Western Classical Literary Theory: A Reader for Graduate Students

Author: Zhang Zhongzai
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-28
Features: This book collects 20 classical Western literary theories, including Plato's The Republic, Horace's Ars Poetica, Bacon's The Advancement of Learning, Schiller's On the Aesthetic Education of Man, and more. 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 comprehend these difficult English versions of Western literary theories. To this end, I intend to proceed from the following points: first, select high-quality materials. Literary theories and theorists do not aim for completeness, but only select important and representative literary theorists and theories from each historical period. Given that a semester only has 16 or 17 weeks of class time, many important literary theorists had to be left out. 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 absolutely necessary to read. This allows readers to grasp both the overall picture and the core ideas and arguments of each literary theory.