The Critical Twilight (Routledge Revivals) Explorations in the Ideology of Anglo-American Literary Theory from Eliot to McLuhan

First published in 1977, this book was the first to map extensively the ideological typography of the Anglo-American tradition of literary theory. It interrogates, comprehensively and in detail, the assumptions and categorical development within critical ideas from I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot, through John Crowe Ransom and the New Criticism, to Northrop Frye and Marshall NcLuhan. This analysis reveals the Anglo-American tradition of literary-cultural theory is most properly intelligible within the overall field of social consciousness as an ideology of progressive cultural rationalization. Against a background of ideological development since nineteenth-century Romanticism, John Fekete illuminates the boundaries of literary ideology in relation to the shapes and changes of modern culture and society.

Foreword by Raymond Williams; Preface; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Part I: General Introduction Structures and Genesis 1. Nineteenth-Century Problematics 2. Foundations of Modern Critical Theory 3. Paradigm in Motion; Part II: John Crowe Ransom The Critical Theory of Defensive Reaction 4. Introduction to John Crowe Ransom 5. Fugitive and Post-Fugitive 6. Agrarianism 7. New Criticism 8. Conclusion to Ransom; Part III: Northrop Frye The Critical Theory of Capitulation 9. Mythological Structuralism; Part IV: Marshall McLuhan The Critical Theory of Counterrevolution 10. Introduction to McLuhan 11. Three Phases of Development 12. Technocratic ideology of One-Dimensionality 13. Conclusion to McLuhan; Part V: General Conclusion Struggle 14. Politics of Cultural Ideology; Appendices; Notes; Selected Bibliography; Index

John Fekete