The Constitution of Literature

Description:

"The Constitution of Literature challenges the prevailing understanding of the relationship between literature and democracy during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when both literature and democracy were acquiring their modern forms. Against the heroic story of criticism shaping the modern public sphere as recounted by Habermas and his followers, this study explores how different resistances to democratized reading preoccupied the thinking of the major English literary critics of the time. By paying attention to how critics participated in a debate over theories of reading - its processes for acquiring meaning from the page, its psychological and social effects on individuals, and its diffusion across the population - the book offers a new understanding of the political history of early literary criticism."--Jacket.

subjects: Books and reading,  Criticism,  English literature,  History,  History and criticism,  Philosophy,  Political aspects,  Political aspects of Books and reading,  Political aspects of Criticism,  Theory,  Criticism, great britain,  English literature, history and criticism

Places: Great Britain

Times: 17th century,  18th century