The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism

Volume 1 of The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism focuses on criticism in the Classical period up to about A.D. 325. This first survey examines the beginnings of critical consciousness in Greece including the functions of poetry and the role of poets in early Greek society and continues with authoritative discussion of the critical writings of Aristophanes Plato Aristotle and Hellenistic scholars. It examines Roman figures including Horace Cicero Quintilian and Tacitus and also considers Greek critics of the Augustan and imperial periods such as Longinus and the neo-platonic Christian and grammatical writers of later antiquity.