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Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History
Literary Criticism offers a concise overview of literary studies in the English-speaking world from the early twentieth century to the present. Joseph North steps back from the usual tangle of figures, schools, and movements in order to analyze the intellectual paradigms that underpinned them. The result is a radically new account of the discipline’s development, together with a trenchant argument about where its political future lies.
People in today’s literature departments often assume that their work is politically progressive, especially when compared with the work of early- and mid-twentieth-century critics. North’s view is less cheering. For when understood in relation to the longer arc of the discipline, the current historicist and contextualist mode in literary studies represents a step to the Right. Since the global turn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s, all the major movements within literary studies have been diagnostic rather than interventionist in scholars have developed sophisticated techniques for analyzing culture, but they have retreated from systematic attempts to transform it. In this respect, the political potential of current literary scholarship compares poorly with that of earlier critical modes, which, for all their faults, at least had a programmatic commitment to cultural change.
Yet neoliberalism is now in crisis―a crisis that presents opportunities as well as dangers. North argues that the creation of a genuinely interventionist criticism is one of the central tasks facing those on the Left of the discipline today.
People in today’s literature departments often assume that their work is politically progressive, especially when compared with the work of early- and mid-twentieth-century critics. North’s view is less cheering. For when understood in relation to the longer arc of the discipline, the current historicist and contextualist mode in literary studies represents a step to the Right. Since the global turn to neoliberalism in the late 1970s, all the major movements within literary studies have been diagnostic rather than interventionist in scholars have developed sophisticated techniques for analyzing culture, but they have retreated from systematic attempts to transform it. In this respect, the political potential of current literary scholarship compares poorly with that of earlier critical modes, which, for all their faults, at least had a programmatic commitment to cultural change.
Yet neoliberalism is now in crisis―a crisis that presents opportunities as well as dangers. North argues that the creation of a genuinely interventionist criticism is one of the central tasks facing those on the Left of the discipline today.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 2017
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182 people want to read
About the author
Joseph North
34 books1 followerJoseph North is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
May 9, 2024
Attracted by its sub-title, I’d imagined that this book would succinctly introduce me, as a lay reader, to a couple of centuries of literary criticism from a political angle. But no, this book's range turns out to be much more limited than that. Focused on rival concepts, coded for specialists, it discusses a tiny number of key 20th century American and English academics and their intra-mural disagreements about how literature should be interpreted. (The kind of literature up for interpretation seems to be highbrow fiction and poetry of England and the USA; the rest of the world and its literatures, with few minor exceptions, make no appearance.)
The book usefully sketches histories and contexts of these contesting theories from a left perspective. Yet its polemical target is an approach favoured by another school on the left, namely, the ‘historicist/contextualist’ paradigm promoted by Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson and others. They and legions of academics pursuing literary and cultural studies have used literature as a kind of magnifying glass on society; in that paradigm, ethical and other subjective views of readers, their emotions or therapeutic experiences -- the stuff of bygone literary criticism (and much commentary here on Goodreads -- are of little interest.
Since the 1970s that historicist/contextualist paradigm has triumphed over an ‘aesthetic’ approach often favoured by those not on the left. Yet the left’s victory has been pyrrhic, for their paradigm's impacts have been neutralized, somehow, through mechanisms the author doesn't specify but seem to stem from neoliberal capitalism. That is doubly regrettable in that scholars on the left themselves share the blame for that unproductive outcome. They have, according to the author, largely ignored the political/ethical potentials of another, progressive ‘aesthetic’ paradigm, originating with the academician I.A. Richards in the 1920s. Thus side-tracked into ivory towers, scholars have failed to create literary studies capable of intervening in and enlivening public life, to kindle emotions and awaken collective sensibilities among readers.
After extended discussions of recent debates – essentially wars of position among academics – the author speculates about re-animating the spirit and purpose of literary criticism as advanced by Richards. The theory goes that if literary scholars would promote the better paradigm, they would help readers engage with literature in ways leading them to promote progressive social change. A bit of a stretch, testing the limits of what is plausible.
Now as a generalist with no formal training in literary studies, I lack qualifications to assess this book’s arguments. Evidently it wasn't written for readers like me. All the same, I stuck it out to the end. The author pitches his arguments at high levels of abstraction. Concrete examples of how scholars have applied the historicist/ contextualist paradigm in academic publications appear briefly and without commentary at the end of the third chapter. He presents his new paradigm in extenso, but also in abstract terms. Apart from brief references to someone's book on Jane Austin’s novels, he offers no examples. That left me wondering: surely the author could have demonstrated how his new paradigm would work in the case of a specific piece of literature? Or could have conjured up an imaginary example? Perhaps then I could have better grasped what kind of criticism the author wants to see emerge – a main intention of his polemic.
