The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: Volume 7, Modernism and the New Criticism

A comprehensive overview of the modern critical tradition in the early twentieth century, first published in 2000.

A. Walton Litz (Edited by), Louis Menand (Edited by), Lawrence Rainey (Edited by)

9780521317238, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 July 2006

576 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 3 cm, 0.76 kg

'Its twenty chapters, written by a distinguished team of contributors, cover most of the peaks and a few of the valleys of Anglo-American criticism between, approximately, 1910 and 1960 … This volume provides some wonderful instances of what being 'intelligent' about literature can be like.' The Times Literary Supplement

This volume of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, first published in 2000, provides a thorough account of the critical tradition emerging with the modernist and avant-garde writers of the early twentieth century (Eliot, Pound, Stein, Yeats), continuing with the New Critics (Richards, Empson, Burke, Winters), and feeding into the influential work of Leavis, Trilling and others who helped form the modern institutions of literary culture. The core period covered is 1910–60, but explicit connections are made with nineteenth-century traditions and there is discussion of the implications of modernism and the New Criticism for our own time, with its inherited formalism, anti-sentimentalism, and astringency of tone. The book provides a companion to the other twentieth-century volumes of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, and offers a systematic and stimulating coverage of the development of the key literary-critical movements, with chapters on groups and genres as well as on individual critics.

Introduction Louis Menand and Lawrence Rainey
Part I. The Modernists: 1. T. S. Eliot Louis Menand
2. Ezra Pound A. Walton Litz and Lawrence Rainey
3. Gertrude Stein Steven Meyer
4. Virginia Woolf Maria di Battista
5. Wyndham Lewis Vincent Sherry
6. W. B. Yeats Lucy McDiarmid
7. The Harlem renaissance Michael North
Part II. The New Critics: 8. I. A. Richards Paul H. Fry
9. The Southern New Critics Mark Jancovitch
10. William Empson Michael Wood
11. R. P. Blackmur Michael Wood
12. Kenneth Burke Eugene Goodheart
13. Yvor Winters Donald Davie
Part III. The Critic and The Institutions of Culture: 14. Criticism and the Academy Wallace Martin
15. The critic and society, 1900–50 Morris Dickstein
16. The British 'man of letters' and the rise of the professional Josephine M. Guy and Ian Small
17. F. R. Leavis Michael Bell
18. Lionel Trilling Harvey Teres
19. Poet-critics Lawrence Lipking
20. Criticism of fiction Michael Levenson
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literature: history & criticism [DS]