Humanistic Heritage

This is an examination of the principle works of Anglo-American novel criticism, defining the values, method and concepts that these works have in common. The common humanistic assumptions of this criticism are seen to be firstly that novels are both creative gestures of the author and the result of their historical context, secondly that novels imitate a world that precedes text and thirdly that human behaviour is central to most novels and should be a focus of analysis. The study advances a defence of Anglo-American humanistic criticism and the ideas proposed by Structuralism, Marxism and Deconstruction.