Critical forms : forms of literary criticism, 1750-2020
(Book)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"Critical Forms is an account of the generic forms in which literary criticism has been undertaken. It examines chiefly Anglophone literary criticism, with comparative discussion of French and German material, from around 1750 to the present and examines prefaces, selections and anthologies, reviews, lectures, dialogues, letters, and life-writing. Though not intended to be an exhaustive history of the period, Critical Forms begins in the mid-eighteenth century with the emergence of something like the forms (chiefly, the essay and the treatise) in which criticism is still predominantly practised. Critical Forms harbours the hope that it will make available a wider array of forms for the practice of literary criticism today; it is this hope that licenses its own experiments in critical form." --,Publisher's description.