This book’s prose is plain. Sentences are long, convoluted and full of abstractions. Lacking specific cases, it is dry and flat. Words like autotelic had me reaching for the dictionary. Some of the grammar is bizarre; the author uses the word emergence as a verb: “…whatever new period of capital emergences in the wake of…” The copy editors at Harvard University Press surely must have seen and approved that usage, but on what basis is a mystery.
The chief value of North’s book for me is its account of how a family tree of literary theories grew in Anglo-American academia and sprouted offshoots in American cultural conservatism.
The book also set me thinking about the kind of literary criticism appearing on the Goodreads website. Going by the reviews I’ve read here, no one follows anything resembling an historicist/contextualist paradigm, which gets North's qualified disapproval. Whereas many Goodreads reviewers seem inspired in ways that would merit North’s approval: the pursuit of affect, therapy, ethics, and sheer enjoyment -- in a word, the drivers of authentic literary criticism as he would like to see it.
I would be fascinated to learn what conclusions literary theoreticians such as North would draw from a study of reviews on Goodreads.
[first posted 7 April 2021]
The book usefully sketches histories and contexts of these contesting theories from a left perspective. Yet its polemical target is an approach favoured by another school on the left, namely, the ‘historicist/contextualist’ paradigm promoted by Raymond Williams, Fredric Jameson and others. They and legions of academics pursuing literary and cultural studies have used literature as a kind of magnifying glass on society; in that paradigm, ethical and other subjective views of readers, their emotions or therapeutic experiences -- the stuff of bygone literary criticism (and much commentary here on Goodreads -- are of little interest.
Since the 1970s that historicist/contextualist paradigm has triumphed over an ‘aesthetic’ approach often favoured by those not on the left. Yet the left’s victory has been pyrrhic, for their paradigm's impacts have been neutralized, somehow, through mechanisms the author doesn't specify but seem to stem from neoliberal capitalism. That is doubly regrettable in that scholars on the left themselves share the blame for that unproductive outcome. They have, according to the author, largely ignored the political/ethical potentials of another, progressive ‘aesthetic’ paradigm, originating with the academician I.A. Richards in the 1920s. Thus side-tracked into ivory towers, scholars have failed to create literary studies capable of intervening in and enlivening public life, to kindle emotions and awaken collective sensibilities among readers.
After extended discussions of recent debates – essentially wars of position among academics – the author speculates about re-animating the spirit and purpose of literary criticism as advanced by Richards. The theory goes that if literary scholars would promote the better paradigm, they would help readers engage with literature in ways leading them to promote progressive social change. A bit of a stretch, testing the limits of what is plausible.
Now as a generalist with no formal training in literary studies, I lack qualifications to assess this book’s arguments. Evidently it wasn't written for readers like me. All the same, I stuck it out to the end. The author pitches his arguments at high levels of abstraction. Concrete examples of how scholars have applied the historicist/ contextualist paradigm in academic publications appear briefly and without commentary at the end of the third chapter. He presents his new paradigm in extenso, but also in abstract terms. Apart from brief references to someone's book on Jane Austin’s novels, he offers no examples. That left me wondering: surely the author could have demonstrated how his new paradigm would work in the case of a specific piece of literature? Or could have conjured up an imaginary example? Perhaps then I could have better grasped what kind of criticism the author wants to see emerge – a main intention of his polemic.
This book’s prose is plain. Sentences are long, convoluted and full of abstractions. Lacking specific cases, it is dry and flat. Words like autotelic had me reaching for the dictionary. Some of the grammar is bizarre; the author uses the word emergence as a verb: “…whatever new period of capital emergences in the wake of…” The copy editors at Harvard University Press surely must have seen and approved that usage, but on what basis is a mystery.
The chief value of North’s book for me is its account of how a family tree of literary theories grew in Anglo-American academia and sprouted offshoots in American cultural conservatism.
