Best Literary Criticism Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 3

Source: Pensées of Joubert

“Poststructuralism. . . . is a form of literary criticism that uses elaborate wordplay to prove its central premise, that all language is internally contradictory and has no fixed meaning.”

Use Form Language Prove Criticism Fixed Contradictory Premises Prove It Literary Criticism Wordplay

Author:Naomi Wolf

“If behind the erratic gunfire of the press the author felt that there was another kind of criticism, the opinion of people readingfor the love of reading, slowly and unprofessionally, and judging with great sympathy and yet with great severity, might this not improve the quality of his work? And if by our means books were to become stronger, richer, and more varied, that would be an end worth reaching.”

Source: ON READING: Le plaisir de lire

“... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to break her and bullyher, as well as honour and love her, for so her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.”

Ifs Wells Art Fiction Break Alive Imagine Youth Standing Criticism And Love Midst Honour Sovereignty Assured Literary Criticism

Book:Selected essays

Source: Selected essays

“When appearance and reality coincide, philosophy and literary criticism find themselves with nothing to say.”

Philosophy Reality Criticism Philosophical Appearance Literary Criticism

Author:Mason Cooley

“Literary criticism now is all pranks and polemics.”

Criticism Literary Criticism Pranks Polemics

Author:Mason Cooley

“Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism.”

Evidence Criticism Strict Psychoanalysis Literary Criticism Strict Rules

Author:Mason Cooley

“A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake prestige throughbeing mistaken for good work. It is essentially negative, it is something that has not come through. But over bad criticism one has a sense of real calamity.”

Doe Real Stories Fiction Novel Negative Criticism Calm Fake Working It Short Story Good Work Mistaken Calamity Prestige Literary Criticism

Book:The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews

Source: The Strange Necessity: Essays and Reviews

“The literary wiseacres prognosticate in many languages, as they have throughout so many centuries, setting the stage for new hautmonde in letters and making up the public's mind.”

Mind Language Century Stage Criticism Letters Setting Settings Making Up Literary Criticism

Author:Fannie Hurst

“If we are ever to construct a feminist movement that is not based on the premise that men and women are always at war with one another, then we must be willing to acknowledge the appropriateness of complex critical responses to writing by men even if it is sexist. Clearly women can learn from writers whose work is sexist, even be inspired by it, because sexism may be simply one dimension of that work. Concurrently fiercely critiquing the sexism does not mean that one does not value the work.”

Source: Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

“The techniques are all means of dealing with one simple idea: She wrote it. (That is, the "wrong" person--in this case, female--has created the "right" value--i.e., art.) Denial of Agency: She didn't write it. Pollution of Agency: She shouldn't have written it. Double Standard of Content: Yes, but look what she wrote about. False Categorizing: She is not really she [an artist] and it is not really it [serious, of the right genre, aesthetically sound, important, etc.] so how could "she" have written "it"? Or simply: Neither "she" nor "it" exists (simple exclusion).”

Source: How to Suppress Women's Writing

“Whoever could properly characterize Goethe's Meister would have actually expressed what is the timely trend in literature. He would be able, as far as literary criticism is concerned, to rest.”

Would Be Able Literature Concerned Criticism Trends Literary Criticism Timely

Author:Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

“A literary woman's best critic is her husband.”

Women Marriage Husband Criticism Critics Literary Criticism

Author:Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

“With a few exceptions, the critics of children's books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something goodin every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.”

Children Book Soul Literature Sound Written Theory Criticism Assuming Critics Exception Children's Books Literary Criticism Children's Literature Lenient

Author:Katharine Sergeant Angell White

“Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit.”

Self Intellectual Criticism Posts Nonsense Serving Bullshit Literary Criticism Self Serving Bunk

Author:John Fante

“If you're, like, a PhD student in English, and you look at each instance that Richard Yates is mentioned in the book...it has sort of it's own narrative that one could analyze and write literary criticism about.”

Ifs Writing Looks Book Students Criticism Instance Narrative Literary Criticism Phds

Author:Tao Lin

“I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever, and let it out in literary-criticism form. I just feel like book reviewing should be respectful and calm and not filled with bile.”

