdowson, University of Gloucestershire "Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, Habib traces how the study of literature evolved in the West. His strength lies in his short segments, which allow readers to absorb the major thoughts of the critics and movements without being overwhelmed. While the book runs nearly 900 pages, it is easy to maneuver. All told, Habib delivers an accessible yet scholarly survey of literary criticism." Ron Ratliff, Kansas State University “A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present by M. A. R. Habib is a useful introduction and quick reference … The attention to each writer and their major works is significant and detailed, with major historical interpretive shifts noted.” Studies in English Literature 1500 - 1900 “Best single-volume introduction to Western literary theory … .With its admirably clear explanation of concepts and terminology, [it] admirably fulfils the promise of its title.” Literary Research Guide"Habib's survey of literary theory and criticism is serious, ambitious, informative and intellectually challenging." Bryn Mawr Classical Review