Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism The Humanistic Alternative [Paperback]

This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present.This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present, arguing that this history can best be seen as a dialogue among three traditions  the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and the humanistic, originated by Aristotle.This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present, arguing that this history can best be seen as a dialogue among three traditions  the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and the humanistic, originated by Aristotle.This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present, arguing that this history can best be seen as a dialogue among three traditions  the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and the humanistic, originated by Aristotle. There are many histories of literary criticism, but this is the first to clarify our understanding of the many seemingly incommensurable approaches employed over the centuries by reference to the three traditions. Making its case by careful analyses of individual critics, the book argues for the relevance of the humanistic tradition in the twenty-first century and beyond.Introduction; 1. Plato and Neoplatonism; 2. Romanticism and modernism; 3. Theory and cultural studies; 4. Aristotle and the humanistic tradition; 5. Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling; 6. Democracy, popular culture, and Ralph Ellison; 7. Literary criticism, the humanities, and liberal education. James Seaton is the only writer discussing the humanist tradition who has sufficient depth of learning to take it back to its origins in Plato and Aristotle. He has shown more clearly than anyone else the paradox of postmodernist theory that nothing can be certain except the postmodernists own certainty that nothing is certain. This book is sui generis because he offers a practical alternative to the current reign of theory and cultural studies . His characteristic virtues as an essayist and literary critic - discrimination, undogmatic flexibility and vast l†