Forming the Critical Mind
Dryden to Coleridge
James Engell(Author)
Harvard University Press
Will be published approx. on 26. June 1989
Book
Hardback
336 pages
978-0-674-30943-2 (ISBN)
Description
James Engell has prepared the first broad treatment of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth century British criticism to appear in a generation, presenting the views of scores of writers on a variety of questions, many of which remain live issues today.
While offering major reevaluations of Dryden, Hume, and Johnson, Engell demonstrates that eighteenth-century criticism cannot be represented by just a few major critics or by generalizations about Augustan taste, neoclassical rules, or "common sense." He presents a complex and highly varied body of theoretical writing and practical application by dozens of critics including Rymer, Addison, Welsted, Ramsay, Hurd, Gerard, Newbery, Campbell, Blair, Beattie, Jeffrey, and Hazlitt. He also analyzes the continued relevance of their critical work, drawing connections with modern writers such as Eliot, Frye, Saussure, Barthes, Culler, Bakhtin, and Levi-Strauss.
Engell concludes with a stimulating essay on the nature and function of the critical process itself. For students and scholars conversant with modern critical theory, Forming the Critical Mind will offer some surprising and interesting comparisons.
While offering major reevaluations of Dryden, Hume, and Johnson, Engell demonstrates that eighteenth-century criticism cannot be represented by just a few major critics or by generalizations about Augustan taste, neoclassical rules, or "common sense." He presents a complex and highly varied body of theoretical writing and practical application by dozens of critics including Rymer, Addison, Welsted, Ramsay, Hurd, Gerard, Newbery, Campbell, Blair, Beattie, Jeffrey, and Hazlitt. He also analyzes the continued relevance of their critical work, drawing connections with modern writers such as Eliot, Frye, Saussure, Barthes, Culler, Bakhtin, and Levi-Strauss.
Engell concludes with a stimulating essay on the nature and function of the critical process itself. For students and scholars conversant with modern critical theory, Forming the Critical Mind will offer some surprising and interesting comparisons.
Reviews / Votes
This is a book of deep learning and bold generalization...the first detailed map of an enormous territory with all the main ranges, rivers, and tributary streams filled in. * Times Literary Supplement * This important book is concerned with an important subject, which it handles with authority, learning, and originality. * New York Review of Books * A learned and important book that treats, in more copious and wide-ranging detail than any other study now available, the evolution of a major idea in Western culture. * Keats-Shelley Journal * Engell brings the light of scholarship to the process by which the idea of 'imagination' replaced the Great Chain of Being as 'a force, an energy' ...A valuable, serious addition to the history of ideas. * Kirkus Reviews *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
none
Dimensions
Height: 238 mm
Width: 162 mm
Thickness: 36 mm
Weight
680 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-30943-2 (9780674309432)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
James Engell is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Harvard University and co-editor of the Bollingen edition of the Biographia Literaria for the Collected Works of Coleridge.
Content
Introduction: The Originating Force of Eighteenth-Century criticism PART 1: METAMORPHOSES 1. Practical Theorist: Dryden's "Variety of Models" 2. The Paradox of Refinement: Progress and Decline in Literature 3. "So Far Retir'd from Happy Pieties": The Rise of Modern Myth PART 2: JUDGEMENT AND VALUES, LITERARY AND SOCIAL 4. Non-Disputandum: Hume's Critique of Criticism 5. Estrangement: The Problem of Ethics and Aesthetics 6. Kinds, Canons, and Readers PART 3: METHODS AND AIMS 7. Johnson and the Contraries of Criticism 8. The New Rhetoricians: Semiotics, Theory, and Psychology 9. What is Poetry? Janus: Criticism and the Contemporary Notes Index