Do-It-Yourself
George Steiner, 23 May 1996
The Modern Epic: The World System from Goethe to García Márquez
by Franco Moretti, translated by Quentin Hoare.
Verso, 250 pp., £44, March 1996,1 85984 934 2 Show More
by Franco Moretti, translated by Quentin Hoare.
Verso, 250 pp., £44, March 1996,
“... A theory becomes ‘classical’ when it is thought to have been understood, which is to say left behind or constructively challenged. Where a theory is forceful enough, there is, inevitably, a sense in which it consumes its object and, thus, itself. These are Hegelian concepts and they bear directly on the theory of the evolution of literary forms which Lukács derived critically from Hegel ... ”