ENG.362

This survey course introduces major literary critical theories and critics: Classical, Renaissance, Neoclassical, Romantics and early 20th century New Criticism. Critics include Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus, Sidney, Coreneille, Dryden (the Italians, Castelvetro and Mazzoni, are mentioned but not emphasized),. Johnson and the Romantics: Shelley, Wordsworth, and Coleridge. The major themes are traced, and specific orientations are emphasized (the mimetic, the expressive, the pragmatic, and objective as highlighted by Abrams).Walter Pater and Matthew Arnold will serve as transition to the 20th century. Highlighting the main position of the New Critics, the course ends at the threshold of modernism and postmodernism.