October 1, 1950
IV. The Verbal Analysis
When I was asked by letter to contribute to the symposium from Peking, my first impulse was to say that I didn’t believe in having any Credo; a critic ought […]
October 1, 1950
I. Toward An Amateur Criticism
Looking back over my own brief critical practice, I find that it has been rather consistently based on presuppositions fashionably called “obscurantist.” Though not always consciously, I have been searching […]
October 1, 1950
II. The Critic as Man of Feeling
At the basis is pathos. Sympathy and empathy—feeling with and feeling into: these are the essential psycho-physical processes without which all criticism is null and dull. It follows from this […]
October 1, 1950
III. Art, Nature, Politics
I derive no doctrines about literature, or about anything else, from within literature itself, beyond the most conventional ideas of grammar, syntax, and style. My literary principles I mostly derive […]