[Crane's main subjects of inquiry are suggested by the title of his book, The Languages of Criticism and the Structure of Poetry.] In the phrase "the languages of criticism" he refers to the different methods of critical investigation, which (as he insists) are necessarily limited in their usefulness and their results by the terms in which they work. He begins by proclaiming himself a "pluralist" in this matter: it is not his view that any one sort of criticism is right, other sorts wrong…. [Crane's] interest in distinguishing between different sorts of criticism, different critical "languages," is one of the threads that run through the book….

To a reader of Critics and Criticism it will come as no surprise that the critic to whom Mr. Crane and his friends most often look for guidance is Aristotle; and the second of his lectures is devoted to "Poetic Structure in...