The Play and Place of Criticism

• The Play and Place of Criticism. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1967.
  Contents:
  Preface:vii-ix.
  

  1. The Play and Place of Criticism:3-16.
     I. The Play of Criticism:17-128.
     
  2. The Innocent Insinuations of Wit: The Strategy of Language in Shakespeare's Sonnets:19-36.
     
  3. The Dark Generations of Richard III: 37-52.
     
  4. The "Frail China Jar" and the Rude Hand of Chaos:53-68.
     
  5. Dover Beach and the Tragic Sense of Eternal Recurrence:69-77.
     
  6. The Marble Faun and the International Theme:79-90.
     
  7. From Youth to Lord Jim: The Formal-Thematic Use of Marlow: 91-104.
     
  8. The Ekphrastic Principle and the Still Movement of Poetry; or, Laokoön Revisited:105-128.
     II. The Place of Criticism:129-251.
     
  9. The Disciplines of Literary Criticism:131-148.
     
  10. Joseph Warren Beach's Modest Appraisal:149-152.
      
  11. Contextualism Was Ambitious:153-164.
      
  12. Contextualism and the Relegation of Rhetoric:165-176.
      
  13. Critical Dogma and the New Critical Historians:177-193.
      
  14. Platonism, Manichaeism, and the Resolution of Tension: A Dialogue: 195-218.
      
  15. Northrop Frye and Contemporary Criticism: Ariel and the Spirit of Gravity: 221-237.
      
  16. The Existential Basis of Contextual Criticism:239-251.

  A volume of collected essays reprinted--occasionally in original form, sometimes slightly revised, sometimes considerably rewritten or supplemented. The essay "The Innocent Insinuations of Wit: The Strategy of Language in Shakespeare's Sonnets," pp. 19-36, appears here for the first time.