Huneker, James Gibbons - Eliot G. Fay (essay date 1940)

Eliot G. Fay (essay date 1940)

SOURCE: "Huneker's Criticism of French Literature," in The French Review, Vol. XIV, No. 24, December, 1940, pp. 130-37.

[In the following essay, Fay focuses on Huneker's reviews of works by such French authors as Gustave Flaubert.]

Several years ago I attempted a study of American criticism of French literature. I wanted to discover which American critics had written most copiously and most discerningly about the literature of France. I began by excluding from my study, perhaps a little arbitrarily, those writers who appeared to me to be book reviewers or literary historians, rather than critics. And I excluded also those critics whose work, since they were still alive, remained unfinished.

It soon became apparent that almost all the criticism of the kind I had in mind was written between 1865 and the present time. Criticism is one of those literary forms which invariably develop last. First comes the...

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