The Fourth Dimension of a Poem and Other Essays

With "a stubborn predilection for finding out what a poem determinately means," renowned 100-year-old scholar Abrams (The Mirror and the Lamp) explores a variety of literary subjects in this insightful new collection, which includes studies of Keats and Hazlitt, the foundations of modern aesthetics, the state of literary humanism, and the titular "fourth dimension" of a poem, defined as "the activity of enunciating the great variety of speech-sounds that constitute [its] words." Abrams's general stance in these essays is humanistic, maintaining that literature is "composed by a human being, for human beings, and about human beings." His style reflects his attitude. Using "the ordinary language that has been developed... to deal with... the human predicament," Abrams conveys his deep love and understanding of literature to a general audience with reasoned expositions and close readings. The title essay is especially noteworthy, as is "How to Prove an Interpretation," an investigation into the hermeneutic process that doubles as a concise essay on how to read well. This volume is not only a worthy production by one of the great scholars of his generation, but a penetrating contribution to "the unceasing, diverse, and unpredictable dialogue... of readers with literary works and of readers with each other." (Sept.)