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M[EYER]. H[OWARD]. ABRAMS (1912 - )

Faculty Page (Cornell University)

"I learned a lot from the New Criticism, how to talk intelligently and pointedly about the particularities of the poem, but I never fell for the noncontextual reading.  I always felt it was important to look at poets in history."  (qtd. in Donadio)

SOURCES: PRIMARY

Off-Line:

• Anthologies:

  • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989. 

  • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984. 
• Edited Works:
  • William Wordsworth: The Prelude, 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and Reception.  Ed. Abrams, Jonathan Wordsworth, and Stephen Gill.  New York: Norton, 1979.
  • English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism.  Oxford: OUP, 1975.
  • Wordsworth: a Collection of Critical Essays.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.
  • The Norton Anthology of English Literature.  New York: Norton, 1962.
  • Literature and Belief.  1958.
• Selected Individual Works:
  • "On Political Readings of Lyrical Ballads."  Lecture, 1987-1988. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  364-391.
  • "Theories of Poetry."  Princeton Handbook of  Poetry and Poetics.  Ed. Alex Preminger.  Princeton: Princeton UP, 1986.  639-649. 
    • Rpt. as "Types and Orientations of Critical Theories."  Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  3-30.
  • "From Addison to Kant: Modern Aesthetics and the Exemplary Art."  Eighteenth Century British Art and Aesthetics.  Ed. Ralph Cohen.  Berkeley: U of California P, 1985. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  159-187.
  • "Construing and Deconstructing."  Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism.  Ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1986. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  297-332.
  • "Art-as-Such: the Sociology of Modern Aesthetics."  Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 38 (1985): 8-33. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  135-158.
  • "How to Do Things with Texts."  Partisan Review 46 (1979): 566-588. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  269-296.
    • Critical Theory Since 1965.  Ed. Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle.  Tallahassee: UP of Florida, 1986.  436-451.
  • "The Deconstructive Angel."  Critical Inquiry 3 (1977): 423-438. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  237-252.
  • "Rationality and Imagination in Cultural History."  Critical Inquiry 2 (1976): 447-464. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  113-134.
    • Critical Understanding: the Powers and Limits of Pluralism.  By Wayne C. Booth.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.  176-194. 
  • "Coleridge and the Romantic Vision of the World."  Coleridge's Variety: Bicentenary Studies.  Ed. John Beer.  London: Macmillan, 1974. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  192-224.
  • "Coleridge's 'A Light in Sound': Science, Metascience and Poetic Imagination."  Proceedinigs of the American Philosohical Society 116 (1972): 458-476. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  158-191.
  • "Two Roads to Wordsworth."  Wordsworth: a Collection of Critical Essays.  Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1972.  1-11. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  145-157.
  • "What's the Use of Theorising About the Arts?"  In Search of Literary Theory.  Ed. Morton W. Bloomfield.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1972.  2-54. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  31-72.
  • Natural Supernaturalism: Tradition and Revolution in Romantic Literature.  New York: Norton, 1971.
  • "Coleridge, Baudelaire and Modernist Poetics."  Immanente Asthetik Reflexion: Lyrik als Paradigma der Moderne.  Ed. Wolfgang Iser.  Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1966.  113-138. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  109-144.
  • "Structure and Style in the Greater Romantic Lyric."  From Sensibility to Romanticism.  Ed. Frederick W. Hilles and Harold Bloom.  Oxford: OUP, 1965.  527-560. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  76-108.
  • "English Romanticism: the Spirit of the Age."  Romanticism Reconsidered: Selected Papers of the English Institute.  Ed. Northrop Frye.  New York: Columbia UP, 1963.  26-72. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  44-75.
  • "Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism."  University of Toronto Quarterly 28 (1959): 190-196. 
    • Doing Things With Texts: Essays in Criticism and Critical Theory.  Ed. Michael Fischer.  New York: Norton, 1989.  223-233.
  • "The Correspondent Breeze: a Romantic Metaphor."  Kenyon Review 19 (1957): 113-130. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  25-43.
    • Revised version in English Romantic Poets: Modern Essays in Criticism.  Oxford: OUP, 1975.  37-54. 
  • "Wordsworth and Coleridge on Diction and Figures." English Institute Essays 1952.  Ed. Alan S. Downer.  New York: Columbia UP, 1954.  171-201. 
    • The Correspondent Breeze: Essays in English Romanticism.  New York: Norton, 1984.  3-24.
  • The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition.  Oxford: OUP, 1953.
    • "Orientation of Critical Theories."  Twentieth Century Literary Theory: an Introductory Anthology.  Ed. Vassilis Lambropoulos and David Neal Miller.  Albany: SUNY Press, 1986.  3-31.
  • A Glossary of Literary Terms.  New York: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson, 1941.  [revised several times since]

On-Line:

• Archives:

  •  

• Selected Individual Works:

  • The Correspondent Breeze: a Romantic Metaphor (1957)

SOURCES: SECONDARY

Off-Line:

• Anthologies:

  • Lipking, Lawrence, ed.  High Romantic Argument: Essays for M. H. Abrams.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.

• Selected Individual Works:

  • Booth, Wayne C.  "M. H. Abrams: History as Criticism and the Plurality of Histories."  Critical Inquiry 2 (1976): 411-445. 

    • Rpt in Critical Understanding: the Powers and Limits of Pluralism.  Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1979.  139-175.

  • Culler, Jonathan.  "The Mirror Stage."  High Romantic Argument: Essays for M. H. Abrams.  Ed. Lawrence Lipking.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.

    • The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction.  Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981.  155-168.

On-Line:

• Aloi, Daniel: Abrams Delivers Poetry as a High Art of Human Expression Cornell Chronicle July 17, 2008

• Bialostosky, Don: M. H. Abrams (Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism)

• Donadio, Rachel: Keeper of the Canon New York Times Book Review January 8, 2006

• Gomathy, R.: M. H. Abrams Orientation of Critical Theories: an Overview

• Kain, D.: Abrams, Orientation of Critical Theories

• Wikipedia Encyclopedia: M. H. Abrams

• Williams, Jeffrey J.: M. H. Abrams: a Life in Criticism Chronicle of Higher Education April 18, 2008 (or here)

PHILWEB was last updated: October 15, 2009

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