The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism
$75.00
USDThis 1999 volume was the first to explore as part of an unbroken continuum the critical legacy both of the humanist rediscovery of ancient learning and of its neoclassical reformulation. Focused on what is arguably the most complex phase in the transmission of the Western literary-critical heritage, the book encompasses those issues that helped shape the way European writers thought about literature from the late Middle Ages to the late seventeenth century. These issues touched almost every facet of Western intellectual endeavour, as well as the historical, cultural, social, scientific, and technological contexts in which that activity evolved. From the interpretative reassessment of the major ancient poetic texts, this volume addresses the emergence of the literary critic in Europe by exploring poetics, prose fiction, contexts of criticism, neoclassicism, and national developments. Sixty-one chapters by internationally respected scholars are supported by an introduction, detailed bibliographies for further investigation and a full index.
- The first comprehensive treatment of the history of literary criticism from c. 1490 to c. 1690
- Makes accessible for the first time the whole complex range of issues that helped define how literary works were described and put together during the early modern period
- Contains a full list of primary texts and secondary sources as a guide for more specialised inquiry into the individual topics
Reviews & endorsements
"A very distinguished crew of experts offers a survey of both literary theory and critical practice <
"[This volume]...is informative, intelligent, and, in places, exciting to read. It will serve generations of scholars and students of the Renaissance exceedingly well." Sixteenth Century Journal
Product details
July 2006Paperback
9780521317191
786 pages
225 × 157 × 39 mm
1.05kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Part I. Reading and Interpretation: An Emerging Discourse of Poetics:
- 1. Theories of language
- 2. Renaissance exegesis
- 3. Evangelism and Erasmus
- 4. The assimilation of Aristotle's Poetics in sixteenth-century Italy
- 5. Horace in the sixteenth century: commentators into critics
- 6. Cicero and Quintilian
- Part II. Poetics:
- 7. Humanist classifications of poetry among the arts and sciences
- 8. Theories of poetry: Latin writers
- 9. Literary imitation in the sixteenth century: writers and readers, Latin and French
- 10. Petrarchan poetics
- 11. Translatio and translation in the Renaissance: from France to Italy
- 12. Invention
- 13. Humanist education
- 14. Second rhetoric and the grands rhetoriqueurs
- 15. The rhetoric of presence: art, literature, and illusion
- 16. The paradoxical sisterhood: 'ut pictura poesis'
- 17. Conceptions of style
- 18. Sir Philip Sidney's An apology for poetry
- 19. Aristotle, Horace, and Longinus: the conception of reader response
- 20. Italian epic theory
- 21. The lyric
- 22. Renaissance theatre and the theory of tragedy
- 23. Elizabethan theatrical genres and literary theory
- 24. Defining comedy in the seventeenth century: moral sense and theatrical sensibility
- 25. Dialogue and discussion in the Renaissance
- 26. The essay as criticism
- 27. The genres of epigram and emblem
- 28. Humour and satire in the Renaissance
- Part III. Theories of Prose Fiction:
- 29. Theories of prose fiction in England:
- 1558–1700
- 30. Theories of prose fiction in sixteenth-century France
- 31. Seventeenth-century theories of the novel in France: writing and reading the truth
- 32. Theories of prose fiction and poetics in Italy: novella and romanzo (1525–96)
- Part IV. Contexts of Criticism:
- 33. Criticism and the metropolis: Tudor-Stuart London
- 34. Criticism in the city: Lyons and Paris
- 35. Culture, imperialism, and humanist criticism in the Italian city-states
- 36. German-speaking centres and institutions
- 37. Courts and patronage
- 38. Rooms of their own: literary salons in seventeenth-century France
- 39. Renaissance printing and the book trade
- Part V. Voices of Dissent:
- 40. The Ciceronian controversy
- 41. Reorganizing the encyclopedia: Vives and Ramus on Aristotle and the scholastics
- 42. The rise of the vernaculars
- 43. Ancients and Moderns: France
- 44. Women as auctores in early modern Europe
- Part VI. Structures of Thought:
- 45. Renaissance Neoplatonism
- 46. Cosmography and poetics
- 47. Natural philosophy and the 'new science'
- 48. Stoicism and Epicureanism: philosophical revival and literary repercussions
- 49. Calvinism and post-Tridentine developments
- 50. Port-Royal and Jansenism
- Part VII. Neoclassical Issues - Beauty, Judgement, Persuasion, Polemics:
- 51. Combative criticism: Jonson, Milton, and classical literary criticism in England
- 52. The rhetorical ideal in seventeenth-century France
- 53. Cartesian aesthetics
- 54. Principles of judgement: probability, decorum, taste, and the je ne sais quoi
- 55. Longinus and the Sublime
- Part VIII. Survey of National Developments:
- 56. Seventeenth-century English literary criticism: classical values, Engish texts and contents
- 57. French criticism in the seventeenth century
- 58. Literary critical developments in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy
- 59. Cultural commentary in seventeenth-century Spain: literary theory and textual practice
- 60. The German-speaking countries
- 61. The Low Countries
- Bibliography
- Index.
