| dc.description.abstract | The purpose of this work is less to define in any narrow way what phenomenological or existential criticism is than to suggest what it may be. The first chapter, describing phenomenology as both an attitude and as a method, suggests the nature of phenomenology as a philosophy. The second chapter demonstrates how such men as lngarden, Duffrenne, Merleau-Ponty, Heidegger, and Sartre have used either the attitude or methods of phenomenology to deal with problems in aesthetics, language, and criticism. The first two chapters are devoted chiefly to characterizing how phenomenological criticism can exist and to what literary uses phenomenology has been put by the descendants of Edmund Husserl. The remainder of this study is concerned with applying the insights into critical technique and aesthetic substance of Husserl and his followers to other problems. Chapter Three investigates the origins and nature of literary genre, Chapter Four attempts to clarify a body of terminology for use as critical criteria. The final chapter, "Convergences and Collisions," places phenomenological and existential criticism in the context of contemporary criticism. Special attention is given to the relationship between the sort of criticism adumbrated here and autotelic criticism, formal criticism, and myth criticism. Because of the secure aesthetic basis of phenomenological criticism, it appears the only critical approach that can reconcile the cacophony of modern criticism by subsuming the various conflicting voices. An appendix, "Browning in the Phenomenal Sphere," has been added in order to demonstrate how certain poetry, The Ring and the Book in this case, ill-suited to conventional approaches, lends itself very readily to the phenomenological attitude. The bibliography includes a selective listing of the major figures and works which are phenomenological or existential in nature. | |
