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PARTISAN REVIEW
relatedness and separateness. That we love others to the extent that they
resemble the projections of our imagination need not trouble us if our
imaginations are worth anything, since respect for the imagination and
respect for the beloved illuminate each other and work in identical ways,
neither quite reduced to the other. This is one of the things that Stevens
may have meant when his "more harassing master" told him that the
theory of poetry is the theory of life. Certainly the endless imaginative
restlessness of Hollander's poetry is not only about love but of it.
JOHN BURT
A
Yellow Pages
of Theory and Criticism
THE JOHNS HOPKINS GUIDE TO LITERARY THEORY AND
CRITICISM. Edited
by
Michael Groden and Martin Kreiswirth.
Johns
Hopkins University Press. S6S.00.
In this era of budgetary belt-tightening and university press downsiz–
ing,
The Johns Hopkins Gllide to Literary Theory al1d Criticism
is a surpris–
ingly ambitious undertaking. Many years in the planning and execution,
drawing on the financial support of two major institutions (the Johns
Hopkins Press and the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism at
the University of W estern Ontario), the advice of scores of academics,
and the writing of two hundred and one scholars, it aspires to be noth–
ing less than an overview of all of literary criticism in all cultures and
times (with understandable emphasis on the developments of the present
century). The result is a massive, double-columned Yellow Pages of lit
crit. If it falls alphabetically between Abrams and Zola, historically
between Plato and postmodernism, intellectually between Aristotle and
feminism, or geogrpahcally between Japanese Theory and Criticism and
Caribbean, you can probably find it here.
One of the problems with a work from many hands, however, is the
inevitable unevenness of the result. While some of the entries are superb
(Richard Macksey on Longinus, Richard Shusterman on John Dewey
and Richard Rorty, Martin Kreiswirth on Henry James), many are merely
pedestrian
O.
Douglas Kneale on Wordsworth), and a few are down–
right embarrassing (Vicki Mahaffey on Modernist Theory and Criticism).
