The Invention of English Criticism
eBook - PDF

The Invention of English Criticism

1650–1760

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

The Invention of English Criticism

1650–1760

About this book

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.

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Yes, you can access The Invention of English Criticism by Michael Gavin in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Literature & English Literary Criticism. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half-title
  3. Title page
  4. Copyright information
  5. Table of contents
  6. Acknowledgments
  7. Introduction: the textualization of judgment
  8. Chapter 1 Criticism and the institutions of drama, 1645-1675
  9. Chapter 2 Politics of Parnassus
  10. Chapter 3 Women among critics
  11. Chapter 4 Criticism and the poetry of Anne Finch
  12. Chapter 5 Disciplining the dunces: literary knowledge in The Dunciad Variorum
  13. Chapter 6 Boswell & Co.: conversation and criticism in the age of print
  14. Notes
  15. Bibliography
  16. Index