Modern Authors; A Review and a Forecast (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1891. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... The object of the present volume is to break introducground in a certain proposal of criticism in litera cy ture. It will throw out many ideas and many judgments, some of which, on account of the limits of space, may appear to be lacking in adequate support; but the belief continues that these judgments and ideas, even if wrong, have nevertheless sprung from fertile principles. Successively in the history of literature various Conven i tional canons of criticism nave been set up, and succes- standards sively some undeniable Bahribrecher has beaten them down and shown them to be useless. Marlowe, with his resounding lines, was a dangerous innovator. Shakespeare was a bar- barian, with no respect for correctness or the rules of the Unities. Wordsworth actually spoke of pedlars and wagoners, and neglected the poetical terms swain and nymph. Keats' sonnets have been authoritatively condemned, not because lack- ing in poetical sentiment and splendid diction, A V but because his arrangement of the rhymes does not accord with what we have been taught to expect. Walt Whitman is a savage who not merely neglects rhyme, but disregards also the orthodoxy of metre. These examples may serve to indicate how worthless may be the "rules," the criteria of "artistic form," that have served as guides for generations. We reject, then, conventional standards, and seek to discover the vital elements concerned in the production of all great work. Three main Capable criticism has most to deal with three factors: The intellectual grasp; the emotional co-efficient (calibre, bore, scope, range); and (the field itself being given) the experience, knowledge of the field--the latter being again divided into the intellectual and emotional elements. Under these divisions...