PREFACE 



JUDGED in terms of sheer literary accomplishment and in- 

 fluence, the career of Hippolyte Taine (1828-1893), leader of 

 the Naturalist movement in French criticism, should repay 

 close attention. As recently as 191 1, one of his American critics 

 could write: *Taine nearly solved the problem of art and so of 

 poetry.' The author of the famous History of English Literature^ 

 Lectures on Art, On Intelligence, and The Origins of Contemporary 

 France — as well as of justly popular travel books and essays on 

 Balzac, La Fontaine, Livy, Saint-Simon, Racine, Stendhal, and a 

 host of others — demands that we take his philosophy seriously, 

 since it bore such opulent fruit. His ideas helped shape the novels 

 of Zola, and the criticism of Brandes and Parrington, among many 

 others; two generations of writers and scholars in Europe and 

 America were more or less under his spell. 



Yet our purpose in this study is not primarily historical. It 

 derives, rather, from the fact that the critic today seems to be 

 confronted with two incompatible goals. On the one hand, he is 

 expected to be an analyst, both textual and historical: the 

 greenest undergraduate is aware of the need for careful explications 

 des textes; for recognition of mythical and symbolic significances, of 

 levels of meaning, of ironic and other complexities of structure; 

 and for knowledge of social and intellectual bacjigrounds. These 

 are commonplaces of literary study in our universities, and they 

 all point in the direction of scholarship which prides itself on 

 the most scrupulous objectivity. On the other hand, the respons- 

 ible, sensitive student of literature and the arts, now more 

 than ever, finds it impossible to escape the need for value judgments. 

 Greatness and mediocrity are ever with us, and the precar- 

 iousness with which civilizations hang in the balance today 

 makes possession of a soundly based, relatively stable, tradition 

 in the humanities seem infinitely precious. Since survival 

 itself is involved, the question of what should be preserved 

 becomes increasingly urgent. Hence the turmoil in critical theory. 



ix 



