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Historical criticism (Literature)

Here are entered works on methods of criticism which consider the literary work in its historical context, including its relationship to the author's life.

See also what's at your library, or elsewhere.

• Criticism
• Literature and history

• Historical criticism (Literature) -- Periodicals

• Modern Language Quarterly (1940-) (partial serial archives)

Items below (if any) are from related and broader terms.

• Figural Realism: Studies in the Mimesis Effect (originally published 1998; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Hayden V. White (HTML and PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Institution of Theory (originally published 1994; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Play and Place of Criticism (originally published 1967; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Words about Words about Words: Theory, Criticism, and the Literary Text (originally published 1988; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Bakhtin's Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives (Ghent: Academia Press, c2010), ed. by Nele Bemong, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen de Temmerman, and Bart Keunen (PDF with commentary at OAPEN)
• Framing Theory's Empire (West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, c2007), ed. by John Holbo (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Marxism and Deconstruction: A Critical Articulation (originally published 1982; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Michael Ryan (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Poetic Presence and Illusion: Essays in Critical History and Theory (originally published 1979; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• The Theory of Criticism: A Tradition and Its System (originally published 1976; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by Murray Krieger (multiple formats with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Tar for Mortar: The Library of Babel and the Dream of Totality (Earth: BABEL Working Group, c2018), by Jonathan Basile
  • PDF with commentary at punctumbooks.com
  • PDF files with commentary at Project MUSE
• Literature Against Criticism: University English and Contemporary Fiction in Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, c2016), by Martin Paul Eve (HTML and PDF with commentary at Open Book Publishers)
• Literature Matters (London: Open Humanities Press, 2016), by J. Hillis Miller, ed. by Monika Reif-Hülser (PDF with commentary at Open Humanities Press)
• Risk Criticism: Precautionary Reading in an Age of Environmental Uncertainty (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, c2016), by Molly Wallace
  • PDF with commentary at OAPEN
  • page images at HathiTrust
  • PDF files at JSTOR
• The Institution of Criticism (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1982), by Peter Uwe Hohendahl (PDF files at Project MUSE)
• Legacies of Paul de Man (2005), ed. by Marc Redfield (PDF at Romantic Circles)
• On Human Nature: A Gathering While Everything Flows, 1967-1984 (Berkeley: University of California Press, c2003), by Kenneth Burke, ed. by William H. Rueckert and Angelo Bonadonna (frame-dependent HTML with commentary at UC Press)
• Subjective Criticism (originally published 1978; open access edition Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019), by David Bleich (HTML and Epub with commentary at Project MUSE)
• Critical Approaches to Literature (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1956), by David Daiches (page images at HathiTrust)
• Critique of Creativity: Precarity, Subjectivity and Resistance in the "Creative Industries" (London: MayFlyBooks, 2011), ed. by Gerald Raunig, Gene Ray, and Ulf Wuggenig (PDF and HTML with commentary at MayFlyBooks)
• Reading Graphs, Maps, Trees: Responses to Franco Moretti (Anderson, SC: Parlor Press, c2011), ed. by Jonathan Goodwin and John Holbo (PDF at parlormultimedia.com)
• Principles of Literary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co.; London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co., ca. 1928), by I. A. Richards
  • Gutenberg text
  • multiple formats at archive.org
• The Anatomy of Criticism: A Trialogue, by Henry Hazlitt (PDF at mises.org)
• The Critical Attitude (London: Duckworth and Co., 1911), by Ford Madox Ford (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Critical Essays of the Early Nineteenth Century, With Introduction and Notes (New York et al.: C. Scribner's Sons, c1921), ed. by Raymond Macdonald Alden (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Critical I, by Norman N. Holland (HTML at ufl.edu)
• Criticism and Fiction, by William Dean Howells (Gutenberg text)
• Essays Literary and Critical, by Matthew Arnold (DjVu at archive.org)
• The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, by Matthew Arnold (HTML at Toronto)
• The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1911), by Joel Elias Spingarn (page images at HathiTrust)
• The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism (1920 edition), by T. S. Eliot (HTML at Bartleby)
• Practical Criticism: A Study of Literary Judgment (originally published 1929; eighth impression London: Routledge and K. Paul Ltd., 1952), by I. A. Richards (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Culture and Cognition: The Boundaries of Literary and Scientific Inquiry (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, c1992), by Ronald Schleifer, Robert Con Davis, and Nancy Mergler (PDF and Epub with commentary at Cornell Open)
• Hieroglyphics (London: Grant Richards, 1902), by Arthur Machen (page images at Google; US access only)
• Literary Criticism From the Elizabethan Dramatists: Repertory and Synthesis (New York: Sturgis and Walton Co., 1910), by David Klein (multiple formats at archive.org)
• Our Stage and its Critics (1910), by Edward Fordham Spence (Gutenberg text)
• Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism, by Henry Seidel Canby (Gutenberg text)
• Definitions: Essays in Contemporary Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., c1922), by Henry Seidel Canby
  • multiple formats at archhive.org
  • page images at HathiTrust
• English Critical Essays: Nineteenth Century (London: Oxford University Press, H. Miford, c1916), ed. by Edmund D. Jones (Gutenberg text)
• The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (main text only; some peripheral sections omitted), by John Dennis (HTML at Toronto)

• Romantic Frictions (2011), ed. by Theresa M. Kelley (HTML at Romantic Circles)

• Fact, Fiction, and Form: Selected Essays (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, c2011), by Ralph Wilson Rader, ed. by James Phelan and David H. Richter (PDF at Ohio State)
• Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom: Two Interviews (2006), ed. by Orrin N. C. Wang, contrib. by Geoffrey H. Hartman, Harold Bloom, Marc Redfield, and Laura Quinney (PDF at Romantic Circles)

• Geoffrey Hartman and Harold Bloom: Two Interviews (2006), ed. by Orrin N. C. Wang, contrib. by Geoffrey H. Hartman, Harold Bloom, Marc Redfield, and Laura Quinney (PDF at Romantic Circles)

• Academic Discourse and Critical Consciousness (Pittsburgh and London: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1994), by Patricia Bizzell (page images at Pitt)

• Deconstruction is/in America: A New Sense of the Political (New York and London: New York University Press, c1995), ed. by Anselm Haverkamp, contrib. by Jacques Derrida, Jonathan D. Culler, Cynthia Chase, Samuel Weber, J. Hillis Miller, Michel Beaujour, Peggy Kamuf, Rodolphe Gasché, Elisabeth Weber, Peter Eisenman, Judith Butler, Barbara Vinken, Avital Ronell, Derek Attridge, Perry Meisel, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and David Wills (HTML with commentary at NYU Press)

• The Digital Humanities and Literary Studies (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, c2022), by Martin Paul Eve (PDF with commentary in the UK)

• An Essay on Criticism, by Alexander Pope
  • HTML at jacklynch.net
  • Gutenberg text
• The Art of Poetry: An Epistle to the Pisos (in Latin and English), by Horace, ed. by George Colman (Gutenberg text)

• A Letter to William Gifford, Esq. from William Hazlitt, Esq. (London: Printed for J. Miller, 1819), by William Hazlitt and William Gifford
  • multiple formats at Google
  • page images at HathiTrust
• Biographia Literaria, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Gutenberg text)

More items available under broader and related terms at left.