The role of the critic isn’t to summarize or repackage art, but to actively participate in a conversation about it.

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 ...

Mary Poovey, a professor of English and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University, examines a parallel between the foundations of contemporary ...

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 ...

Even with all the recent advances in the ability of large language models (like ChatGPT) to help us think, research, ...

J onathan Kramnick’s book Criticism and Truth is more modest than its title suggests. Essentially an apologia for the nuts-and-bolts work of literary studies, it is best described not as “ambitious” — ...

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 ...

In a few weeks, thousands of Kenyan students will sit for their final literature exams in Form Four. They will answer questions on Fathers of Nations, The Samaritan, The Artist of the Floating World ...

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 ...

Literature has always helped people understand themselves and the world around them. It shapes how people think and connect ...