num_pages: 152
description: Examines literary modernism in its relation to the history of criticism by analysing the role of Aristotelian principles, primarily the notion of formal affectivism, in the critical writings of these three modernists who have invariably been thought to uphold incompatible aesthetic whereas Eliot saw himself as a classicist modernist, Stevens and Woolf shared a marked anti-classicist stance. Despite their initially incompatible attitudes to literary history and criticism, this study discloses their convergence on the Aristotelian notion of formal affectivism, demonstrated through specific conceptual shifts. The main feature of the book is its originality of approach, which seeks a 'diachronic' solution to a 'synchronic' problem -- the debate about the Modern, reflected in the claims and counterclaims made by the modernists themselves and by subsequent literary critics and theorists. This methodology was largely dictated by the nature of the the adversarialcritical orientation of th
language: English
title: Aristotle and Modernism: Aesthetic Affinities of T S Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf
titlecomplete: Aristotle and Modernism: Aesthetic Affinities of T S Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Virginia Woolf
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Liverpool University Press