Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through ...

In this spirited if esoteric outing, Yale University English professor Kramnick (Paper Minds) mounts a granular defense of literary criticism as a method for making sense of the world. “Close reading ...

In 1966, Roland Barthes published a short book—a pamphlet, really—called Criticism and Truth, in response to Raymond Picard, a distinguished professor and the biographer of the French classical ...

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 ...

“C riticism” is a curiously protean word. In academic discourse, as in ordinary speech, it can refer simply to the act of appraisal, sometimes with a censorious edge. It’s used to describe reviews, ...

Of the character sketches that the English satirist Samuel Butler wrote in the mid-seventeenth century—among them “A Degenerate Noble,” “A Huffing Courtier,” “A Small Poet,” and “A Romance Writer”—the ...

Anyone who has taught a college literature course has likely heard a student say, “Can’t I just enjoy the book?” This frustration with literary theory is common. Many undergraduates feel that theory ...

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 ...

Did Kenneth Burke, intellectual maverick, accidentally create cultural studies? At the age of 20, Kenneth Burke left academic life for good; or so he thought. “It is now time for me to quit college,” ...

TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...