Directions in Literary Criticism

At present there do not seem to be any fashions in literary criticism—an impression that this book reinforces. Each individual in this gathering of critics was invited to practice his trade in whatever fashion he liked, and the results show that criticism of literature is going off in as many directions as literature itself. In addition to poet and scholar, here we have novelist, essayist, folklorist, psychologist, and biographer.

Several selections carry on the poem as an act of criticism; the others take their evidence from sources that range from bibliographic data to the facts of composition and the record of stage interpretation, from the reaction of audiences to the response of the computer. As this delightfully eclectic forum of distinguished critics shows, literary criticism at its best takes on widely ranging perspectives expressed in a variety of forms and styles.

Contributors: John Barth, Bruce Rosenberg, John Balaban, Lawrence Kohlberg, Robert Worth Frank, Jr., Joseph G. Price, Jack McManis, Ralph W. Condee, Frank Brady, F.W. Bateson, Harrison T. Meserole, W.T. Jewkes, Deborah Austin, Philip Young, Chadwick Hansen, Maurice B. Cramer, John Haag, Arthur O. Lewis, Jr., Stanley Weintraub, John B. Smith, Michael H. Begnal, Kenneth Burke, Joseph L. Grucci, Paul West.