ISBN: 1628972831 9781628972832

Category: Literary Criticism / General

Page count: 400

<b><i>Theory of Literature</i> was born from the collaboration of Ren Wellek, a Vienna-born student of Prague School linguistics, and Austin Warren, an independently minded "old New Critic."</b> Unlike many other textbooks of its era, however, this classic kowtows to no dogma and toes no party line. Wellek and Warren looked at literature as both a social product--influenced by politics, economics, etc.--as well as a self-contained system of formal structures. Incorporating examples from Aristotle to Coleridge, written in clear, uncondescending prose, <i>Theory of Literature</i> is a work which, especially in its suspicion of simplistic explanations and its distrust of received wisdom, remains extremely relevant to the study of literature today.