Concepts of "tradition" in the literary theories of Ernst Robert Curtius, Frank Kermode and Antoine Compagnon.

In their accounts of literary history, theorists and critics of literature have introduced different concepts of innovation and tradition. For both aesthetic and political reasons, however, many forms of literary criticism stress modernity and novelty rather than antiquity and continuity. To redress this balance, the present project examines the work of three critics from different European countries and different phases of the twentieth century who have criticized this emphasis on innovation. More specifically, it compares the writings of Ernst Robert Curtius, Frank Kermode and Antoine Compagnon. Taking the long view, these critics note that literary texts use recurrent commonplaces or topoi, that readers continuously accommodate classic texts to modern concerns and that even supposedly modern authors show certain anti-modern characteristics. The present project refines the conceptual repertoire of literary history by describing these concepts the topos, the classic and the antimodern and situating them in their (literary-)historical contexts.

Keywords:Literary theory, Literary history, Tradition, Topos, Classic, Anti-modern, Arrière-garde

Disciplines:Language studies, Literary studies, Theory and methodology of language studies, Theory and methodology of linguistics, Theory and methodology of literary studies, Other languages and literary studies