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PARTISAN REVIEW
of norms, realized only partially in the actual experience of its many
readers." And so, when they approach the question of evaluation, they
reject both the appeal to absolute and transcendental standards and the
subjectivist surrender of all serious values, and remark: "The valuing
of the poem is the experiencing, the realization, of aesthetically valuable
qualities and relationships structurally present in the poem for any
competent reader." So, again, with the question of genres; they insist,
on the one hand, that "the literary kind is not a mere name," and on the
other deny that "types" and "forms" have the kind of absolute objectivity
they were once alleged to have: "genre should be conceived, we think,
as a grouping of literary works based, theoretically, upon both outer
form ... and also upon inner form." And they wisely recommend that
more attention be given to this question of genres than has recently
been given.
In this flexible and experimental spirit Mr. Wellek and Mr. Warren
deal with almost all the topics they raise. They are concerned throughout
to insist on the sharp individuality of the particular work of literature-–
and on the idiosyncratic character of literature itself as compared with
other human activities-but they rightly deny that individuality means
complete particularity and uniqueness, and that idiosyncrasy means a
transcendental independence of all external relationships. By taking such
a position they can, for example, discuss the question of literary
history
with a suppleness and a cogency that have become rarer and rarer. The
best critical thought of the last twenty or thirty years has been so in–
tensely concentrated on formalistic and verbal analysis that the very con–
cept of literary history might seem to have gone into the discard once
and for all. And not unnaturally, since our very few examples of the type
in this country have been either histories-of-ideas in disguise or histories
of the literary
life
in personal and quasi-fictional form. Yet unless one is
to take the puristic view that the interrelations of literary works have
no real existence, a return to the interest in literary history would seem
well overdue: as these authors remark, a serious literary criticism or
theory of literature
without
history is inconceivable; the three forms
implicate each other at every turn.
Inevitably, in a book devoted to such tough questions, there will
be lapses from perfect coherence and even from real persuasiveness. The
chapter on Literature and Psychology, for example, seems to me the
least satisfactory; the distinction between psychology
in
literature and
psychology
on
literature is not carefully maintained, and more important,
the enormous value and interest that depth psychology has for the
literary student is much understated. Freudian insights have often been
