History of Literary Criticism

M.A.R. Habib is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. He received his D.Phil. in English from Oxford University, and is the author of five books, including Modern Literary Criticism and Theory: A History (Blackwell, 2007).

Winner of a 2006 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Award“[A] magnificently comprehensive history of literary criticism. Authoritative, formidable, generous and compassionate … Habib's achievements are many, but two stand out. The first is the putting of theory into historical perspective and the second is to make connections between criticism and philosophy.”Times Higher Education Supplement "This is a book to be read cover to cover, and those who undertake that happy task will be better informed. They will understand the twin pillars of Western civilization, Hellenism and the Judaic Christian ethic. They will understand the intersections of philosophy, literature, and religion. They will understand Plato, Aristotle, the Age of Enlightenment, Romanticism, and the three great thinkers who forever shifted thought at the beginning of the 20th century: Marx, Freud, and Darwin. Dividing the discussion into eight chronological sections, from ancient Greece to the 20th century, Habib (English, Rutgers Univ.) discusses each period in detail, exploring major critical figures and their works in a way that illuminates, rather than exhausts, the issues they are concerned with. His explorations entice one to read more, and that is the best kind of criticism. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all levels." CHOICE "Philosophically sophisticated and full of fascinating connections and distinctions ...a monumental achievement."Ron Bush, University of Oxford “Rafey Habib's History of Literary Criticism, with its substantial grounding in classical texts and its excellent coverage of contemporary criticism and theory, is certain to be as highly regarded as Wimsatt and Brooks' Literary Criticism: A Short History. Habib's lucidity and wit will also make his book highly teachable.”Michael Payne, Bucknell University "This huge undertaking offers a comprehensive, expository and lucid account - including close readings of selected formative texts - of the history of literary criticism and theory from the earliest western classics to influential contemporary movements, while also embedding these in their broader social, cultural and philosophical contexts. A major resource - as narrative or as compendium - for students at all levels."Peter Widdowson, University of Gloucestershire "Beginning with Plato and Aristotle, Habib traces how the study of literature evolved in the West. His strength lies in his short segments, which allow readers to absorb the major thoughts of the critics and movements without being overwhelmed. While the book runs nearly 900 pages, it is easy to maneuver. All told, Habib delivers an accessible yet scholarly survey of literary criticism."Ron Ratliff, Kansas State University “A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present by M. A. R. Habib is a useful introduction and quick reference … The attention to each writer and their major works is significant and detailed, with major historical interpretive shifts noted.”Studies in English Literature 1500 - 1900 “Best single-volume introduction to Western literary theory … .With its admirably clear explanation of concepts and terminology, [it] admirably fulfils the promise of its title.”Literary Research Guide"Habib's survey of literary theory and criticism is serious, ambitious, informative and intellectually challenging." Bryn Mawr Classical Review

• Acknowledgments viiiAbbreviations of Frequently Cited Works ixIntroduction 1Part I Ancient Greek Criticism 7Classical Literary Criticism: Intellectual and Political Backgrounds 91 Plato (428–ca. 347 bc) 192 Aristotle (384–322 bc) 41Part II The Traditions of Rhetoric 633 Greek Rhetoric 65Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Lysias, Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle4 The Hellenistic Period and Roman Rhetoric 80Rhetorica, Cicero, QuintilianPart III Greek and Latin Criticism During the Roman Empire 1035 Horace (65–8 bc) 1056 Longinus (First Century ad) 1187 Neo-Platonism 129Plotinus, Macrobius, BoethiusPart IV The Medieval Era 1498 The Early Middle Ages 151St. Augustine9 The Later Middle Ages 166Hugh of St. Victor, John of Salisbury, Dante Alighieri, Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Ibn Rushd (Averroës), St. Thomas Aquinas10 Transitions: Medieval Humanism 215Giovanni Boccaccio, Christine de PisanPart V The Early Modern Period to the Enlightenment 22711 The Early Modern Period 229Giambattista Giraldi, Lodovico Castelvetro, Giacopo Mazzoni, Torquato Tasso, Joachim Du Bellay, Pierre de Ronsard, Sir Philip Sidney, George Gascoigne, George Puttenham12 Neoclassical Literary Criticism 273Pierre Corneille, Nicolas Boileau, John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Samuel Johnson13 The Enlightenment 311John Locke, Joseph Addison, Giambattista Vico, David Hume, Edmund Burke, Mary WollstonecraftPart VI The Earlier Nineteenth Century and Romanticism 347Introduction to the Modern Period 34914 The Kantian System and Kant’s Aesthetics 35715 G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) 38216 Romanticism (I): Germany and France 408Friedrich von Schiller, Friedrich Schleiermacher, Germaine de Staël17 Romanticism (II): England and America 428William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Edgar Allan PoePart VII The Later Nineteenth Century 46718 Realism and Naturalism 469George Eliot, Émile Zola, William Dean Howells, Henry James19 Symbolism and Aestheticism 489Charles Baudelaire, Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde20 The Heterological Thinkers 502Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henri Bergson, Matthew Arnold21 Marxism 527Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, György Lukács, Terry EagletonPart VIII The Twentieth Century 555The Twentieth Century: Backgrounds and Perspectives 55722 Psychoanalytic Criticism 571Freud and Lacan23 Formalisms 602Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson, John Crowe Ransom, William K. Wimsatt, Monroe C. Beardsley, T. S. Eliot24 Structuralism 631Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes25 Deconstruction 649Jacques Derrida26 Feminist Criticism 667Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Elaine Showalter, Michèle Barrett, Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous27 Reader-Response and Reception Theory 708Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish28 Postcolonial Criticism 737Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.29 New Historicism 760Stephen Greenblatt, Michel FoucaultEpilogue 772Selective Bibliography 777Index 791