Western Classical Literary Theory: A Selected Reading

Author: Zhang Zhongzai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: This book includes 20 classical Western literary theories such as Plato's The Republic, Horace's Ars Poetica, Bacon's The Advancement of Learning, and Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man. There are two purposes for compiling this book: one is to solve the problem of wanting to read but not being able to access the books; the other is to help Chinese readers (mainly those who understand English and young students) read and understand these difficult English versions of Western literary theories. To this end, I intend to proceed from the following points: first, select high-quality materials. The literary theories and critics do not aim for completeness, but only choose important and representative literary critics and theories from each historical period. Given that a semester only has 16 or 17 weeks of class time, many important literary critics had to be omitted. The selected literary theories also do not aim for completeness, but only choose the essential parts of each theory, omitting those sections that are not necessarily essential to read. This allows readers to grasp both the overall picture and the core ideas and arguments of each literary theory.