Volume 14, Number 5 · March 12, 1970
Anaesthetic Criticism: II
By Frederick C. Crews
The answer to the question whether it is anti-humanistic to look outside literature for principles of literary understanding must be a further question: What is meant by humanism? The humanism that purports to defend classical and Judaeo-Christian values by cherishing the texts in which those values supposedly reside is indeed jeopardized by extraliterary knowledge, but such a humanism amounts to little more than the confusion of a book list with an education, and its practical results are hardly worth preserving.
Feature, 4263 words
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