This volume, first published in 1991, seeks to reposition literary activity at the centre of that study. The internationally renowned contributors draw together two main streams.

This book offers foundations for a literary criticism which seeks to mediate between writers and readers belonging to different historical periods or social groupings.

Further developing the line of argument put forward in his Literature as Communication (2000) and Mediating Criticism (2001), Roger D. Sell now suggests that when so-called literary texts stand the test of time and appeal to a large and ...

Other critics have found Sell’s work inspirational. This book both responds to Sell’s ideas and demonstrates the multifaceted potential of his work.

The despondent anti-hedonism of the twentieth century intelligentsia can now seem rather dated. Some of the papers selected for this volume develop Sell’s ideas in mainly theoretical terms.

Even literary education and literary criticism could sometimes actually distance novels, poems and plays from their potential audience. This is the trend which Roger D. Sell now seeks to reverse.

In much of his earlier work Roger D. Sell was shaping literary studies, historical perspectives, and pragmatics into a fluent interdisciplinarity.