Much literary criticism comes from people for whom extreme specialization is a cover for either grave cerebral inadequacy or terminal laziness, the… — John Kenneth Galbraith Copy Share Image
“When the critic has said everything in his power about a literary text, he has still said nothing; for the very existence… — Todorov Tzvetan Copy Share Image
“The heart of [J.G.] Ballard's vision [is] the object at odds with its function and abandoned by its time.” — Tacita Dean Copy Share Image
“It must be remembered that no art lives by nature, only by acts of voluntary attention on the part of human individuals.… — C.S. Lewis Copy Share Image
“One problem with the work of the New Critics was that their close readings, no matter how brilliant, could not deliver all… — Jewel Spears Brooker Copy Share Image
“Leslie Stephen died in 1904. In that year his children retreated to Wales for a period and then travelled in Italy. Vanessa… — Jane Goldman Copy Share Image
Certainly professionally, yes [I was interested more in history]. And literary criticism, the structure of poetry. But it is primarily as a… — Frank Moore Cross Copy Share Image
“The language of Shakespeare is the first and lasting affirmation of the great changes that took place in the sixteenth century, leaving… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“Woolf turned her back on a number of tokens of her rising eminence in the 1930s, including an offer of the Companion… — Jane Goldman Copy Share Image
“Tess is not simply presented as a passive victim, however. Throughout the novel she is shown as experiencing tension between the intractable… — Geoffrey Harvey Copy Share Image
“[T]his is how it will remain until ... literary criticism discards its sociological, religious, philosophical and other textbooks, which only help mediocrity… — Vladimir Nabokov Copy Share Image
“Saying that studying the brain is limited to the study of physical entities would be like saying that literary criticism must focus… — Douglas R. Hofstadter Copy Share Image
“However, for Hardy the possibility of poetry’s traditional function of transcendence remains, but in a more limited form. In Hardy’s work the… — Geoffrey Harvey Copy Share Image
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is… — DH Lawrence Copy Share Image
“A turning point in the criticism of Hardy’s poetry came in his centenary year, in which W. H. Auden (1940) recorded his… — Geoffrey Harvey Copy Share Image
“All Renaissance drama, especially the works of Marlowe and Shakespeare, is profoundly concerned with shifting power relations within society. The individual was… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“The great majority of interpretations of Apocalypse assume that the End is pretty near. Consequently the historical allegory is always having to… — Frank Kermode Copy Share Image
“In the eighteenth century, the Scottish Enlightenment focused attention on Glasgow and Edinburgh as centres of intellectual activity. The Scottish Enlightenment was… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“Milton argued, in 1649, after the execution of Charles I, that a people 'free by nature' had a right to overthrow a… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“It is already the fashion to diminish Eliot by calling him derivative, the mouthpiece of Pound, and so forth; and yet if… — Frank Kermode Copy Share Image
“The decline of sustained close reading of Eliot is also related, ironically, to the emergence of historical scholarship regarding sources and allusions.… — Jewel Spears Brooker Copy Share Image
“I have tried to write about politics in an allusive manner that draws upon other interests and to approach literature and criticism… — Christopher Hitchens Copy Share Image
“It doesn't matter whether a sequence of words is called a history or a story: that is, whether it is intended to… — Northrop Frye Copy Share Image
“Mankind is immortal in the comic perspective not by virtue of man's subjugation of nature but by virtue of man's subjection to… — Rose A. Zimbardo Copy Share Image
“Writers in what we now call the Middle English period (late twelfth century to 1485) did not necessarily always write in English.… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
In the old days of literature, only the very thick-skinned - or the very brilliant - dared enter the arena of literary… — Joanne Harris Copy Share Image
“Christian monks and nuns were, in effect, the guardians of culture, as they were virtually the only people who could read and… — Ronald Carter Copy Share Image
“[N]o such thing as objective writing, . . . every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing,… — Sue Hubbell Copy Share Image
... if we can imagine the art of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly bid us to… — Virginia Woolf Copy Share Image
“Meaningful literary criticism is like penance to please Bhagwan Shiva and ask for wisdom for the world instead of material things for… — Alok Mishra Copy Share Image
I'm never a fan of the sociopathic kind of reviewing, people who are sort of self-immolating and have social problems or whatever,… — Dave Eggers Copy Share Image
“It is important to recognise Woolf ’s acknowledgement of her father’s dually formative influence. The domestic dictator was also an intellectual who… — Jane Goldman Copy Share Image
“Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's… — Elif Batuman Copy Share Image
A bad short story or novel or poem leaves one comparatively calm because it does not exist, unless it gets a fake… — Rebecca West Copy Share Image
“The critic will certainly be an interpreter, but he will not treat Art as a riddling Sphinx, whose shallow secret may be… — Oscar Wilde Copy Share Image
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."… — Wesley Morris Copy Share Image
“Indeed, and crucially so, the serial form took the control of the novel away from the reader and left him in an… — Ian Gregor Copy Share Image
“It happens that in our phase of civility, the novel is the central form of literary art. It lends itself to explanations… — Frank Kermode Copy Share Image
“Most intellectual training focuses on analytical skills. Whether in literary criticism or scientific investigation, the academic mind is best at taking things… — Richard J. Borden Copy Share Image
“Read as little as possible of literary criticism — such things are either partisan opinions, which have become petrified and meaningless, hardened… — Rainer Maria Rilke Copy Share Image
![“The heart of [J.G.] Ballard's vision [is] the object at odds with its function and abandoned by its time.” quote by Tacita Dean](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/a7f/tacita-dean-281246_abandoned_the-heart-of-j-g-ballard-s-vision-is-the_2643659.jpg)
![“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.” quote by Frank Moore Cross](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/b7f/frank-moore-cross-14963_criticism_certainly-professionally-yes-i-was-inter_3110471.jpg)
![“[T]his is how it will remain until ... literary criticism discards its sociological, religious, philosophical and other textbooks, which only help mediocrity to admire itself. Only then will you be free to say what you please. [F]or God's sake stop that irrelevant chitchat.” quote by Vladimir Nabokov](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/e47/vladimir-nabokov-198_criticism_t-his-is-how-it-will-remain-until-litera_2511149.jpg)
![“[N]o such thing as objective writing, . . . every inscription, every traveler's tale, every news account, every piece of technical writing, tells more about the author and his time than it does about the ostensible subject.” quote by Sue Hubbell](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/d05/sue-hubbell-14236_books_n-o-such-thing-as-objective-writing-ever_2859804.jpg)
