History of Literary Theory and Criticism until 1930

(About this list: a paragraph describing the thinking behind this list)

Dante Alighieri. Letter to Can Grande della Scala. Trans. Robert Haller.

Aristotle. Poetics.
Matthew Arnold. “Sweetness and Light” in Culture and Anarchy.
---. The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.
Edmund Burke. “Introduction on Taste”, “Of the Sublime”, and “The Sublime and the Beautiful Compared” in A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful.
Théophile Gautier. Preface to Mademoiselle de Maupin.
G.W.F. Hegel. Introduction to Lectures on Fine Art.
Horace. Ars Poetica. Trans. D.A. Russell.
David Hume. “Of the Standard of Taste” in The Four Dissertations.
Immanuel Kant. Introduction, “Analytic of the Beautiful”, and “Analytic of the Sublime” in Critique of the Power of Judgment.
Longinus. On Sublimity. Trans. D.A. Russell.
Friedrich Nietzsche. On Truth and Lying in a Non-moral Sense.
---. The Birth of Tragedy.
Plato. Phaedrus. Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff.
---. Books II, III, X of Republic. Trans. Robin Waterfield.
---. *Symposium. Trans. Christopher Gill.
Sir Philip Sidney. “The Defence of Poesy.”
Giambattista Vico. Books 1-3 from “The New Science”.
Oscar Wilde. “The Critic as Artist” in Intentions.
William Wordsworth. Preface to Lyrical Ballads, with Pastoral and Other Poems.