Focusing on dramatic criticism, this book explores the self authorizing strategies of writers such as Jonson, Dryden, Aphra Behn, Thomas Rymer, Jeremy Collier and Joseph Addison. Cannan focuses on how they established themselves as critics, and paved the way for the birth of dramatic criticism in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England.

This study tries, through a systematic and historical analysis of the concept of critical authority, to write a history of literary criticism from the end of the 17th to the end of the 18th century that not only takes the discursive construction of its (self)representation into account, but also the social and economic conditions of its practice. It tries to consider the whole of the critical discourse on literature and criticism in the time period covered. Thus, it is distinctive through its methodology (there is no systematic account of the historical development of critical authority and no discussion of the institutionalization of criticism of such a scope), its material of analysis (most of the many hundred texts self-reflexively commenting on criticism that are discussed here have been so far virtually ignored) and through its results, a complex history of criticism in the 18th century that is neither reductive nor the accumulation of isolated aspects or author figures, but that probes into the very nature of the activity of criticism. The aim of this study is both to provide a thorough historical understanding of the emergence of criticism and as a consequence an understanding of the inner workings and power relations that structure criticism to this day.

Focusing on dramatic criticism, this book explores the self authorizing strategies of writers such as Jonson, Dryden, Aphra Behn, Thomas Rymer, Jeremy Collier and Joseph Addison. Cannan focuses on how they established themselves as critics, and paved the way for the birth of dramatic criticism in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century England.

Originally published in 1947, this volume reviews the critical achievement at the Renaissance. It discusses the ideas of literature then current in England, as revealed in contemporary theorizing and judgments. The period has sometimes been dismissed as lacking great critics, and the critical works themselves have been described as elementary and remote, but, as this work shows, viewed in the light of what came before and after, those texts will be found to be of considerable interest and possess intrinsic and historical value. This book charts the course of the movement and the main findings and their significance in critical history. There is an emphasis to show the part payed by the medieval tradition, with its inheritance of post-classical and patristic doctrine; the lead given by 15th Century Italian and other Humanists and the no less important attempts of independent native writers to work out new artistic and dramatic theory of their own.

A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance is a book by Joel Elias Spingarn. It focuses on the impact of Italy in the development and expansion of modern classicism.

Philip Smallwood celebrates the emotional power and enduring wisdom of Samuel Johnson's literary criticism, showing how the abyss of the heart informs its powerful life. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

An essay examining the history of literary criticism in the Renaissance, with a focus on the sixteenth century. Divided into three sections devoted to: Italian criticism from Dante to Tasso, French criticism from Du Bellay to Boileau, and English criticism from Ascham to Milton.