Author : Michael Gavin
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 131636884X
Total Pages : 229 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (163 download)
Book Synopsis The Invention of English Criticism by : Michael Gavin
Download or read book The Invention of English Criticism written by Michael Gavin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-05 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early literary criticism was undisciplined. Unlike the staid essays and monographs of later academic scholarship, English criticism first appeared in the contentious world of the London theater: dramatists and other poets argued about their craft in contending prefaces and dedications, and their disputes spilled into the public sphere in pamphlet wars, mock epics, lampoons, and even novels. Across these forms, criticism was personal, political, and unconcerned with analysis for its own sake. Yet this unruly discourse laid the groundwork both for modern literary criticism and for the discipline of literary studies. The Invention of English Criticism explores the earliest uses of criticism and the attempts by some to convert a field of literary debate into an archive of useful knowledge. Criticism's undisciplined past thus illuminates its contested, ambivalent, and never fully disciplined present.