The book also set me thinking about the kind of literary criticism appearing on the Goodreads website. Going by the reviews I’ve read here, no one follows anything resembling an historicist/contextualist paradigm, which gets North's qualified disapproval. Whereas many Goodreads reviewers seem inspired in ways that would merit North’s approval: the pursuit of affect, therapy, ethics, and sheer enjoyment -- in a word, the drivers of authentic literary criticism as he would like to see it.
I would be fascinated to learn what conclusions literary theoreticians such as North would draw from a study of reviews on Goodreads.
[first posted 7 April 2021]
July 1, 2020
This book is finely written and its arguments are precise and clear. North's approach does manage to diagnose an ongoing trend in academic literary criticism with historical specification and reasoning.
Nevertheless, there exist several problems with the argument. For North literary criticism ought to be engaged foremost in social issues and it must align itself with radical left political interests: it shouldn't only "deconstruct" or "genealogize," but try to change. This is a Lukacsian reformulation of Leaviste criticism. Never once, however, any reason is given as to why literary criticism ought to be "radical left"; we are given plenty as to why literary criticism in the last three decades or so took a Right turn - that North considers Derrida and Foucault as "neo-liberal right" already limits his central hypothesis - and are called to reorient it to the "radical left" (whatever this means, I suppose it means talking about class whenever you can in a pseudo-revolutionist rhetoric hijacked from the 60s); but why exactly, and why literary criticism for this reason? If we ought to be practical first and foremost, perhaps it'll better, as Rousseau suggests in Emilie, to stop reading books altogether and join our local community organizers. The only thing infinitely more leisurely than reading a book is criticizing it. In that, I find the mode of criticism proposed here to be a vast exaggeration of the powers of literary criticism and that it leaves us with regressive critical categories belonging to a cultural epoch that has long lost its legitimacy. Still, the contemporary purpose of literary criticism and literary scholarship is in desperate need of discussion and redefinition, and despite my many objections, it is welcome that North engages fiercely and rigorously in a topic that has been sidelined for a good while.
Nevertheless, there exist several problems with the argument. For North literary criticism ought to be engaged foremost in social issues and it must align itself with radical left political interests: it shouldn't only "deconstruct" or "genealogize," but try to change. This is a Lukacsian reformulation of Leaviste criticism. Never once, however, any reason is given as to why literary criticism ought to be "radical left"; we are given plenty as to why literary criticism in the last three decades or so took a Right turn - that North considers Derrida and Foucault as "neo-liberal right" already limits his central hypothesis - and are called to reorient it to the "radical left" (whatever this means, I suppose it means talking about class whenever you can in a pseudo-revolutionist rhetoric hijacked from the 60s); but why exactly, and why literary criticism for this reason? If we ought to be practical first and foremost, perhaps it'll better, as Rousseau suggests in Emilie, to stop reading books altogether and join our local community organizers. The only thing infinitely more leisurely than reading a book is criticizing it. In that, I find the mode of criticism proposed here to be a vast exaggeration of the powers of literary criticism and that it leaves us with regressive critical categories belonging to a cultural epoch that has long lost its legitimacy. Still, the contemporary purpose of literary criticism and literary scholarship is in desperate need of discussion and redefinition, and despite my many objections, it is welcome that North engages fiercely and rigorously in a topic that has been sidelined for a good while.
August 7, 2021
It is always so much fun to dip back into an academic text, if only to read some of the reviews that assess it for a general readership. The chief misconception that most reviews have with this book is that the type of literary criticism North proposes is substitutable with evaluative reviews. North's literary criticism is however in fact rooted in the pedagogical and political value of reading a text and being ennobled by its content. In this sense, literary criticism is not a gleeful hack job committed by a reviewer, but a way of reading texts with the intention of 1) diagnosing the contemporary concerns of which a text is produced and 2) deriving from these texts positions and opinions on how to improve cultures and ideologies.
North's key contribution is how he demonstrates the gradual shift of literary criticism from its original, leftist leanings towards a regressive tool for establishing hierarchies under the influential New Criticism school. Explored in detail within chapters 2 & 3, North looks at the foundational texts of Ivan Armstrong Richards and how his original vision for using literature as a method for diagnosing culture (and so intervening in it) was co-opted by the New Critics such as Brooks and Ransom. As North goes on to show, this distortion has had a lasting impact on Richards' legacy, and the ideology of close reading was altered towards politically conservative ends.
