Chicago
critics is a group of critics associated with the University of Chicago, who
contributed to the volume Critics and Criticisms: Ancient and Modern (1952)
edited by the most prominent figure, R. S. Crane. Other members included W. R.
Keast, Elder Olson, and Bernard Weinberg; Wayne C. Booth, the author of The
Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), was also associated with the group. The Chicago
critics were concerned with accounting for the variety of critical approaches
to literature in terms of assumptions about the nature of literary works. They
also emphasized the larger structures of literary works, following the example
of Aristotle, whom they admired for basing his Poetics on actual examples
rather than on preconceptions. Their interest in plot and in the design
of a work as a whole distinguishes them from the new critics, who
concentrated on the study of metaphor and symbol in LYRIC verse.