The real test of Abram's historical explanations is of course whether or not they "work" --whether, when we apply the criteria of correspondence and coherence (Just as in interpreting a poem), they "make sense" out of the particulars at hand and produce useful generalizations even in the face of competing historical interpretations. Abrams' work continues to hold up. --Jack Stillinger

But Abrams offers more than a work of scholarship, for he ranges before and after, to place the age in Western culture. he reveals what is traditional and what is revolutionary in the period, providing insights into those same two forces in the ideas of today. He shows that central Romantic ideas and forms of imagination were secularized versions of traditional theological concepts, imagery, and design, and that modern literature participates in the same process. Our comprehension of this age and of our own time is deepened by a work astonishing in its learning, vision, and humane...