["Theory of Literature"] discusses aims and methods in the expansive field of literary study. It observes and assesses both "extrinsic" and "intrinsic" avenues of approach to literature, the ways of getting at a poem, novel, or play for its own sake or for something else.

The peculiar success of the book lies in a harmony of powers often mutually restrictive: clear theoretical vision and diverse learning. There is a sense in which "Theory of Literature" may be said to recapitulate an era of revolutionary scholarship and criticism, but it is a sense which may easily be overstressed, for if properly used the book should be less a chronicle than a charter. The authors make the justifiable claim that it "lacks any close parallel." Certainly none in English comes to mind. (p. 180)

Obviously [Wellek and Warren's] book transcends the immediate needs of that perhaps mythical person, the "ordinary reader...