The excerpts included in Moulton's Library of Literary Criticism can be used to stimulate thought and to provide a focus for writing assignments. Here are a few possibilities to consider.
1. Investigate the assumptions implied in a particular excerpt. For example, what is the writer assuming (taking for granted) about the role of the writer, the text, the audience, "reality," the critic, or the connections of any or all of these?
2. Compare and contrast the response of an excerpted writer with a more modern, "contemporary" response. For example, how do the responses (and assumptions) of Anna Brownell Jameson about Shakespeare differ from those of contemporary feminists?
3. Focus on an idea suggested in one of the excerpts and trace that idea throughout an entire work. Use the idea as the starting point for a much fuller examination.
4. Compare and contrast the responses of two of the excerpted writers. How, exactly do their responses differ; how are they alike? What larger intellectual differences or similarities do their responses take for granted?
5. Does a particular excerpt strike you as especially valuable or as particularly useless? If so, why?
6. How does a given excerpt reflect the larger intellectual tendencies of the age (or other circumstances) in which the author wrote? How, for instance, are the comments of Coleridge on Shakespeare typical (if at all) of a Romantic thinker?
7. Many of the excerpts are taken from writers who were contemporaries of the writers. Taken together, what do these excerpts reveal about shared habits of mind?
8. Many of the excerpts are taken from many of the same critics (such as Dryden or Johnson or Coleridge). When the excerpts from one of these critics are read in succession, what do they suggest about his or her general ways of thinking?
9. Trace the excerpts to their original sources. How well does the excerpt represent the thought of the original author? Has anything crucial been lost or distorted through the process of excerpting?
10. Are there any continuities among the excerpts? In other words, do the excerpted critics -- despite their various disagreements -- tend to make any of the same larger assumptions?
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