Austin Warren - Theory of Literature

With René Wellek, Warren authored the landmark classic Theory of Literature in 1944-46, an influential and comprehensive analysis of the American New Criticism movement. According to Wellek, the work was written with the idea between Warren and himself that “we should rather combine our forces to produce a book which would formulate a theory of literature with an emphasis on the aesthetic fact which cannot be divorced from evaluation and hence from criticism.”

Wellek contributed insights he acquired from his familiarities with Russian formalism, the Prague Linguistic Circle, the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden, and the movements of German Geistesgeschichte and stylistics. Warren’s contributions to the work stemmed from his knowledge of American New Criticism, aesthetics, and the history of criticism. Harcourt, Brace and Company published Theory of Literature in December 1948 with an imprint of 1949, and at the time of the publication of Teacher & Critic: Essays by and about Austin Warren, it had been translated into eighteen languages (Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, German, Portuguese, Hebrew, Danish, Serbocroat, modern Greek, Swedish, Rumanian, Finnish, Hindi, Norwegian, Polish, French, and Hungarian, in order).

The work encompasses "definitions and distinctions" of the natures and functions of literature; literary theory, criticism, and history; and general, comparative, and national literature. Warren and Wellek discuss an extrinsic approach to the study of literature involving approaching literature from perspectives of biography, psychology, society, ideas, and other arts. Theory of Literature also discusses an intrinsic approach to studying literature, discussing the use of devices such as euphony, rhythm, meter, stylistics, imagery, metaphor, symbols, and myth. The work concludes with a discussion of literary genres, history, and the study of literature in the graduate school.

Since its publication, Terence B. Spencer, a former Director of the Shakespeare Institute at University of Birmingham, has testified that it “broke our resistance to literary concepts and woke us from our lethargy.” Allen Tate has professed that “Theory of Literature has done more towards civilizing the teaching of literature than any other work of our time.”