Description
Book SynopsisOriginally published in 1967. In The Play and Place of Criticism, Professor Krieger addresses basic questions related to criticism in the title essay that forms the introduction to this collection and that constitutes a considered statement of his contextualist position. In agreement with Spitzer, Krieger believes that the critic has a valuable part to play in relating the new words of the individual poem to the old words of the language. He goes further in identifying the role of the critic as essentially rhapsodic, a sharing-in and an expression of the poet's fine frenzy, which, when it succeeds, transports the critic beyond words and dooms his analytical efforts to failure. Thus, while defending the critic's right to exercise the free play of the mind in approaching his subject, the author insists that the critic recognize his subordinate place in performing his act of mediation. Elsewhere in the volume Krieger uses other terms and metaphors to explore similar problems revolving aro
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. The Play and Place of Criticism
Part I. The Play of Criticism
Chapter 2. The Innocent Insinuations of Wit: The Strategy of Language in Shakespeare's Sonnets
Chapter 3. The Dark Generations of Richard III
Chapter 4. The "Frail China Jar" and the Rude Hand of Chaos
Chapter 5. "Dover Beach" and the Tragic Sense of Eternal Recurrence
Chapter 6. The Marble Faun and the International Theme
Chapter 7. From Youth to Lord Jim: The Formal-Thematic Use of Marlow
Chapter 8. The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or Laokoon Revisited
Part II. The Place of Criticism
Chapter 9. The Disciplines of Literary Criticism
Chapter 10. Joseph Warren Beach's Modest Appraisal
Chapter 11. Contextualism Was Ambitious
Chapter 12. Contextualism and the Relegation of Rhetoric
Chapter 13. Critical Dogma and the New Critical Historians
Chapter 14. Platonism, Manichaeism, and the Resolution of Tension: A Dialogue
Chapter 15. Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism: Ariel and theSpirit of Gravity
Chapter 16. The Existential Basis of Contextual Criticism
Index
