ABSTRACT
Critics who defended the poem as a cultural document had first to correct the indiscriminate attack upon the eighteenth century. But in countering the developmental theory, such critics continued to disregard the aesthetic values of the poem, often arguing that these were irrelevant. By adhering to quantitative historical studies, critics were sometimes led to the individuality of poets and their distinctive uses of shared content and vocabulary. Thus in opposition to the poem as document critics began to re-examine the expression of ideas and the meaning of the literary as distinct from other kinds of the history. The associationist critics accepted two sources for popularity: the extensive associations of a poem (defined quantitatively) and the transmission of such associations. Other critics argued that the popularity of the poem lay in its capacity to lead men to the knowledge and action.
