Literary Criticism

Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.

Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory, or conversely from book reviewing, is a matter of some controversy. For example, the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary thinking and Criticism draws no distinction between lit ...more

New Releases Tagged "Literary Criticism"

The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien's Creation

Most Read This Week Tagged "Literary Criticism"

Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative

Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival

Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess

Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World

A Memoir of My Former Self: A Life in Writing

Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times

Origins of The Wheel of Time: The Legends and Mythologies that Inspired Robert Jordan

More most read this week tagged "literary criticism"...

Literary Criticism Books

Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature

The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines

The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

More literary criticism books...

Lists

Literary Movements for Students by David M. Galens

The Oxford Dictionary of Allusions by Andrew Delahunty

The Situation of Poetry by Robert Pinsky

A Scholar’s Guide to English Literature

73 books — 1 voter

The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems by James Thomson

Death's Jest Book by Thomas Lovell Beddoes

Gothicomantibolisms

131 books — 9 voters

Juan Luis Martinez's Philosophical Poetics by Scott Weintraub

The Translation and Transmission of Concrete Poetry by John Corbett

Folk-Lore of Shakespeare by T.F. Thiselton-Dyer

•-The Rope & The Cuckold-

178 books — 2 voters

The View from the Cheap Seats by Neil Gaiman

The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynne Jones

A Slip of the Keyboard by Terry Pratchett

Traveler of Worlds by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

Speculative Fiction: Literary Criticism, Essays, Non-Fiction

130 books — 29 voters

The Annotated Alice - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Th... by Lewis Carroll

Annotated Editions and Commentaries on Novels

2 books — 1 voter

Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Seminal Works (fiction and nonfiction)

96 books — 73 voters

Related Genres

Nonfiction
Criticism

Featured News & Interviews

Get Ready! Readers' Most Anticipated Books of 2026

Read »

Quotes Tagged “Literary Criticism”

“ Life, of course, never gets anyone's entire attention. Death always remains interesting, pulls us, draws us. As sleep is necessary to our physiology, so depression seems necessary to our psychic economy. In some secret way, Thanatos nourishes Eros as well as opposes it. The two principles work in covert concert; though in most of us Eros dominates, in none of us is Thanatos completely subdued. However-and this is the paradox of suicide-to take one's life is to behave in a more active, assertive, Life, of course, never gets anyone's entire attention. Death always remains interesting, pulls us, draws us. As sleep is necessary to our physiology, so depression seems necessary to our psychic economy. In some secret way, Thanatos nourishes Eros as well as opposes it. The two principles work in covert concert; though in most of us Eros dominates, in none of us is Thanatos completely subdued. However-and this is the paradox of suicide-to take one's life is to behave in a more active, assertive, "erotic" way than to helplessly watch as one's life is taken away from one by inevitable mortality. Suicide thus engages with both the death-hating and the death-loving parts of us: on some level, perhaps, we may envy the suicide even as we pity him. It has frequently been asked whether the poetry of Plath would have so aroused the attention of the world if Plath had not killed herself. I would agree with those who say no. The death-ridden poems move us and electrify us because of our knowledge of what happened. Alvarez has observed that the late poems read as if they were written posthumously, but they do so only because a death actually took place. "When I am talking about the weather / I know what I am talking about," Kurt Schwitters writes in a Dada poem (which I have quoted in its entirety). When Plath is talking about the death wish, she knows what she is talking about. In 1966, Anne Sexton, who committed suicide eleven years after Plath, wrote a poem entitled "Wanting to Die," in which these startlingly informative lines appear: But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build. When, in the opening of "Lady Lazarus," Plath triumphantly exclaims, "I have done it again," and, later in the poem, writes, Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call, we can only share her elation. We know we are in the presence of a master builder. ...more ”
― Janet Malcolm, The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes

47 likes

“ Everywhere I go, I am asked if I think university stifles writers. My opinion is that it doesn't stifle enough of them. ...more ”
― Flannery O'Connor

49 likes

More quotes...