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.
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.
Not completely agreeing with either Victorian or postmodern critics, Roger D. Sell sees literature as involving processes of communication or community-making that are both profoundly universal and fundamentally historical.