The Constitution of Literature
Subtitle: Literacy, Democracy, and Early English Literary Criticism
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: December 14, 2007
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 256
ISBN-13: 9780804757867
Subjects: Literary studies: 16th to 18th centuries; British Isles; Literary Criticism & Collections / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism
Description: "The Constitution of Literature challenges the prevailing understanding of the relationship between literature and democracy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when both literature and democracy were acquiring their modern forms. Against the heroic story of criticism shaping the modern public sphere as recounted by Habermas and his followers, this study explores how different resistances to democratized reading preoccupied the thinking of the major English literary critics of the time. By paying attention to how critics participated in a debate over theories of reading - its processes for acquiring meaning from the page, its psychological and social effects on individuals, and its diffusion across the population - the book offers a new understanding of the political history of early literary criticism."--Jacket.