Image for The origins of criticism  : literary culture and poetic theory in classical Greece

The origins of criticism : literary culture and poetic theory in classical Greece

See all formats and editions

By "literary criticism" we usually mean a self-conscious act involving the technical and aesthetic appraisal, by individuals, of autonomous works of art.

Aristotle and Plato come to mind. The word "social" does not. Yet, as this book shows, it should - if, that is, we wish to understand where literary criticism as we think of it today came from. Andrew Ford offers a new understanding of the development of criticism, demonstrating that its roots stretch back long before the sophists to public commentary on the performance of songs and poems in the preliterary era of ancient Greece.

He pinpoints when and how, later in the Greek tradition than is usually assumed, poetry was studied as a discipline with its own principles and methods. "The Origins of Criticism" complements the usual, history-of-ideas approach to the topic precisely by treating criticism as a social as well as a theoretical activity.

With unprecedented and penetrating detail, Ford considers varying scholarly interpretations of the key texts discussed.

Examining Greek discussions of poetry from the late sixth century B.C. through the rise of poetics in the late fourth, he asks when we first can recognize anything like thServing as a monumental preface to Aristotle's Poetics, this book allows readers to discern the emergence, within the manifold activities that might be called criticism, of the historically specific discourse on poetry that has shaped subsequent Western approaches to literature.

Read More
Available
£36.00 Save 20.00%
RRP £45.00
Add Line Customisation
Usually dispatched within 2 weeks
Add to List
Product Details
Princeton University Press
0691120250 / 9780691120256
Paperback / softback
08/08/2004
United States
English
research & professional /academic/professional/technical Learn More
Reprint. Originally published: 2002.
This is an original, ambitious book on an important theme. Earlier scholars have adumbrated in one way another its major theses--but never have these been argued with so much care, thoroughness, or bibliographical completeness. Ford's synthesis is an impressive one that merits close attention from every scholar interested in the history of the Western literary tradition. -- Thomas Cole, Yale University The topic is right at the cutting edge of contemporary concerns and will be of wide interest not only to classicists but also to cultural theorists and literary critics. Ford's argument constitu
This is an original, ambitious book on an important theme. Earlier scholars have adumbrated in one way another its major theses--but never have these been argued with so much care, thoroughness, or bibliographical completeness. Ford's synthesis is an impressive one that merits close attention from every scholar interested in the history of the Western literary tradition. -- Thomas Cole, Yale University The topic is right at the cutting edge of contemporary concerns and will be of wide interest not only to classicists but also to cultural theorists and literary critics. Ford's argument constitu 1QDAG Ancient Greece, DS Literature: history & criticism