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The following page is an attempt to
provide students with the names of the great critics of English-language
poetry, along with a list of their representative works. This list is not
comprehensive, exhaustive, or complete. It makes no attempt to list
significant works of literary criticism concerning other genres (such as
fiction); it does not cover the significant poetry criticism of the last
thirty years, and it does not offer a complete bibliography of the authors
it mentions, ignoring all their works written on subjects other than
poetry. As such, the list merely attempts to name those established
and perennially influential works that are generally recognized as classic,
so that the student may acquaint himself more easily with the landmarks of
English and American poetry criticism.
Finally, the student should also
remember that this list does not mention those classic works of poetry
criticism written in foreign languages. For example, no study of criticism would be
complete without Aristotle, Longinus, and Horace--to name only the
most influential of the ancient critics in English-speaking countries.
CPR Recommends: English
Criticism
| Sir Philip Sidney |
An Apologie For
Poetrie (1595)
|
| John Dryden |
Essays
|
| Alexander Pope |
An Essay on
Criticism (1711)
|
| Samuel Johnson |
The Lives of the
English Poets (1779, 1781)
Preface to Shakespeare (1763)
|
| Lord Byron |
English Bards and
Scotch Reviewers (1809)
|
| William Hazlitt |
My First
Acquaintance with Poets
Characters of Shakespeare's Plays (1817) The Spirit of the
Age (1825)
|
| Charles Lamb |
Specimens of English Dramatic
Poets
The Essays of Elia (1823)
The Later Essays of Elia (1833) |
| Samuel Taylor
Coleridge |
Biographia
Literaria (1817)
Lectures on Shakespeare
|
| William
Wordsworth |
Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads (1798)
|
| Percy Bysshe
Shelley |
A Defence of
Poetry (1821)
|
| John Keats |
Letters
|
| Matthew Arnold |
Essays in
Criticism (1865, 1888)
On Translating Homer (1861)
Culture and Anarchy (1869)
Literature and Dogma (1873)
|
| Algernon
Charles Swinburne |
Essays and Studies (1875)
Miscellanies (1886)
|
| Arthur Symons |
The Symbolist
Movement in Literature (1899)
|
| George
Saintsbury |
A History of
English Prosody (1908)
|
| I. A. Richards |
Principles of
Literary Criticism (1925)
Science and Poetry (1926)
Practical Criticism (1929)
Coleridge on Imagination (1934)
|
| F. R. Leavis |
New Bearings in
English Poetry
(1932)
Revaluation (1936)
The Common Pursuit (1952)
|
| W. B. Yeats
(Irish) |
Essays (1937)
|
| Northrop Frye
(Canadian) |
Fearful Symmetry (1947)
Anatomy of Criticism (1957)
|
| W. H. Auden |
The Enchaféd
Flood (1950)
The Dyer's Hand (1962)
Forewords and Afterwords (1973)
|
| William Empson |
Seven Types of
Ambiguity (1930)
Some Versions of Pastoral (1935)
The Structure of Complex Words (1951)
Using Biography (1985)
|
| A. E. Housman |
The Name and Nature of
Poetry (1933) |
| A. Alvarez |
Stewards of Excellence (1958)
The School of Donne (1961)
The Savage God (1971)
|
CPR Recommends: American
Criticism
| Ralph Waldo Emerson |
"The Poet" (from Essays,
1844) |
| Walt Whitman |
Democratic Vistas
(1871) |
| Edgar Allan Poe |
"The Philosophy of
Composition" (1846)
"The Poetic Principle"
"The Rationale of Verse" |
| George
Santayana |
Interpretations of Poetry and
Religion (1900) |
| Ezra Pound |
The Spirit of Romance (1910)
Pavannes and Divisions
(1918)
Instigations (1920)
Indiscretions (1923)
How to Read (1931)
ABC of Reading (1934)
Polite Essays (1937)
Guide to Kulchur (1938)
Literary Essays (1954)
Selected Prose (1973)
|
| T. S. Eliot |
Ezra Pound: His Metric and Poetry
(1917)
The Sacred Wood (1920)
The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism
(1933)
Selected Essays (1950)
Poetry and Drama (1951)
On Poetry And Poets (1957)
To Criticize The Critic (1965)
Selected Prose (1975)
|
| William Carlos Williams |
Kora in Hell
(1920)
Selected Essays (1954)
|
| Edmund Wilson |
Axel's Castle
(1931) |
| F. O.
Matthiessen |
The Achievement of T. S.
Eliot (1935)
American Renaissance (1941) |
| John Crowe
Ransom |
I'll Take My Stand
(1930)
God Without Thunder (1930)
The World's Body (1938)
The New Criticism (1941) |
| Allen Tate |
Reactionary Essays
(1936)
On the Limits of Poetry
The Man of Letters in the Modern
World
Reason in Madness
Essays of Four Decades (1969)
|
| R. P. Blackmur |
The Expense of Greatness
(1940)
Language As Gesture (1952)
The Lion and the Honeycomb (1955)
A Primer of Ignorance (1967) |
| Yvor Winters |
Primitivism and Decadence
(1937)
Maule's Curse (1938)
The Anatomy of Nonsense (1943)
In Defense of Reason (1947)
The Function of Criticism (1957) |
| Cleanth Brooks |
Understanding Poetry (1938)
Modern Poetry and the Tradition (1939)
The Well Wrought Urn (1947)
Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957) |
| Kenneth Burke |
The Philosophy of Literary Form
(1941)
A Grammar of Motives (1945)
Language As Symbolic Action (1966) |
| Lionel Trilling |
Matthew Arnold (1939)
The Liberal Imagination (1950)
Beyond Culture (1965) |
| Wallace Stevens |
The Necessary Angel (1951) |
| R. S. Crane |
The Languages of Criticism and the
Structure of Poetry (1953) |
| W. K. Wimsatt |
The Verbal Icon (1954)
Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957)
Hateful Contraries (1965)
The Day of the Leopards (1976)
|
| Hart Crane |
Selected Letters |
| Hugh Kenner |
The Invisible Poet: T. S. Eliot
(1959)
The Pound Era (1971) |
| Randall Jarrell |
Poetry and The Age (1953)
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket (1962)
The Third Book of Criticism (1969)
Kipling, Auden & Co. (1980) |
|
