Gary Day has made a thought-provoking and highly readable contribution to one of the most difficult categories of critical writing: a history of literary criticism.... There is a great treasure trove of curiosities here, economically expressed, which really adds to the great pleasure of reading this book
The volume makes widely available some important scholarship on the canonical texts of ancient rhetoric and poetics. While there are numerous studies of general trends in classical criticism, this collection offers direct discussions of primary sources, which provide a useful companion to the Russell and Winterbottom anthology, Ancient Literary Criticism.
Ancient Literary Criticism: The Principal Texts in New Translations
Ancient literary criticism has always been a particularly inaccessible subject for the non-specialist student. This edition provides for the first time the principal texts in translation, giving the reader a full view of ancient literary criticism and its development.
In her Introduction, Penelope Murray compares and contrasts the viewpoints of these formidable critics as well as their impact on the Western tradition. This edition also includes a new bibliography and chronology and comprehensive notes to each of the texts.
This collection of new essays addresses a topic of established and expanding critical interest throughout the humanities. It demonstrates that genre matters in a manner not constrained by disciplinary boundaries and includes new work on Genre Theory and applications of thinking about genre from Aristotle to Derrida and beyond.
