A s a precocious child in the early 1940s, the American philosopher Richard Rorty became a connoisseur of exotic flowers. His passion sent him hunting for wild orchids in the mountains of northwestern ...

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” — ...

This course introduces students to a wide range of critical theories that English majors need to know. We’ll begin with some basic questions about literary texts: How can we understand documents from ...

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 ...

Feminism has transformed the academic study of literature,fundamentally altering the canon of what is taught and setting newagendas for literary analysis. In this authoritative history offeminist ...

Provided an accessible entry point into complex literary criticism concepts Reframed student engagement with literary works in the context of current debates Influenced course design and teaching in ...

The truly interesting thing about those articles, however, is that they demonstrate the huge gap between the new literary criticism taking place online and the media’s ability to respond to it. In ...