The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry

by Ronald S. Crane

Overview

These vigorous lectures deal with some of the many ways in which the

question of structure in poetry (here synonymous with the whole range of artistic

creation in words) can be discussed. Criticism has never been, Professor Clare argues, a

single discipline, but a collection of more and less distinct conceptual

"languages," within any one of which a literary problem takes on a special

solution.

The Alexander Lectures for 1952.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802060242
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	12/15/1953
Series:	Alexander Lectures
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.54(d)

About the Author

R.S. Crane (1886-1967) was a literary critic, historian, bibliographer, and professor. He is credited with the founding of the Chicago School of Literary Criticism.

Editorial Reviews

"...this book aims at being a comprehensive account of the attitude of one of the most influential of modern critics to the critics of the past, with suggestions for the directions in which contemporary critics may most profitably explore...an unusually stimulating book."—The Times Literary Supplement
"The Alexander Lectures given by Professor Crane in 1952 form one of the most significant volumes in a distinguished series...here we have a reasoned statement, in manageable compass, of the doctrines which roused so much controversy when they appeared in Critics and Criticism, but without the polemical tone or the sense of the partisanship of a 'school' which confused the response to that book. Mr. Crane here remarks that schools are a sign of competing dogmatisms rather than of co-operative learning, and it is impossible for any reader of this book to regard its author as an Aristotelian determinist out to do a hatchet job on the new critics."—Northrop Frye, University of Toronto Quarterly
"Mr. Crane divides modern critics into two schools: those who take an analytic, systematic interest in the language and meanings of poetry as these are differentiated from the language and meanings of prose; those who apply to poetry the insights of psychoanalysis and anthropology. Most of both sorts are New. Gazing at them from calm, distant, commonsensical eyes, Mr. Crane describes with reflective detachment, his critics' midnight marches, routs, sieges, voyages, their all-but-mortal combats."—Randall Jarrell, Saturday Review

From the Publisher