Having read North's book in full, I wish that the title could have been edited to highlight neoliberalism. It is neoliberalism that North's book considers in its last chapter on the future of literary criticism and whether it may return to greater prominence in universities, and it is neoliberal market forces which North considers the main threat to the humanities today. North makes a good point that neoliberalism pressures universities to avoid overt political engagement in favour of periodicized cultural analyses, and hints that the neoliberal turn in the 70's and 80's was part of the reason why higher education rebranded itself as a key producer of knowledge. However, neoliberalism is a broad concept and terrifyingly easy to mischaracterise. While North spends plenty of time to demarcate on what terms he is speaking about literary criticism, he is frustratingly vague on what forms (actors, processes, structures) neoliberalism takes. The lack of rigorous examination means the final chapter of North's book loses some of the careful and informed voice North has when he is speaking about literary theorists and ideas.
In sum, North's writing is for an academic audience. He assumes readers are familiar with epistemological concepts such as Kantian aesthetics and Marxist materialism, as well as a passing understanding of the literary movements of the 20th century such as New Criticism, New Historicism, and Queer Theory. However, North writes clearly and engagingly. A dedicated reader will find he has much to say.
North's key contribution is how he demonstrates the gradual shift of literary criticism from its original, leftist leanings towards a regressive tool for establishing hierarchies under the influential New Criticism school. Explored in detail within chapters 2 & 3, North looks at the foundational texts of Ivan Armstrong Richards and how his original vision for using literature as a method for diagnosing culture (and so intervening in it) was co-opted by the New Critics such as Brooks and Ransom. As North goes on to show, this distortion has had a lasting impact on Richards' legacy, and the ideology of close reading was altered towards politically conservative ends.
Having read North's book in full, I wish that the title could have been edited to highlight neoliberalism. It is neoliberalism that North's book considers in its last chapter on the future of literary criticism and whether it may return to greater prominence in universities, and it is neoliberal market forces which North considers the main threat to the humanities today. North makes a good point that neoliberalism pressures universities to avoid overt political engagement in favour of periodicized cultural analyses, and hints that the neoliberal turn in the 70's and 80's was part of the reason why higher education rebranded itself as a key producer of knowledge. However, neoliberalism is a broad concept and terrifyingly easy to mischaracterise. While North spends plenty of time to demarcate on what terms he is speaking about literary criticism, he is frustratingly vague on what forms (actors, processes, structures) neoliberalism takes. The lack of rigorous examination means the final chapter of North's book loses some of the careful and informed voice North has when he is speaking about literary theorists and ideas.
In sum, North's writing is for an academic audience. He assumes readers are familiar with epistemological concepts such as Kantian aesthetics and Marxist materialism, as well as a passing understanding of the literary movements of the 20th century such as New Criticism, New Historicism, and Queer Theory. However, North writes clearly and engagingly. A dedicated reader will find he has much to say.
December 19, 2017
North's book is a clear-eyed look at the fate of what he calls the critical paradigm in academic literary studies, especially vis-a-vis the scholarly paradigm that has come to dominate the academy over the past forty or so years. North is particularly good at illustrating that historical shift, and a section at the end of chapter three in which he simply excerpts the thesis statements of major works over that period underscores just how thoroughly the "historicist/contextualist" mode of literary scholarship dominates the field.
While he regularly qualifies that he is *seeking out* ways that a critical paradigm might re-emerge, especially as a tool for leftist thought and action, the leads he identifies in chapter four are really only leads, and the book is almost maddening in the sense that it cannot really lay out what that new paradigm would look like. North doesn't claim to be able to manage that task, so he's not over promising; nonetheless, that absence at the conclusion might also be seen as the book's major limitation. However, one might just as easily say that the book is successful precisely because it leaves readers (or this reader at least) salivating over the potentials of what such a new paradigm might look like. Enough to try to undertake that work ourselves? Hard to say.
In the end, yes, I am prompted to be on the lookout for a return to a personal, closely read criticism that inculcates a set of values more clearly from the left, but perhaps the limitations of North's astute and provocative book lie in the fact that he has utilized precisely the kind of historicist/contextualist analytic for literary criticism that he suggests is on the point of exhausting the entire field.
While he regularly qualifies that he is *seeking out* ways that a critical paradigm might re-emerge, especially as a tool for leftist thought and action, the leads he identifies in chapter four are really only leads, and the book is almost maddening in the sense that it cannot really lay out what that new paradigm would look like. North doesn't claim to be able to manage that task, so he's not over promising; nonetheless, that absence at the conclusion might also be seen as the book's major limitation. However, one might just as easily say that the book is successful precisely because it leaves readers (or this reader at least) salivating over the potentials of what such a new paradigm might look like. Enough to try to undertake that work ourselves? Hard to say.
