Interior Birds (Part III): Ortega's literary criticism under the influence of Neo-Kantian Idealism and the humanist turn with the Meditations on Quixote

This is the third installment, in a fourt part series of articles, where I intend to present and discuss the development of the ideas of the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset about literary criticism, conceived as an intellectual activity of particular philosophical interest. The importance that literature assumes in Ortegan thought and style is already a subject thoroughly discussed; the study of his work as a literary critic and his views on literary criticism is also not a novel issue; so my proposal is not simply to repeat the paths of works already well done, but to present, from a critical reading of the works of Ortega, a particular view about the development –at different times of his intellectual career– of his conceptions of the activity of the critic, with the intention to discuss the timeliness and relevance of the ideas of the philosopher for contemporary literary debate. In this third installment, the concepts and ideas by Ortega and Gasset during his «neo-kantian» period are analyzed.