Literary Criticism
Contemporary Literature
Faith Hahn and
Literary Criticism
For all its good intentions, art that tries to minister to its audience by showcasing moral aspirants and paragons or the abject victims of political oppression produces smug, tiresome works that are failures both as art and as agitprop. Artists and critics—their laurel bearers—should take heed.
Anastasia Berg • On the Aesthetic Turn | The Point Magazine
Poetry is an essential part of society—but only as itself and not as a vehicle for something else.
Micah Mattix • The Integrity of Poetry | Micah Mattix
Apropos of nothing.
Nabokov — Speak, Memory.
Culture and Imperialism
An exploration of the cultural and literary manifestations of imperialism in 19th and early 20th century Britain and France, and its relationship with the formation of national identity.
oldemc.english.ucsb.eduCulture and Imperialism, Edward Said.
To be honest, my appetite for this sort of online blowup diminishes hourly. Though I’m as prone to schadenfreude as any other media professional trying to hold onto relevance in an increasingly winner-take-all economy, there’s something about watching extremely online people have noisy meltdowns that makes me feel like I’m inhaling my own body... See more
Who Killed Creative Writing?
It’s hard to talk about “masterpieces” because the concept trades on a theory of aesthetics that is controversial when spelled out (aesthetic value realism; maybe even a kind of Platonism about beauty) and difficult to defend, but which we all nevertheless subscribe to intuitively.
The Cultural Decline of Literary Fiction
She has said she is against “the self-promotion obsessively imposed by the media. This demand for self-promotion diminishes the actual work of art, whatever that art may be...” Thus, she continues to absent herself from the marketing of her work. While acknowledging her position is extreme, she maintains “that a book has to absolutely make it on... See more