Positivism and Imagination

Download or read book Positivism and Imagination written by Catherine LeGouis and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Catherine LeGouis examines the work of three nineteenth-century positivist critics, each of whom struggled to overcome the contradictions of attempting to separate esthetic, psychological, and sociological concerns from individual subjectivity. These positivists - staunch believers in the authority of scientific reason inspired by Auguste Comte, J.S. Mill, and Hippolyte Taine - attempted to turn literary criticism into an exact science that would observe and explain not only the social context of literature, but also its esthetics, without recourse to subjectivity based on individual reactions.