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 ...

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, ...

Provides a basic skills course designed to equip students to handle the English major. Emphasizes critical writing and the acquisition of basic techniques and vocabulary of literary criticism through ...

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 ...

For years, the writer flirted and exchanged ideas with Amélie Bosquet—until her ideas threatened his work. Criticism has a way of surviving without infrastructure, but there is no replacement for ...