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English Critical Essays Twentieth Century
1964. 1964 Reprint. 399 pages. Purple pictorial dust jacket over blue cloth. Pages are lightly tanned and thumbed at the edges, with light foxing. Binding has remained firm. Boards are a little rub worn, slight shelf wear to corners, spine and edges. Corners are a little bumped. Spine ends are mildly crushed. Light wear to unclipped dust jacket with tears, nicks and creases to spine, edge and corners. Light tanning to spine and edges.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published April 1, 1985
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November 14, 2025
【Twentieth Century English Critical Essays / ed. Phyllis M. Jones / U of Oxford Press, 1933】
This selection of English critical essays features three names familiar to the modern readers as the precursor to the age of literary theory - EM Forster, TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf, under the chapter title of 'modernism' in the textbooks of literary critical theory. But actually, they were the most subjective - or almost sentimental - and least critical three essays in this volume, even less than sketches of literary figures such as one by A.C. Benson.
It's certainly correct that they departed from the eclectic style of biographical and stylistic reading of English literature supported by erudition and trying to see 'the communication of an entire experience' ('Pure Poetry,' J. Middleton Murry, p. 320), or 'who, or what, rides the storm [of association, i. e. poetry]?' ('The Profession of Poetry,' H. W. Garrod, p. 228) and practically taking problems of actual crafts like:
--Poetry drama, however, except only for preserving the necessary credibility, neglects the outer shell of reality, and directly seeks to imitate the core. ('The Function of Poetry in a Drama,' Lascelles Abercrombie, P258)
This practical characteristics of English literary criticism - sometimes too much playful like Max Beerbohm on Ouida - was certainly a steady way to go, but modernist critics seemed to reject it. However, literary tradition is not something one can ditch without care - this 'biographical, stylistic and artisanal' master-work attitude of English literary criticism is still obvious even in PhD students' monographs - which ended up in forcing theories in other cultural spheres (like Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Freud, Benjamin, Bachtin etc.) the Anglo-Saxon attitude.
This selection of English critical essays features three names familiar to the modern readers as the precursor to the age of literary theory - EM Forster, TS Eliot and Virginia Woolf, under the chapter title of 'modernism' in the textbooks of literary critical theory. But actually, they were the most subjective - or almost sentimental - and least critical three essays in this volume, even less than sketches of literary figures such as one by A.C. Benson.
It's certainly correct that they departed from the eclectic style of biographical and stylistic reading of English literature supported by erudition and trying to see 'the communication of an entire experience' ('Pure Poetry,' J. Middleton Murry, p. 320), or 'who, or what, rides the storm [of association, i. e. poetry]?' ('The Profession of Poetry,' H. W. Garrod, p. 228) and practically taking problems of actual crafts like:
--Poetry drama, however, except only for preserving the necessary credibility, neglects the outer shell of reality, and directly seeks to imitate the core. ('The Function of Poetry in a Drama,' Lascelles Abercrombie, P258)
This practical characteristics of English literary criticism - sometimes too much playful like Max Beerbohm on Ouida - was certainly a steady way to go, but modernist critics seemed to reject it. However, literary tradition is not something one can ditch without care - this 'biographical, stylistic and artisanal' master-work attitude of English literary criticism is still obvious even in PhD students' monographs - which ended up in forcing theories in other cultural spheres (like Foucault, Derrida, Barthes, Freud, Benjamin, Bachtin etc.) the Anglo-Saxon attitude.
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