Contents 3
British Literary Criticism 3
Sir Philip Sidney(1554—1586) 3
The Defence of Poesy(5 Excerpts) 5
John Dryden(1631—1700) 24
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy(3 Excerpts) 26
Alexander Pope(1688—1744) 36
An Essay on Criticism(Excerpt:Part 2) 38
Samuel Johnson(1709—1784) 57
The Preface to Shakespeare(2 Excerpts) 60
William Wordsworth(1770—1850) 79
Preface to Lyrical Ballads(3 Excerpts) 81
Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772—1834) 103
Biographia Literaria(Excerpt) 105
Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792—1822) 116
A Defence of Poetry(2 Excerpts) 118
Matthew Arnold(1822—1888) 143
The Function of Criticism at the Present Time(2 Excerpts) 146
Oscar Wilde(1854—1900) 173
Preface to the Picture of Dorian Gray 175
The Decay of Lying 177
Edward Morgan Forster(1879—1970) 221
Aspects of the Novel(Excerpt) 223
Virginia Woolf(1882—1941) 239
Modern Fiction 241
Ivor Armstrong Richards(1893—1979) 253
Practical Criticism(Excerpt) 255
American Literary Criticism 267
Ralph Waldo Emerson(1803—1882) 267
The Poet 269
Edgar Allan Poe(1809—1849) 299
The Philosophy of Composition 301
Henry James(1843—1916) 318
The Art of Fiction 320
Thomas Stearns Eliot(1888—1965) 348
Tradition and the Individual Talent 350
Meyer Howard Abrams(1912— ) 363
The Mirror and the Lamp(Excerpt from Chapter 1) 366
Susan Sontag(1933— ) 405
Against Interpretation 407