LITERARY THEORY READING LIST

Hazard Adams, ed. Critical Theory Since Plato (Adams)
Hazard Adams and Leroy Searle, eds.  Critical Theory Since 1965 (Adams and Searle)
Vincent Leitch, et al., eds. Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism (Leitch)

ANCIENT (CLASSICAL)

Plato (c.427 - c.347 BCE):

• Ion

• The Republic Book X [pp. 31-38 in Adams; pp. 67-80 in Leitch; or chs. xxxv, xxxvi, xxxvii of Cornford translation]

Aristotle (c.384 - c.322 BCE):

• Poetics [pp. 50-66 in Adams; pp. 90-117 in Leitch]

Quintus Horatius Flaccus [Horace] (65 BCE - 8 BCE):

• Art of Poetry [pp. 68-74 in Adams; pp. 124-135 in Leitch]

'Longinus' (1st Century CE):

• On the Sublime [pp. 76-98 in Adams; pp. 138-154 in Leitch]

Plotinus (204 - 270 CE):

• Enneads [pp. 100-106 in Adams; pp. 174-178 in Leitch]

MEDIEVAL

St. Augustine (354 - 430):

• On Christian Doctrine (396-426) [pp.108-113 in Adams; pp. 188-192 in Leitch]

St. Thomas Aquinas (1225 - 1274):

• Summa Theologiae (1256-1272): The Nature and Domain of Sacred Doctrine [pp.117-119 in Adams; pp. 243-246 in Leitch]

Dante Alighieri (1265 - 1321):

• "Letter to Can Grande Della Scala" (1318) [pp. 120-121 in Adams; pp. 251-252 in Leitch]

• "The Banquet" (1304-8) [pp. 121-122 in Adams; pp. 249-251 in Leitch]

EARLY MODERN

Renaissance:

Lodovico Castelvetro (1505 - 1571):

• The Poetics of Aristotle (1570) [pp. 135-141 in Adams]

Sir Philip Sidney (1554 - 1586):

• An Apology for Poetry (1583; 1595) [pp. 143-162 in Adams; pp. 326-263 in Leitch]

17th and 18th Century:

Pierre Corneille (1606 - 1684):

• "Of the Three Unities" (1660) [pp. 206-212 in Adams; pp. 367-378 in Leitch]

John Dryden (1631 - 1700):

• An Essay of Dramatic Poesy (1668) [pp. 214-140 in Adams; pp. 381-383 in Leitch]

Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636 - 1711):

• The Art of Poetry (1674) [pp. 242-252 in Adams]

Joseph Addison (1672 - 1719):

• Selections from The Spectator (1711-1712) [pp. 284-288 in Adams; pp. 419-425 in Leitch]

Edward Young (1683 - 1765):

• Conjectures on Original Composition (1759) [pp. 329-337 in Adams; pp. 427-437 in Leitch]

Alexander Pope (1688 - 1744):

• Essay on Criticism (1711) [pp. 274-282 in Adams; pp. 441-457 in Leitch]

Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784):

• Preface to Shakespeare (1765) [pp. 320-327 in Adams; pp. 468-480 in Leitch]
• "On Fiction" (1750) [pp. 317-319 in Adams; pp. 462-466 in Leitch]

David Hume (1711 - 1776):

• Of the Standard of Taste (1757) [pp. 307-315 in Adams; pp. 486-498 in Leitch]

Joshua Reynolds (1723 - 1792):

• Discourses on Art (1769-1790) [pp. 343-363 in Adams]

Immanuel Kant (1724 - 1804):

• Critique of Judgment (1790) [pp. 376-393 in Adams; pp. 504-535 in Leitch]

Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797):

• A Philosophical Enquiry into our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) [pp. 299-306 in Adams; pp. 539-550 in Leitch]

NINETEENTH CENTURY

Romanticisms and Neo-Romanticisms:

Johann Gottfried Herder (1744 - 1803):

• "Shakespeare" (1773) [pp. 291-307 in his Selected Writings on Aesthetics]

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832):

• Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann (1836) [pp. 530-532 in Adams]

Friedrich Schiller (1759 - 1805):

• "On Naive and Sentimental Poetry" (1795-1796)

• Letters Upon the Aesthetic Education Of Man (1795) [pp. 416-427 in Adams; pp. 573-582 in Leitch]

• "On the Sublime" (1793)

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768 - 1834):

