For all the debates that have roiled literature departments over the past 60 years, the history of the discipline itself is a source of surprising consensus. According to the standard narrative, ...

From Mary Shelley's Gothic masterpiece to Chekhov's subtle realism, literary criticism keeps reshaping how we read and value classic works. Modern approaches—from feminist to psychoanalytic—uncover ...

J onathan Kramnick’s book Criticism and Truth is more modest than its title suggests. Essentially an apologia for the nuts-and-bolts work of literary studies, it is best described not as “ambitious” — ...

THERE are five groups interested in literary criticism: publishers of books, authors, publishers of reviews, critics, and, finally, the reading public. An obvious interest of all the groups but the ...

A very interesting piece by Prof. Thomas Balazs in Quillette. An excerpt: When ChatGPT can analyse Hamlet as well as any grad student, we might reasonably ask, "What is the point of writing papers on ...

The chair of this year’s Man Booker Prize, and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, does not like all The chair of this year’s Man Booker Prize, and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement ...

TS Eliot said that the function of literary criticism is “the common pursuit of true judgment.” In other words, literary criticism is all about telling you whether a work is good or bad, and why. This ...

A s a precocious child in the early 1940s, the American philosopher Richard Rorty became a connoisseur of exotic flowers. His passion sent him hunting for wild orchids in the mountains of northwestern ...

I WANT to talk about the historical interpretation of literature — that is, about the interpretation of literature in its social, economic, and political aspects. To begin with, it will be worth while ...

Criticism had not been an exciting segment in Sinhala literature till focus was drawn to it by Peradeniya critics. They understood the value of the study and criticism of Sinhala Literature and laid ...