For all the debates that have roiled literature departments over the past 60 years, the history of the discipline itself is a source of surprising consensus. According to the standard narrative, ...

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” — ...

Over at The New Yorker, Joshua Rothman profiles Franco Moretti, who does work in “computational criticism,” and asks: Should literary criticism be an art or a science? A surprising amount depends on ...

Christoph Irmscher, winner of the Washington Monthly’s 2025 Kukula Award, reflects on his review of Stolen Pride by Arlie Russell Hochschild—and on why thoughtful, professional criticism remains ...

Perhaps, you may have caught a glimpse of me milling around campus these past few weeks. If so, you would likely have noticed my trendsetting new accessory: a rotund, corpulent book. If you were ...

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 ...

The chair of this year’s Man Booker Prize, and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement, does not like all The chair of this year’s Man Booker Prize, and the editor of the Times Literary Supplement ...

T hese are bad times for literary studies. The catastrophically constricted job market for English Ph.D.s conveys the culture’s contempt for professional literary scholarship in the clearest terms.

What if every book was worth reading? Not just the books with silver medallions on their covers, but every hardcover featured at Barnes & Noble, every paperback foisted upon you by a friend or a ...

GROVETON, Texas (KTRE) - The Groveton High School UIL literary criticism team just earned their second state title, with three team members placing in the top five in individual scoring. Jeremy Gentry ...