Each of the 21 essays included in Inner Workings: Literary Essays 2000-2005 is named for the author whose works it examines, making the collection’s table of contents read like a syllabus. In the ...

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 ...

THE newspaper critic of books has a very different office to perform from that of the critic of pure literature. Literary criticism in its best sense deals with pure literature, with books the ...

The status of literature - its meaning, structure, truth value, and social function - has proven, throughout history, to be surprisingly controversial, and has generated endless commentary. This class ...

The truly interesting thing about those articles, however, is that they demonstrate the huge gap between the new literary criticism taking place online and the media’s ability to respond to it. In ...

Sisters from a convent outside Waco have repeatedly visited the prisoners—and even made them affiliates of their order. The story of a powerful spiritual alliance. “Now I’m an adult, restraining 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 ...

John Guillory’s “Cultural Capital,” published amid the 1990s canon wars, became a classic. In a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on his field’s deep funk. By Jennifer Schuessler Thirty ...

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 ...