Critics And Criticism Abridged Edition R S Crane by R. S. Crane instant download after payment.

THE eight essays in this volume were first assembled, along with a dozen

others, in Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern in 1952. Since then

that book has been frequently and even vigorously discussed by prominent

critics here and abroad. The discussion has often been conscientious; it has

shown how lively is the concern nowadays with questions of critical method;

and it has brought out many interesting points. Perhaps it would be ungrateful

to insist too strongly that not all of these are relevant to what the Chicago writers

were doing : yet a few matters ought to be set straight if the essays now

reprinted are to be read in the spirit in which they were written.

They were written at a time when controversy among literary theorists centered

chiefly on the "true" nature of poetry and the "proper" character of

criticism. It was therefore natural to ascribe to their writers these same interests

and to assume that they too were engaged in defending a single system of

literary aesthetics and critical procedure. It was easily possible, moreover, by

generalizing from one part of their writings, to discover what this alleged system

was; and so these critics have come to be referred to generally as "The

Chicago Neo-Aristotelians."