Ralph Cohen – författare

Ralph Cohen was highly regarded as the visionary founding editor of New Literary History, but his own theoretical essays appeared in such a scattering of publications that their conceptual originality, underlying coherence, and range of application have not been readily apparent. This new selection of twenty essays, many published here for the first time, offers a synthesis of Cohen’s vital work.

In these pages Cohen introduces change and continuity as essential modes of discourse in the study of literary behavior, an approach that can produce reliable narratives of literary, artistic, and cultural change. Here Cohen conceptualizes and develops a compelling, innovative theory of genre that promotes a systematic study of historical change, offering rewarding insights for twenty-first-century scholars.

First published in 1970, The Unfolding of The Seasons provides an interpretation and evaluation of James Thomson’s poem The Seasons. Professor Cohen urges its reconsideration as a major Augustan poem, arguing that Thomson’s unity, diction and thought combine with a conception of man, nature and God which is poetically tenable and distinctive. The case for The Seasons as an important work of art depends upon its effectiveness as a moving vision of human experience, and Professor Cohen believes that many critics have not felt this effectiveness because they have misconceived Thomson’s vision and misunderstood his idiom. His study aims to persuade them to return to the poem and to examine it within the context of an Augustan tradition.

Professor Cohen shows that Thomson’s great achievement is to have fashioned a conception which, by bringing nature to the forefront of his poem, became a new poetic way of defining human experience. Thomson was not the first nature poet in English, but he was the first to provide an effective idiom in which science, orthodox religion, natural description, and classical allusions blended to describe the glory, baseness and uncertainty of man’s earthly environment, holding forth the hope of heavenly love and wisdom. This study shows that Thomson found a personal idiom by means of which he created an artistic vision. It will appeal to those with an interest in English literature and in philosophy.

First published in 1970, The Unfolding of The Seasons provides an interpretation and evaluation of James Thomson’s poem The Seasons. Professor Cohen urges its reconsideration as a major Augustan poem, arguing that Thomson’s unity, diction and thought combine with a conception of man, nature and God which is poetically tenable and distinctive. The case for The Seasons as an important work of art depends upon its effectiveness as a moving vision of human experience, and Professor Cohen believes that many critics have not felt this effectiveness because they have misconceived Thomson’s vision and misunderstood his idiom. His study aims to persuade them to return to the poem and to examine it within the context of an Augustan tradition.

Professor Cohen shows that Thomson’s great achievement is to have fashioned a conception which, by bringing nature to the forefront of his poem, became a new poetic way of defining human experience. Thomson was not the first nature poet in English, but he was the first to provide an effective idiom in which science, orthodox religion, natural description, and classical allusions blended to describe the glory, baseness and uncertainty of man’s earthly environment, holding forth the hope of heavenly love and wisdom. This study shows that Thomson found a personal idiom by means of which he created an artistic vision. It will appeal to those with an interest in English literature and in philosophy.

First published in 1974, New Directions in Literary History is a comprehensive attempt to present approaches to literary studies that have developed from phenomenology, stylistics and linguistics, Marxist reconsiderations of literature, interdisciplinary studies and analysis of reader response. Written by an international group of scholars, the essays are taken from the pages of New Literary History. They range from the Middle Ages to contemporary literature.

European and American literary critics are here represented, together with an art critic, a philosopher and a novelist. Their essays deal with crucial problems in the study of literature: the relationship of the contemporary critic to works of the past; the place of method in literary study; how reading takes place; the role of the reader in different literary periods in providing a guide to interpretation; the language of literature and its relation to natural or ordinary language; the origin and decline of literary forms; and what constitutes literature, especially in the relation between fictional character and autobiography. Although the essays are essentially concerned with theoretical issues, they also examine the practical applications to literature. Students of English literature and literary theory will find this book particularly interesting.

First published in 1974, New Directions in Literary History is a comprehensive attempt to present approaches to literary studies that have developed from phenomenology, stylistics and linguistics, Marxist reconsiderations of literature, interdisciplinary studies and analysis of reader response. Written by an international group of scholars, the essays are taken from the pages of New Literary History. They range from the Middle Ages to contemporary literature.

European and American literary critics are here represented, together with an art critic, a philosopher and a novelist. Their essays deal with crucial problems in the study of literature: the relationship of the contemporary critic to works of the past; the place of method in literary study; how reading takes place; the role of the reader in different literary periods in providing a guide to interpretation; the language of literature and its relation to natural or ordinary language; the origin and decline of literary forms; and what constitutes literature, especially in the relation between fictional character and autobiography. Although the essays are essentially concerned with theoretical issues, they also examine the practical applications to literature. Students of English literature and literary theory will find this book particularly interesting.

First published in 1964, The Art of Discrimination is a study in the relation between critical theory and practice, taking as its test-case James Thomson’s The Seasons, the poem which was, according to Johnson, of "a new kind". Professor Cohen explores the different applications of criticism from 1750 to 1950, analysing specific interpretations of the poem that altered, contradicted or supported poetic theory. In doing so, he introduces new techniques to supplement traditional critical commentary: illustrations are treated as interpretations and critical language is related to non-literary as well as literary information. In treating the history of critical interpretation, the reprinting of editions and past interpretations are considered along with contemporary statements as necessary to define a literary period.

The book offers alternatives to theories of organicism and to those of the arbitrariness of literary history by defining the kinds of continuities that exist in criticism. As analysis of criticism, it studies how men think about literature, the extent to which such thinking resists systematization and those elements in it which can be controlled and organized and transmitted. The book will appeal to students of literature and critical theory.

First published in 1964, The Art of Discrimination is a study in the relation between critical theory and practice, taking as its test-case James Thomson’s The Seasons, the poem which was, according to Johnson, of "a new kind". Professor Cohen explores the different applications of criticism from 1750 to 1950, analysing specific interpretations of the poem that altered, contradicted or supported poetic theory. In doing so, he introduces new techniques to supplement traditional critical commentary: illustrations are treated as interpretations and critical language is related to non-literary as well as literary information. In treating the history of critical interpretation, the reprinting of editions and past interpretations are considered along with contemporary statements as necessary to define a literary period.

The book offers alternatives to theories of organicism and to those of the arbitrariness of literary history by defining the kinds of continuities that exist in criticism. As analysis of criticism, it studies how men think about literature, the extent to which such thinking resists systematization and those elements in it which can be controlled and organized and transmitted. The book will appeal to students of literature and critical theory.

The aim of this book is to orchestrate “a generic reconstitution of literary studies” based on a comprehensive theory of genre and generic transformation. Taking “An Excellent Ballad of George Barnwel,” a seventeenth-century broadside of sex and greed, Ralph Cohen analyzes the generic transformations—including Addison’s ballad criticism in The Spectator, The London Merchant, Percy’s ballad editing in Reliques, and Barnwell. A Novel—in which this particular ballad exhibits remarkable continuity over the next four centuries, culminating with his personal re-formation; what was considered non-literary criticism becomes literary. This unique literary history reconceives narrative as a component of genre rather than a genre itself, demonstrates the ineluctably mixed nature of genres and the literary nature of our humanness, and analyzes the shifting generic contexts for interpretation and gender relations. Incorporating theory consciousness into the literary genre he is regenerating, Cohen offers a brilliant example of how future literary histories might be written.