If Not Critical

by Eric Griffiths, Freya Johnston (Editor)

Eric Griffiths delivered hundreds of lectures at the Faculty of English in Cambridge, yet his lectures were never turned into books. If Not Critical brings together ten lectures, published here for the first time, that offer a representative selection of Dr Griffiths' original, fully-argued, and richly exemplified contributions to literary criticism and literary history.

Crammed into his writing are decades of reading in several languages and across most genres and literary periods. In these lectures, he pursues the blind spots not only of other people's arguments, but of the whole business of criticism in general, with what he calls its 'over-concentration on a narrow range of examples . . . such over-concentration warps our thinking'. Implicit and explicit throughout his work is the argument that 'an appropriately wide range of instances is essential to making progress in conceptualisation'; that what we need, in order to do better thinking, is 'a keener attention to a greater variety of examples'. Such examples include, in these lectures, the works of Shakespeare, Dante, Kafka, Beckett, Racine, Rabelais, T. S. Eliot, and Jonathan Swift.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Criticism

262 pages, Hardcover

First published March 8, 2018

Reviews

[Ramona · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the few literary criticism books that are fun to read. Eric Griffiths has a way to sprinkle his texts with subtle humor, keeping you interested and alert even if the content is hard-going. I enjoyed it very much.

[Imogen King · Rating 4 out of 5]

Witty and insightful but occasionally on the dry side. A standout section comes in the last lecture where EG so seamlessly weaves the threads of texts spanning thousands of years together. Special shoutout too for his keen eye on Shakespeare.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Profoundly insightful.