In his 1979 study, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism, Booth argues that there are five ways of approaching novels, or literary texts. The critic James Phelan summarizes these as follows: as an imitation of the world external… Read More ›
In the feverish political climate of the 1930s and 1940s outlined in the introductory section, American critics with left-wing sympathies tubarned James’s disavowal of any direct purpose for the novel against him. They approved of writers such as Theodore Dreiser… Read More ›