History of Criticism for our Time

Reviews History of Criticism for our Time History, whatever its particular subject, requires to be rewritten at intervals . Not only does knowledge accumulate, but focus changes and possible insights multiply. In every serious effort of historical interpretation, two elements are operative: first, the sense of the past as something fixed and unchanging, to which the historian owes his primary allegiance and whicb he must learn to enter on its terms, not his own~ and, secondly, a sense of the present as the outcome, however remote and indirect, of the past which he is examining. and as capable, therefore, of casting a light back upon it, of bringing into relief features which can now be seen to have a special significance, and even of mOdifying in some degree the larger patterns to be educed. This consideration is certainly relevant to Professor Rene Wellek's rewriting of history in the volumes under review (A History 0/ Modern Criticism: 1750-1950. I, The Later Eighteenth Century [1750-1800] ; II, The Romantic Age [1800--1830]. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1955. Pp. x, 358; vi, 459. $4.50; $5.50). A history, he avers, "cannot be written without a frame of reference, a standard of selection and evaluation, which will be influenced by our own time and determined by our own theory of literature." To a knowledge of the past, both extensive and detailed, which is not, however, identical with a sense of the past, he adds a strong-if, one may suspect, an assiduously cultivated-sense of the present, which is capable of sharpening certain perceptions and of affording to his ·inquiry certain fruitful directives, but which may also entail some inhibitions and issue in some curiously partial judgments-a danger no doubt increased by the position which Professor Wellek has chosen to assume. The contemporary situation in literary criticism is in the highest degree interesting and not a little baffling. As compared with the period, just over half a century ago, when George Saintsbury published his History of Criticism in Europe from the Earliest Texts to the Present Day (1900-3), the activity, especially in North America, is prodigious; tbe clash of ideas is continuous; and the vehicle of it all is a terminology almost entirely lacking in definition. In.the final volume of bis History, Professor Wellek may be expected to COme definitely to grips with this situation and to provide us with a much-needed chart. Meanwhile his sense of the present unmistakably colours his account of the past. One of the most striking features of this 507 508 REVIEWS present is the flight from literary history and the rejection of historical method, which has ranged the "critics" and the "scholars" in opposing camps and greatly impeded the process of mutual education of which they stand equally in need. Additional significance, if also a note of paradox, is lent to Professor Wellek's effort by the fact that he must be almost the only scholar with pronounced historical interests and impressive historical knowledge to align himself with what is commonly called the "new criticism"for Professor Crane and the Chicago school have deliberately renounced the alignment. That Professor Wellek's adherence stops short of the rejection of history goes without saying; but inevitably his historicism is severely modified. It is compelled to substitute the absolute value judgments to which the "new criticism" is so strongly addicted for the tentative and "relative" appraisals natural to) the historian: relativism is a term of severest reproach. The new "theory of literature" and of literary study insists not merely on concentration upon the work itself (who in his senses would wish to do otherwise?) but on the absolute autonomy of literary work and literary artist as such, with its attendant consequence of banning all extra-literary considerations and explanations; and this carries over in some degree to the treatment of criticism and works of criticism, though these, apparently, are not regarded under the terms and restrictions of literary art. Certainly, the "theory of literature" which he has adopted leads Professor Wellek to condemn out of hand every critic who collides with one of its favourite dogmas-for example , the whole group, representative of the...