Encyclopaedia of Literary Criticism

Literary criticism has probably existed for as long as literature. Aristotle wrote the Poetics, a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticism of contemporary of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works, in the 4thcentury BC. Poetics developed for the first time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, which are still crucial in literary study. Plato's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. Later classical a