ABSTRACT
English language in the twentieth century is that the great majority of these studies were published fairly recently. Though a more analytic approach to literature emerged in the first quarter of the century with the Russian formalists and I A.Richards, it is doubtful whether they would have regarded themselves as theorists of literature in the modern sense. It is more likely that they would have seen themselves as establishing critical principles. It is only in the last studies. 25 years or so that theory has become a major force in literary
WELLEK and WARREN’s study is one of the few books on critical theory published more than 40 years ago. Wellek’s role is the dominant one. He came to the United States from Europe and had been associated with the Prague structuralist school. He brought this background into contact with American New Criticism, and the outcome of that meeting is Theory of Literature. Warren was a more orthodox New Critic. After discussing questions such as the nature of literature, they split literary criticism into the “extrinsic” and the “intrinsic” approach, the former dealing with literature’s relation to such things as biography and society, and the latter concentrating on the formal aspect of literature. Wellek and Warren attempt to justify in theoretical terms the New Criticism’s
emphasis on form and internal coherence, though there is an awareness of the semioticthe work of art as “a structure of signs”—that looks forward to structuralist approaches.
