The twentieth-century humanist critics
Subtitle: from Spitzer to Frye
By: William Calin.
Publisher: University of Toronto Press; University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division
Published: 2007
Place of publication: Toronto; Buffalo
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9780802092830; 9780802094759
Subjects: Criticism -- History -- 20th century.; Humanism -- History -- 20th century.
Description: "The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics revisits the work and place of eight scholars roughly contemporary with Anglo-American New Criticism: Leo Spitzer, Ernst Robert Curtius, Erich Auerbach, Albert Beguin, Jean Rousset, C.S. Lewis, F.O. Matthiessen, and Northrop Frye. First, William Calin considers the achievements of each critic, examining their methodologies and basic presuppositions as well as the critiques marshalled against them. Calin then explores their relation to history, to canon-formation, and to current theoretical debates. He goes on to show how these eight scholars form a current in the history of criticism, a current that is related to both humanism and modernism." "Underscoring the international, cosmopolitan aspects of literary scholarship in the last century, The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics discusses humanist critical traditions from Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America, and reveals the surprising extent to which, across various languages and academic systems, critics posed similar questions and arrived at a wealth of complementary responses."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [221]-248) and index.
Table of contents: title: Leo Spitzer ; or, how to read a text; title: The continuity of Western literature : Ernest Robert Curtis; title: The evolution of Western literature : Erich Auerbach; title: Albert Béguin and the origins of literary modernism; title: Academic criticism at its best : Jean Rousset; title: C.S. Lewis and the discarded image of the Middle Ages and Renaissance; title: The search for an American usable past : F.O. Matthiessen; title: Northrop Frye's totalizing vision : the order of words.