Theory of Literature

“The naming of this book has been more than ordinarily difficult. Even a proper “short title,” “Theory of Literature and Methodology of Literary Study,” would be too cumbersome. Before the nineteenth century one might have managed, for then a full, analytic title could have covered the title-page while the spine bore the inscription “Literature.”

We have written a book which, so far as we know, lacks any close parallel. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. Some continuity it may claim with Poetics and Rhetoric (from Aristotle down through Blair, Campbell, and Karnes), systematic treatments of the genres of belles-lettres and stylistics, or with books called Principles of Literary Criticism. But we have sought to unite “poetics” (or literary theory) and “criticism” (evaluation of literature) with “scholarship” (“research”) and “literary history” (the “dynamics” of literature, in contrast to the “statics” of theory and criticism).”