Review of Roger Sell's Mediating Criticism: Literary Education Humanized
Language and Literature, Vol. 12, No. 3 pp. 283-85, 2003
4 Pages Posted: 26 Jun 2010
Date Written: 2003
Abstract
In LITERATURE AS COMMUNICATION Roger Sell expounded an extended theory of linguistic politeness and a theory of literature as communicative interaction. Here we find the application to the criticism of poetry and fiction. This companion volume, MEDIATING CRITICISM: LITERARY EDUCATION HUMANIZED is more ‘literary’ than linguistic or theoretical. Sell’s mediating criticism provides a critique and an appropriation of the insights of twentieth-century literature and theory (e.g. the ‘resisting reading’ of political criticism, feminism, or cross-cultural criticism) within an ongoing humanist project, as seen in his vindication of authors’ individualities as relevant elements in criticism. The three sections of the book deal with the three hallmarks of mediating criticism: empathy, recognition of past achievement in its own context, and “a responsiveness to literature’s underlying hopefulness.”
Keywords: Pramatics, Pragmalinguistics, Criticism, Mediation, Humanism, Literary theory, Sell
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