In the twentieth century, literature was under threat. Not only was there the challenge of new forms of oral and visual culture. Even literary education and literary criticism could sometimes actually distance novels, poems and plays from their potential audience. This is the trend which Roger D. Sell now seeks to reverse. Arguing that literature can still be a significant and democratic channel of human interactivity, he sees the most helpful role of teachers and critics as one of mediation. Through their own example they can encourage readers to empathize with otherness, to recognize the historical achievement of significant acts of writing, and to respond to literary authors’ own faith in communication itself. By way of illustration, he offers major re-assessments of five canonical figures (Vaughan, Fielding, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, and Frost), and of two fascinating twentieth-century writers who were somewhat misunderstood (the novelist William Gerhardie and the poet Andrew Young).
Table of contents
Introduction
1
Part I: Empathizing
Summary
33
1. William Gerhardie’s Chekhovism
35
2. Andrew Young’s poetic secretion
57
Part II: Recognizing achievement
Summary
103
3. The impoliteness of The Waste Land
107
4. Henry Vaughan’s unexpectedness
139
5. Decorum versus indecorum in Dombey and Son
165
6. Robert Frost’s hiding and altering
195
Part III: Responding to hopefulness
Summary
215
7. Robert Frost and childhood
217
8. The pains and pleasures of David Copperfield
263
9. Fielding’s reluctant naturalism
291
Epilogue: Mediating critics and common [sic] readers [sic]