Lansdown (English James Cook U., Cairns) generally agrees with the recent consensus among English-speaking academics that history and culture are the primary focus of literature, and should therefore be that of literary criticism as well. It is true, he says, that literature cannot find autonomy in some Platonic literary essence, but that does not mean it has no autonomy at all. He argues that literature is not the passive recipient of institutional influence, but an active means of comprehending and transforming it. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
In the aftermath of the theory wars, the imaginative, formal, and moral features of literature have been substantially marginalized, downgraded, and neglected. Yet for many readers such elements will always be central to the experience of reading, just as for writers they are central to the experience of writing. This provocative study argues that literature has an abundant life of its own, and reconsiders that life in the contexts provided by three influential contemporary groups of critics: some North American philosophers; some psychoanalysts; and some theorists of history.
