The Invention of English Criticism: 1650-1760

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.

Author: Michael Gavin
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 08/31/2017
Pages: 228
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9781107498525

About the Author
Gavin, Michael: - Michael Gavin is an assistant professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina. Before joining USC he was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Research Center at Rice University.