Elizabethan Prose Fiction and Some Trends in Recent Criticism
C urrent methodological trends now influence the study of most literature, but as I shall argue, in the future they may alter radically the study of Elizabethan prose fiction. Some works of literature, especially the major ones, may be enjoyed by readers in any age, but many, perhaps now most, depend on literary criticism to be properly understood and fully appreciated. At one time Milton's Paradise Lost was a popular work, requiring of its readers only that their lives be grounded in the Bible to ensure their full response to it. For most readers today, an adequate response to Milton's poem is a product of the historical scholarship and the New Criticism practiced mostly in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Except for popular or primitive poems, past literary works may be appreciated chiefly through the study of their pastness rather than their contemporary relevance. Hence Lionel Trilling may claim that we would not admire Wordsworth's "Immortality Ode" if it were offered to us now as a contemporary work. On the other hand, Donne's poetry was restored to its place in the English poetical tradition largely because of its contemporary relevance in the second quarter of the twentieth century and the flourishing at that time of New Criticism, which made us aware of his poetic use of language, imagery, and metaphor. I could list other accomplishments of literary criticism-noting, for example, that editors and annotators have transformed our understanding especially of medieval poets and Renaissance dramatists and that biographical studies have altered our response to the major Romantic writers-and conclude that past methodological trends have given us most of the literature we read today. Or rather, they