History of Modern Literary Criticism. Volume 5

Author: (American) Welker
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-03-01
Features: There is one more point that should be emphasized. I focus on the literary criticism of the figures I set out to explore, rather than—and it is impossible to—elaborate on their entire achievements: their significance in the history of poetry, fiction writing, or philosophy. If I were to concentrate on the poetry of Yeats, Pound, Eliot, the fiction of Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and Wyndham Lewis, or even the philosophy of George Santayana, this work would become unmanageable. It must be assumed that the reader has a general knowledge of literary history during this period. I am convinced that literary criticism is a uniquely human activity that is inherently worthy of study, just as I believe and can argue that there has always been a unique body of works called literature since ancient times. It possesses the aesthetic qualities that have long been called beauty, while simultaneously influencing the lonely individual and society at large, making it worth our attention. Without literature, the world would be impoverished to an unimaginable extent. Conversely, literature also relies on the understanding, filtering, and judgment provided by criticism.