In the end, yes, I am prompted to be on the lookout for a return to a personal, closely read criticism that inculcates a set of values more clearly from the left, but perhaps the limitations of North's astute and provocative book lie in the fact that he has utilized precisely the kind of historicist/contextualist analytic for literary criticism that he suggests is on the point of exhausting the entire field.
December 7, 2017
North provides a well-written, thoughtful, and self-aware account of the paradigm shift between literary criticism and literary theory, with attention predominantly focused on the political implications of the neglect / misreading of the work of early critic I.A. Richards, and North's analysis of the subsequent quality of political power of late 20th century/contemporary literary theory.
The aforementioned self-awareness is essential to the work, as North seeks to take on an ambitious subject, but in as concise and clear manner as possible. He returns to themes and thoughts consistently, reiterating points for clarity and stating outright any intentions or misgivings he has about his analysis. He is thoughtful and upfront about the specific theorists, critics, and historical moments he chooses for his analysis, justifying specific examples as stand-ins for otherwise large and unwieldy aspects of the academics of literary studies.
In my undergrad work in literary criticism, I found I had a lot of questions and misgivings about the practical implications of the discipline. I thought this book did an excellent job of contextualizing and elucidating these issues, while providing glimmers of shifts in the current paradigm. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested or involved in literary studies, and even the humanities as a whole.
The aforementioned self-awareness is essential to the work, as North seeks to take on an ambitious subject, but in as concise and clear manner as possible. He returns to themes and thoughts consistently, reiterating points for clarity and stating outright any intentions or misgivings he has about his analysis. He is thoughtful and upfront about the specific theorists, critics, and historical moments he chooses for his analysis, justifying specific examples as stand-ins for otherwise large and unwieldy aspects of the academics of literary studies.
In my undergrad work in literary criticism, I found I had a lot of questions and misgivings about the practical implications of the discipline. I thought this book did an excellent job of contextualizing and elucidating these issues, while providing glimmers of shifts in the current paradigm. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested or involved in literary studies, and even the humanities as a whole.
August 13, 2018
I want to give North credit for his impressive grasp of the history of literary criticism and his ability to contextualize literary projects. I can't do this work. I should also acknowledge that my frustrations with this book might have more to do with this kind of book than with Joseph North himself. Each insight I gained here was erased by long passages of tone-deaf dismissal of significant works that didn't fit his project or his view of where literary criticism should go. Relatedly, North should not be allowed to use the word "Concise" in the title of a book with so many convoluted sentences riddled with qualifies and tangents. His fronting of disclaimers and emphasis on hypothetical other readings over lucid summary are difficult. I probably agree with his hopes for what criticism can do, and what a reconsideration of affect and aesthetic might bring to our field. Yet, I can't quite get comfortable with his refusal to treat writers on their own terms before lumping them into his sense of lineage or cutting off their projects for potential lacks of theoretical purity. It's a tiresome book.
July 23, 2017
One of the best books I've read in a year. An astute reading of how neoliberalism has played out over the past thirty years, in some unexpected places (literary criticism, the liberal academy) and guide towards what a genuinely progressive future might look like.
March 15, 2020
a useful account in the sense that it goes from a to b in a clearer way than i've seen elsewhere and draws some important distinctions between ia richards and the new critics. i enjoyed his hammering the new historicists and i think his reading of radical academia, the activist tone that bleeds into much criticism written by people who want to believe that their interpretations can form some small part, however small, of the road to the socialisation of the means of production is dead on. unfortunately north is not totally not of their set and believes there is a materialist criticism to be recovered from richards' practical criticism, through which we can meaningfully intervene in social life. i think mulhern is right in that this would require a re-founding of the discipline, probably outside of the contemporary university, and i think this would have been a much better book if north tried to insist on an absolute distinction between activism and criticism; trotsky writing 'i'm going to do the revolution now' after he'd finished his work of literary criticism is a suggestive example
December 6, 2017
Much love. This book is restoring my faith in lots of things!
October 16, 2021
Although a tad repetitive, this book offered some insights into the works of Richards, New Critics and Leavisites that I don't know how I would have accessed otherwise.
November 6, 2021
Bold and brilliant. Love it.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews