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literary criticism

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Assessment and interpretation of literary works. The term ‘criticism’ is often taken to mean exclusively adverse comment, but in fact it refers to all literary assessment, whether positive or negative. Contemporary criticism offers analyses of literary works from structuralist, semiological, feminist, Marxist, and psychoanalytical perspectives, whereas earlier criticism tended to deal with moral or political ideas, or with a literary work as a formal object independent of its creator. The earliest systematic literary criticism was the Poetics of Aristotle; a later Greek critic was the author of the treatise On the Sublime , usually attributed to Longinus. Horace and Quintilian were influential Latin critics. The Italian Renaissance introduced humanist criticism, and the revival of classical scholarship exalted the authority of Aristotle and Horace. Like literature itself, European criticism then applied neoclassical, Romantic, and modern approaches. Writing literary criticism Students…
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Full text Article literary criticism

From Philip's Encyclopedia
Discipline concerned with literary theory and the evaluation of literary works. It effectively began with Plato 's comments on the role of poets in his Republic ; Aristotle 's response to this, the Poetics , represents the first systematic attempt to establish principles of literary procedure. …
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Full text Article literary criticism

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Discipline concerned with philosophical, descriptive, and evaluative inquiries about literature, including what literature is, what it does, and what it is worth. The Western critical tradition began with Plato ’s Republic (4th century bce ). A generation later, Aristotle , in his Poetics , …
| 265 words
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Full text Article literary criticism

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Assessment and interpretation of literary works. The term ‘criticism’ is often taken to mean exclusively adverse comment, but in fact it refers to all literary assessment, whether positive or negative. Contemporary criticism offers analyses of literary works from structuralist, semiological, …
| 276 words
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Full text Article literary criticism before 1914

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
Early American literary criticism is intimately connected to national life. That is to say, the early criticism was conducted outside of a professional context: whereas 20th-c. criticism takes place largely within a university environment, complete with academic presses, scholarly journals, literary…
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Full text Article literary criticism before 1945

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
A recognizable English literary criticism began to emerge in the Elizabethan era. Its chief concerns were to define and promote poetry, to vindicate writing in English rather than in Latin or Greek, and to provide precepts, based partly on classical rhetoric, for the writing of poetry and prose. The…
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Full text Article LITERARY CRITICISM: GERMANY

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
That in the mid-eighteenth century there was no body of German literature that had been accorded canonical status was reflected in the lack of a native Germanic tradition of literary criticism and theory, which was dominated instead by French neo-Classicism. However, as the century wore on, the…
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Feminist literary criticism examines, interprets, and seeks to redress the marginalization of women through a critical response to literature, within the larger context of a male-dominated literary establishment. Feminist literary criticism also challenges, and aims to correct, broader assumptions…
| 561 words
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Full text Article LITERARY CRITICISM: BRITAIN

From Encyclopedia of the Romantic Era, 1760-1850
In late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain, writers and critics abandoned the neoclassical literary tradition. Rejecting the tenets that had guided Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, and the other Augustans, they turned to new sources of inspiration, theories, and practices. The term…
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Full text Article literary criticism since 1945

From Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature
Three dominant features of British criticism since World War II distinguish this phase of its history from the preceding period of energetic “modernist” controversy led by Ezra Pound, T.S.ELIOT and Virginia WOOLF in the 1920s and 1930s. These may be labeled as academic incorporation, cultural…
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Full text Article literary criticism since 1914

From Continuum Encyclopedia of American Literature
American literary criticism since 1914 has been a collision of forces, an explosion of talent in the essay form, and a constant coming to terms with the direction of modern literature and thought. From the early part of this century, American critics have been embattled and emphatic as they clear a…
| 9,342 words
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