Past Significance and Present Meaning in Literary History

OVER the last 30 years the critique of the historical method has, in the West, achieved considerable dimensions, but perhaps the time has now come to re-assess the nature and the object of this critique, and from there to proceed to some re-appraisal of the possibilities and limitations of literary history. If, in the United States, the historical study of literature is to achieve a new sense of direction and purpose, it must first be prepared to face (with all that this implies) the full extent of the crisis of its discipline. This crisis is in many ways a symptom of the larger crisis of western society, in which the revolutionary idea of change, organic and dialectical concepts of evolution, and the liberal and humanist traditions of progress are all, in various degrees, affected. In recent years the consciousness of this wider background of crisis seems once more to be gaining ground, and perhaps the conjecture may be hazarded that a new interest in historical method can only benefit from an awareness of its present background. Such awareness may indeed facilitate the first steps towards re-opening, in the realm of literary history, the

Art · Epistemology · History of literature · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Historical and Literary Studies · History · Philosophy · Philosophy, History, and Historiography

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