The Anatomy of Criticism: A TrialogueLudwig von Mises Institute, 2007 - 303 strani When Henry Hazlitt published this exceedingly rare book, he was finishing up a three-year position at The Nation as literary critic, and preparing to accept the position as H.L. Mencken's successor at American Mercury. He was struggling with integrating his two main interests: literary criticism and economics. In economics, value is subjective, whereas the key goal in literary criticism is the discovery of something approximating objective value. The text of this book reflects that struggle in the form of a trialogue. Hazlitt has his characters debate the question of literary value, and pushes forward the proposition that the value of literature is discerned and revealed through the operation of the "social mind." So he ends up rejecting relativism while avoiding mistakes in economic theory. A fascinating study, brilliantly conceived and rendered by a master. As an extra bonus here, Hazlitt offers a postscript on the rise of Marxism in literary criticism. He shows how preposterous it is for Marxism to reject the main corpus of Western litertaure as hopelessly bourgeois, even while Marx himself read all the great works in his leisure. This is a highly significant essay becuase it was probably the first attack on Marxist literary deconstructionism ever written! |
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admire Aeschylus aesthetic argument Aristotle Arthur artist believe better bourgeois Brunetière cism course creative Croce Croceans culture economic Edgar Guest Elder ence example exist expression fact feel function genius Goethe Gulliver's Travels I. A. Richards idea imagine individual infallible insist Irving Babbitt judge judgment Jules Lemaître knowledge least Lemaître less literary literature living logic Marx matter Matthew Arnold mean ment merely merits Middleton never novel objective opinion Oscar Wilde painting past perhaps poem poet poetry possible posterity precisely question ranking reader realism reason recognize remarked Remy de Gourmont reputation reviewer Rex Beach Sainte-Beuve seems sense Shakespeare simply social mind sound standards suppose surely T. S. Eliot talent talk taste tell theory thing thought tion Tolstoy tradition true truth whole words writer Young