Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye PDF
Preview Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye
THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY HUMANIST CRITICS: FROM SPITZER TO FRYE The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics revisits the work and place of eight scholars roughly contemporary with Anglo-American New Criticism: Leo Spitzer, Ernst Robert Curtius, Erich Auerbach, Albert Béguin, Jean Rousset, C.S. Lewis, F.O. Matthiessen, and Northrop Frye. First, William Calin considers the achievements of each critic, examining their meth- odologies and basic presuppositions as well as the critiques marshalled against them. Calin then explores their relation to history, to canon- formation, and to current theoretical debates. He goes on to show how these eight scholars form a current in the history of criticism, a current that is related to both humanism and modernism. Underscoring the international, cosmopolitan aspects of literary schol- arship in the last century, The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics discusses humanist critical traditions from Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America, and reveals the surprising extent to which, across vari- ous languages and academic systems, critics posed similar questions and arrived at a wealth of complementary responses. WILLIAM CALIN is a graduate research professor in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Florida. This page intentionally left blank The Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye WILLIAM CALIN UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com ©University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN 978-0-8020-9283-0 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-8020-9475-9 (paper) Printed on acid-free paper Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Calin, Wiliam The twentieth-century humanist critics: from Spitzer to Frye/William Calin. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8020-9283-0 (bound) – ISBN 978-0-8020-9475-9 (pbk.) 1. Criticism – History – 20thcentury. 2. Critics. 3.Humanism – History – 20thcentury. I. Title. PN94.C35 2007 801'.950904 C2007-904953-2 University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 3 PART ONE 1 Leo Spitzer; or, How to Read a Text 15 2 The Continuity of Western Literature: Ernst Robert Curtius 29 3 The Evolution of Western Literature: Erich Auerbach 43 4 Albert Béguin and the Origins of Literary Modernism 57 5 Academic Criticism at Its Best: Jean Rousset 70 6 C.S. Lewis and the Discarded Image of the Middle Ages and Renaissance 85 7 The Search for an American Usable Past: F.O. Matthiessen 101 8 Northrop Frye’s Totalizing Vision: The Order of Words 118 PART TWO 9 Discussion 141 vi Contents Notes 185 Bibliography 221 Index 249 Acknowledgments I wish to thank friends and colleagues who, over the years, offered encouragement and support for this book. They are medievalists, vingtiémistes including those active in the International Colloquia on Twentieth and Twenty-first Century French Studies, the pioneers in the International Society for Studies in Medievalism, and comrades from all over. The list is long yet terribly incomplete: Thelma Fenster, who gave me the idea, and Ron Akehurst, Alex Alberro, Nora Alter, Barbara Altmann, Andrés Avellaneda, Philip Bennett, Françoise Calin, Frédéric Canovas, Bill Cloonan, Frank Collins, Steve Durrant, David Ellison, Franz Futterknecht, Martine Guyot, Pat Henry, Otto Johnston, Sarah Kay, Dragan Kujundzic, Brian Merrilees, Gwen Morgan, Geraldine Nichols, Rupert Pickens, Gina Psaki, Peter Schakel, Helen Solterer, David Staines, Richard Utz, Kathleen Verduin, Timmie Vitz, Mary Watt, and the late, great Leslie Workman. In 2000 I was a Fellow at the Northrop Frye Centre, University of Toronto, and in 2004–5 a Fellow at the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, also University of Toronto. Those two centres and the University of Florida Research Foundation contributed enormously to the elaboration of this project. I wish to express gratitude to the anonymous readers for the Univer- sity of Toronto Press, to my editors at the Press – Ron Schoeffel, Jill McConkey, and Barb Porter – and to Ruth Pincoe, who copyedited, read proof, and made the index. And special thanks to my graduate student research assistants Rachel Hart, Kate Hunter, Jaime O’Dell, Barbara Petrosky, and Giovanna Summerfield. This page intentionally left blank THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY HUMANIST CRITICS: FROM SPITZER TO FRYE
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