Abstract

that is is not only inevitable but useful to witness a strong reaction against formalism, or contextualism, in the last few years. The attacks come from various quarters; but the argument that has the greatest support, nad the one which I hope to answer in this essay, is that contextualist criticism, by ignoring the moral dimension in literature, removes it from our deepest concerns. Formalist analysis saps man's creative products of their social meaning, and thereby, often, of their spiritual impact, is a key statement from one manifesto of the New