Twentieth-Century Humanist Critics: From Spitzer to Frye

276 Pages·2007·2.428 MB·English

by  William Calin

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