San Antonio College Library

"This book is a guide to the history of literary criticism from antiquity to the present day. It not only provides an overview of the major movements, figures, and texts of literary criticism, but also supplies the cultural, historical, and philosophical background which enables students to see them in context."--Jacket.

Provides within the covers of a single book, a selection of important and representative work from all the major theoretical schools or tendencies in contemporary criticism, and places them before the reader in two alternative orders: one historical, the other thematic.

"How many people know that Aristotle thought the best tragedies were those which ended happily? Or that the first mention of the motor car in literature may have been in 1791 in Boswell's Life of Johnson? Or that it was not unknown in the nineteenth century for book reviews to be 30,000 words long!" "These are just a few of the facts to be found in this history of literary criticism. From the Ancient Greek period to the present day we learn about...

What have they done to literary criticism? Where is it leading-and where will it all end? The past two decades have seen swift and radical changes in the way literature is perceived and taught in this country and abroad. The emergence of a myriad of new schools of literary theory is perplexing-perhaps even disturbing-but Howard Felperin offers guidance to the bemused in this balanced and lively overview of all the major schools of contemporary literary...