People Feels Should Kind Book Self Problem Form Social Fans Criticism Filled Calm Respectful Literary Criticism Social Problems Be Respectful Book Review

Author:Dave Eggers

“So-called "natural language" is wonderful for the purposes it was created for, such as to be rude in, to tell jokes in, to cheat or to make love in (and Theorists of Literary Criticism can even be content-free in it), but it is hopelessly inadequate when we have to deal unambiguously with situations of great intricacy, situations which unavoidably arise in such activities as legislation, arbitration, mathematics or programming.”

“If I like a movie, I'm definitely advocating for it, but it's not "you should see this" or "you shouldn't see this." I try to take a longer view about what the movie is doing and where it fits in the context of other things, in the way that certain good literary criticism tries to do the same thing.”

Ifs Way Should Trying Certain Views Fit Criticism Advocating Literary Criticism

Author:Wesley Morris

“My favorite method of encryption is chunking revolutionary documents inside a mess of JPEG or MP3 code and emailing it off as an "image" or a "song." But besides functionality, code also possesses literary value. If we frame that code and read it through the lens of literary criticism, we will find that the past hundred years of modernist and postmodernist writing have demonstrated the artistic value of similar seemingly arbitrary arrangements of letters.”

“Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising.”

Book Feelings Criticism Accounts Critics Literary Criticism Impertinence

Book:Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

Source: Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays

“When I first started writing in my early 20s it was literary criticism for a very eccentric magazine called Books And Bookmen, which allowed me to write, more or less anything.”

Writing Firsts Book Criticism Magazines Eccentric Literary Criticism Early 20s

Author:Jonathan Meades

“I intend Deaths in Venice to contribute both to literary criticism and to philosophy. But it's not "strict philosophy" in the sense of arguing for specific theses. As I remark, there's a style of philosophy - present in writers from Plato to Rawls - that invites readers to consider a certain class of phenomena in a new way. In the book, I associate this, in particular, with my good friend, the eminent philosopher of science, Nancy Cartwright, who practices it extremely skilfully.”

“In elaborating how "philosophy by showing" works, and in defending the idea that literature and music can contribute to philosophical "showing", I am also doing something more standardly philosophical. But I view most of the book as an interweaving of philosophy and literary criticism. If that entails a broadening of a standard idea of philosophy, it's a broadening I'd like to see happen.”

Ifs Book Ideas Philosophy Happens Literature Views Standards Criticism Philosophical Literary Criticism Literature And Music

Author:Philip Kitcher

“One of the functions of literary criticism, or reviewing, generally - and I, most of my reviews actually are not about literature - but one of the functions of that is basically the sort of Consumer Reports function of letting readers know whether this is something they want to read.”

Knows Want Literature Reader Criticism Function Consumers Reports Reviews Literary Criticism

Author:Louis Menand

“Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a historian that I work, although text criticism and literary criticism are very much a part of my interests.”

Interest Criticism Structure Historian Literary Criticism

Author:Frank Moore Cross

“Fiction writers have their own world, and poets have their own world, and literary criticism has sort of passed over into cultural studies in the university, and so on. They seem more disconnected from each other than they did when I first began to write.”

World Writing Firsts Seems Fiction Study Poet Criticism University Fiction Writers Disconnected Literary Criticism

Author:Robert Hass

“What I teach is literary criticism and comparative literature and so on and that's my function, but from time to time it's possible for me actually to help a writer. I read something and something strikes me then, I feel I can talk to that writer about it.”

Feels I Can Helping Literature Teach Criticism Function Strikes Literary Criticism Comparative Literature

Author:Wole Soyinka

“The asymmetries of power that have shaped relations between the West and the rest of the world also exist in the realm of literary criticism.”

World Criticism Relation West Realms Literary Criticism Asymmetry

Author:Pankaj Mishra

“I also encourage my students to read literary criticism that is deeply personal yet formally inventive and intellectually expansive... books that offer unorthodox ways of doing double duty as literary criticism and as love letters to the power of literature per se.”

Book Literature Students Duty Criticism Love Letter Literary Criticism

Author:Rob Nixon

“My literary criticism has become less specifically academic. I was really writing literary history in The New Poetic, but my general practice of writing literary criticism is pretty much what it always has been. And there has always been a strong connection between being a writer - I feel as though I know what it feels like inside and I can say I've experienced similar problems and solutions from the inside. And I think that's a great advantage as a critic, because you know what the writer is feeling.”

