Romance and realism : a study in English bourgeois literature / by Christopher Caudwell ; edited by Samuel Hynes.

Includes index.

This item does not include a table of contents.

"Christopher Caudwell was the pseudonym of Christophe St. John Sprigg, a British journalist and professional writer who became an important philosopher and critic in the 1930's, author or Illusion and Reality and Studies in a Dying Culture. In the mid-thirties Caudwell joined the Communist Party: he died in 1937 in the defense of Madrid, leaving the Manuscript of Romance and Realism unpublished. This short but comprehensive book is a Marxist interpretation of English literature from Shakespeare to Spender. The author follows the course of English history- from the end of feudalism through the age of exploration, the rise of the common man, industrialization, science- producing his particular synthesis of literature as a subjective experience (romance) and as a response to society (realism). The major writers and movements of English literature are discussed, often with brilliant observations. Romance and Realism is important as Marxist criticism, as a reflection of the acrid definitions of the writers of the thirties (including Auden, Orwell, C. Day Lewis), and as the highly personal view of a talented critic. Samuel Hynes, author of The Edwardian Turn of Mind, has written a critical introduction about this essay and Caudwell's place in English letters." --From the dust jacket.

From the library of Karl and Elizabeth Niebyl.