Literary Criticism: A New History

Literary Criticism: A New History
Gary Day

Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 9780748615636
March, 2009
Hard Back 352 pages
Price :$95.00

Did you know that Aristotle thought the best tragedies ended happily? Or that the first mention of the motor car in literature was in Boswell's Life of Johnson, written in 1791? In the nineteenth century, it was not unusual for book reviews to be 30,000 words long.
These are just a few of the fascinating facts to be found in this absorbing history of literary criticism. From the Ancient Greeks to the present day, Gary Day gets the scoop on the lives of critics, the times in which they lived, and the problems of interpretation and valuation that have persist throughout the ages. Day questions whether the “theory wars” of recent years have lost sight of literature itself, and makes surprising connections between criticism and a range of subjects, including the growing influence of money.
General readers will appreciate this informative, intriguing, and often provocative account of the history of literary criticism, students will value the clear way in which criticism is put into context, and academics will enjoy the inherent challenge to prevailing views about the current nature of theory.
Gary Day is principal lecturer in English at De Montfort University.