Looking upon literary theory as a bridge between literature and philosophy, this selection brings into focus literary theory's major issues and concerns -- reality and its literary representation, the creative, the language of representation, forms of enactment, modes of literary meaning, the epistemic value of literature and the role of 'author' and of 'reader'. In the texts of classical theorists -- Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Longinus -- all these major issues are found conceptualised. Subsequent literary criticism in the West is either explicating these concepts or the Greek masters whose work is the backdrop for classical theories. In the Same tradition, the English literary criticism, evaluates these classical formulations and practices in relation to the developing and increasingly assertive English ('vernacular') literature , remaining rooted in the classical thought , and deriving there from its analytical apparatus. But at the same time it records the assertion of national identity, the liberation of the English mind from the tyranny of classical rules and practices and of the European, particularly French, models.
The selected texts have been commented upon to foreground the recurrent issues and assumptions, and the short essays on major theorists and thinkers review their principles and their place in the history of ideas.
These selections and their discussions have originated in the class room and therefore have a pedagogic foundation and value.