Introduction 2

21 The theory of effect (affective theory):

the effect that literaturę may have on its readers;

Aristotle: the State of catharsis, the purging of pity and fear that the audience undergo in the course of a tragedy.

3/ The theory of expression (expressive theory):

literaturę as an expression of the author’s inward world; the poet as divinely inspired (Plato); poet as a craftsman (neoclassicist view);

Romanticism: poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful emotion” (William Wordsworth).

IV. Good (versus bad) literaturę:

-    psychological truth/ ‘holding the mirror up to naturę’

-    originality

-    craftsmanship

-    a consciousness of morał values.