An examination of literary modernism in its relation to the history of criticism, this work analyzes the role of Aristotelian principles, primarily the notion of formal affectivism, in the critical writings of three modernists who have invariably been thought to uphold incompatible aesthetic beliefs. In an original approach, the author seeks a diachronic solution to a synchronic problem the debate about the modern, reflected in the claims and counterclaims made by the modernists themselves and by subsequent literary critics and theorists. This methodology is largely dictated by the nature of...