Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
After the last line of a poem, nothing follows except literary criticism.
There is far too much literary criticism of the wrong kind. That is why I never could have survived as an academic.
I don't believe in pulling punches or being judicious, as the standard in literary criticism or academic musicology.
The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.
The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the latter being a much cherished aspect of academic freedom.
People have been predicting the death of philosophy since the 17th century. When I was a student, people were saying, 'We're in the last days of philosophy.' Then we were told in the '60s it would be replaced by sociology, then by literary criticism.
Jacques Derrida is a very important thinker and philosopher who has made serious contributions to both philosophy and literary criticism. Roland Barthes is the one I feel most affinity for, and Michel Foucault, well, his writing influenced my novel, 'Middlesex.'
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary criticism. To criticise a person's work required equal measures of erudition and wit, and inferior critics were often the butt of satire and ridicule.
Indeed, 'The Second Plane' is such a weak, risible, and often objectionable volume that the reader finishes it convinced that Mr. Amis should stick to writing fiction and literary criticism, as he's thoroughly discredited himself with these essays as any sort of political or social commentator.
Determining the value of individual texts has been an ideological scuffle in literary criticism for centuries: but the environmental cost of printing them hauls this dispute from the ivory tower into day-to-day decision-making. Is it right to write? The publishing industry is slowly beginning to commit to using sustainably harvested trees.