The invention of English criticism, 1650-1760 / by Michael Gavin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gavin, Michael, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Criticism--Great Britain--History.

Criticism.

English literature--History and criticism--Theory, etc.

English literature.

Literature and society--Great Britain.

Literature and society.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (vii, 220 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Criticism and the institutions of drama, 1645-1675

2: Politics of Parnassus

3 : Women

Among critics

4 : Criticism and the poetry of Anne Finch

5: Disciplining the dunces: Literary knowledge in the Dunciad Variorum

6 : Boswell

7. Conversation and criticism in the age of print.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 05 Oct 2015).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-36584-0

1-316-37184-0

1-316-37584-6

1-316-37784-9

1-316-37884-5

1-316-37684-2

1-316-37384-3

1-316-37484-X

1-316-18172-3