The Later Eighteenth Century

A History of Modern Criticism, 1750-1950 #1

by René Wellek

The first volume of a very important study of literary criticism as it has developed over the last 250 years.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Literature, History, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1955

Reviews

[Narjes Dorzade · Rating 5 out of 5]

بی نظیر

[Amir · Rating 5 out of 5]

یاد جناب شیرانی گرامی به خاطر همچین اثر عظیمی که ترجمه کرد.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wasn't going to review this since I skipped one chapter, but I think it's worthwhile since it touches broadly on this whole endeavour. The main issue of criticism is how to determine good from bad - what constitutes a "good read", say, and how do we identify it? On some level this is a question for the branch of philosophy called Aesthetics, which Wellek dives into where he must, though understandably seeing that as outside his already large scope. One conclusion might be total relativism, which is basically embraced by this site - everyone shares their own tastes - and perhaps by the industry more broadly, as ousted New York book critic Christian Lorentzen argued earlier this years in Harper's (discussed in a symposium here). But most people understand there to be a broad sense that some books are better than others, that there is a difference between the great and the merely pleasurable, and that it is the role of critics to figure that out. Leaving the conundrum of how that can be to the philosophers, we back out and ask merely what is good? The answer to that is the history of criticism.

Wellek reads at least half a dozen languages and is conversant with the literary traditions of the big European nations. He is also an insanely clear writer - something happened to academic literary theory soon after this came out (was it Derrida's infamous Johns Hopkins conference?) that made the field a lot less accessible to dilettantes like myself. He begins with the inheritance of Aristotle's Poetics, the three classical unities which European writers and critics, especially the French, tried to hold by, while admitting exceptions for genius. He understands the idea behind this as being related to the suspension of disbelief, one possible vision of the dramatic experience. But by the mid-18th century, the period in which this book begins, that was already showing signs of strain.

Running through French thinkers like Voltaire and Diderot, Wellek then covers Dr Johnson in England and a host of minor English aestheticians, before devoting the rest of the volume to German movements - Sturm und Drang, Goethe's wild vision of nature united with the Classical world, Kant and then Schiller, whose influential essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry contrasted the primitive (naive) poet with his modern, self-aware counterpart, setting the stage for the Romanticists who followed. I wish I'd taken better notes as I read, as a lot of the ideas swirl together even now.

Reading this and seeing the flow of opinions - Neoclassicism, Didacticism, Romanticism, Art for Art's Sake - helped give me a sense of what critics try to do when they set a frame of reference for what a work should be, where it succeeds or falls flat. There is always a hidden matrix of assumptions about what we should expect from art and why we enjoy it. The answer to those questions are subjective, and change from generation to generation, but it our task as readers and critics to be aware of them.

End-note: a friend found this book on the street and gave it to me. I'm happy to write its first GR review!

[Serubiri Moses · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ordered more of his books. It is a fascinating teaching text that can equally be read by casual readers inspired by the literary classics.