• ""Outline of the 1819 Lectures" (1819) [pp. 613-626 in Leitch]

G. W. F. Hegel (1770 - 1831):

• Aesthetics (1820s; 1835): Introduction [pp. 533-545 in Adams; pp. 636-644 in Leitch]

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850):

• "Preface to Lyrical Ballads" (1800) [pp. 437-446 in Adams; pp. 648-667 in Leitch]

Friedrich von Schlegel (1772 - 1829):

• Lectures on the History of Literature, Ancient and Modern (1812): Lectures 1, 12

• "On Incomprehensibility" (1800) [pp. 434-435 in Adams]

• "Athenaeum Fragments" (1798) [pp. 432-434 in Adams]

• "Critical Fragments" (1797) [pp. 429-432 in Adams]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834):

• "Shakespeare's Judgment Equal to his Genius" (1836) [pp. 469-471 in Adams]

• "On Poesy or Art" (1818) []

• Biographia Literaria (1817) [pp. 476-480 in Adams; pp. 674-681 in Leitch]

• The Statesman's Manual: Symbol and Allegory (1816) [p. 476 in Adams; pp. 672-674 in Leitch]

• "On the Principles of Genial Criticism" (1814) [pp. 471-476 in Adams]

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775 - 1854):

• "On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature" (1807) [pp. 457-467 in Leitch]

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860):

• The World as Will and Idea (1818) [pp. 496-507 in Adams]

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 - 1822):

• "A Defence of Poetry" (1821) [pp. 516-529 in Adams; pp. 699-716 in Leitch]

John Keats (1795 - 1821):

• Letters (1817-1818) [pp. 493-494 in Adams]

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882):

• "The Poet" (1842-1843) [pp. 557-566 in Adams; pp. 724-239 in Leitch]

Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve (1804 - 1869):

• "What is a Classic?" (1850) [pp. 567-573 in Adams]

Charles Baudelaire (1821 - 1867):

• "The Painter of Modern Life" (1863) [pp. 792-801 in Leitch]

• "Le Salon de 1859" (1859) [pp. 622-623 in Adams]

Hippolyte Taine (1828 - 1893):

• History of English Literature: "Introduction" (1863-1864) [pp. 609-620 in Adams]

Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 - 1911):

• "The Understanding of Other Persons and their Life-expressions" (1901-1911; 1926)

• "The Rise of Hermeneutics" (1900)

• "The Imagination of the Poet: Elements for a Poetics" (1887)

• "On Understanding and Hermeneutics" (1867-1868) 

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 - 1900):

• The Birth of Tragedy Out of the Spirit of Music (1872) [pp. 629-634 in Adams; pp. 884-895 in Leitch]

'Victorian':

John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873):

• "What is Poetry?" (1833) [pp. 551-556 in Adams]

Théophile Gautier (1811 - 1872):

• "Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin" (1835) [pp. 753-759 in Leitch]

Matthew Arnold (1822 - 1888):

• "The Study of Poetry" (1880) [pp. 603-607 in Adams]

• Culture and Anarchy (1867-1868):

  • "Sweetness and Light" [pp. 825-832 in Leitch]

  • "Hebraism and Hellenism"

• "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time" (1864) [pp. 592-603 in Adams; pp. 806-825 in Leitch]

• Poems: "Preface" (1853) [pp. 586-592 in Adams]

Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910):

• "What is Art?" (1898) [pp. 679-690 in Adams]

Walter Pater (1839 - 1894):

• Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873): Preface and Conclusion [pp. 640-643 in Adams; pp. 833-841 in Leitch]

Emile Zola (1840 - 1902):

• "The Experimental Novel" (1880) [pp. 645-655 in Adams]

Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 - 1898):

• "Crisis in Poetry" (1896) [pp. 841-851 in Leitch]

• "Mystery in Literature" (1896) [pp. 676-678 in Adams]

• "The Book: a Spiritual Instrument" (1895) [pp. 674-676 in Adams]

Henry James (1843 - 1916):

• "The Art of Fiction" (1884) [pp. 855-869 in Leitch]

Anatole France (1844 - 1924):

• "The Adventures of the Soul" (1888-1893) [p. 656 in Adams]

Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900):

• "Preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1891) [p. 891 in Leitch]

• "The Critic as Artist" (1890) [pp. 900-912 in Leitch]

• "The Decay of Lying" (1889) [pp. 657-670 in Adams]

TWENTIETH CENTURY