Thinking Writing Feelings Problem Strong Solutions Criticism Critics Poetic Academic Literary Criticism

Author:Christian Karlson Stead

“Deprivation is for me what daffodils were for Wordsworth.”

Poetry Deprivation Literary Criticism Daffodil Wordsworth Sensory Deprivation

Author:Philip Larkin

“Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.”

Source: Palm Sunday: An Autobiographical Collage

“In many ways, Eulah-Beulah prepared me for literary criticism. After having a two-hundred-pound babysitter fart on your face and yell Pow!, The Village Voice holds few terrors.”

Way Two Faces Voice Hundred Criticism Prepared Terror Pounds Village Your Face Fart Literary Criticism Babysitter Pow

Author:Stephen King

“In literary criticism the critic has no choice but to make over the victim of his attention into something the size and shape of himself.”

Choices Attention Shapes Criticism Victim Critics Size Literary Criticism

Book:Travels with Charley in Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley in Search of America

“I still found literary criticism to be a suspect activity”

Stills Found Activity Criticism Suspects Literary Criticism

Book:Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Source: Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

“You know lots of criticism is written by characters who are very academic and think it is a sign you are worthless if you make jokes or kid or even clown. I wouldn't kid Our Lord if he was on the cross. But I would attempt a joke with him if I ran into him chasing the money changers out of the temple.”

Ifs Thinking Knows Character Kids Lord Written Jokes Crosses Criticism Ran Temples Academic Worthless Chasing Clown Our Lord Literary Criticism

Book:The Good Life According to Hemingway

Source: The Good Life According to Hemingway

“In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning.”

Writing Kind Long Art Certain Normal Criticism Math Passages Lacking Literary Criticism

Book:A Collection of Essays

Source: A Collection of Essays

“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”

Source: Sexual Personae

“The great critic … must be a philosopher, for from philosophy he will learn serenity, impartiality, and the transitoriness of human things.”

Humans Philosophy Critics Philosopher Serenity Literary Criticism Impartiality

Book:Mr. Maugham Himself

Source: Mr. Maugham Himself

“Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.”

Book Girl Baby Approach Genuine Spices Literary Criticism Cannibal Baby Girl Polemics

Book:One-Way Street

Source: One-Way Street

“Interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world -- in order to set up a shadow world of ''meanings.''”

World Art Order Shadow Intellect Revenge Interpretation Literary Criticism

Author:Susan Sontag

“The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.”

Important Literature Study Psychology Creation Aspect Criticism Manuscripts Literary Criticism

Author:Umberto Eco

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion.”

Poetry Emotion Poet Personality Poetry Is Literary Criticism American Poetry Poetry By Famous Poets Poetry By Poets Looseness Individual Talent

Author:T. S. Eliot

“The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud.”

Writing Two Ideas Running Political Hate Strong Liberty Criticism I Hate Favors Fraud Literary Criticism I Am Strong Polemics

Author:H. L. Mencken

“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.”

Knows Want Mean Art Poetry Courses Emotion Poet Expression Personality Poetry Is Literary Criticism Poetry By Famous Poets Poetry By Poets Looseness Individual Talent What Is Poetry Expressing Emotions

Author:T. S. Eliot

“Lulled into somnolence by five hundred years of print, literary studies have been slow to wake up to the importance of MSA (media-specific analysis). Literary criticism and theory are shot through with unrecognized assumptions specific to print. Only now, as the new medium of electronic textuality vibrantly asserts its presence, are these assumptions clearly coming into view.”

Years Has Beens Views Study Five Media Theory Hundred Shots Criticism Importance Wake Up Mediums Analysis Assumption Print Literary Criticism

Author:N. Katherine Hayles

“There is creative reading as well as creative writing.”

Writing Wells Reading Healing Education Creativity Creative Creative Writing Exam Literary Criticism Allusion Creative Writers Funny Exam American Scholar

Book:Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838

Source: Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume V: 1835-1838

“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.'”

Feels Writing Wells Made Important Philosophy Novel Serious Criticism Philosopher Contribution Thinker Affinity Literary Criticism Derrida

Author:Jeffrey Eugenides

“The point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.”

Research Criticism Anthropology Persuasive Literary Criticism

Author:Clifford Geertz

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Literary Criticism Quotes