Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History

Joseph North

Published by Harvard University Press 2017

Literary Criticism

A Concise Political History

Joseph North

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674978522

Overview
Contents

About this book

Since the global turn to neoliberalism in the 1970s, movements in literary studies have been diagnostic rather than interventionist: scholars have developed techniques for analyzing culture but have retreated from attempts to transform it. For Joseph North, a genuinely interventionist criticism is a central task facing scholars on the Left today.

Author / Editor information

North Joseph :

Joseph North is Assistant Professor of English at Yale University.

Reviews

[A] bold, lively, engagingly polemical account of academic literary criticism in the Anglo-American world.
-- Bruce Robbins Los Angeles Review of Books

[North’s] effort to disentangle the progressive possibilities of aesthetic cultivation from the reactionary forms it has assumed may well help to rejuvenate the discipline. After all, it is entirely possible to expose students to complexity and nuance without reaffirming the old-school canon of dead white men or the reactionary politics that the canon was made to serve. North’s style is disarmingly lucid and self-assured; his reminds me of the work produced by an earlier kind of scholar, the sort who imagined a general audience. As devastating as it is meticulous, North’s analysis is a tour de force demonstration of what close reading can bring to light and why it would be a tragedy if the discipline ever gave it up.
-- Timothy Aubry New Republic

[There is] a great deal to learn from this highly informed, articulate, bold and quietly passionate book.
-- Brendan Gillott 3:AM

[North] is a courteous and charming narrator whose book is an absorbing addition to the history of literary studies, and future researchers will be indebted to him.
-- Gary Day Times Higher Education

An exemplary venture in a leftist politics of culture…Literary Criticism is what its title claims for it, a book of quite general significance that should be read and considered by anyone, in or outside the academy, with a serious practical interest in the politics of literary culture today.
-- Francis Mulhern New Left Review

Utterly absorbing, revelatory, and inspiring in equal measures…A challenge to received wisdom…An exhilarating, sweeping, and hopeful narrative of literary studies’ pasts and possible futures. Anyone who wants to do literary studies in the coming years must read it.
-- Tim Lanzendörfer Amerikastudien/American Studies

This book is really a remarkable achievement: the best thing I have ever read about the history of criticism. North has read so much, thought so judiciously, and achieved a tone that is at once bold and modest, extraordinarily respectful of others’ achievements, while calmly showing that they have not fully understood what they are doing. North skillfully demonstrates that criticism’s best hope of bringing cultural change lies not with the historicist-contextualist critics who seek knowledge of cultures, but with the critics who seek the enhancement of the imaginative faculties of readers. This book gives us a different way of thinking about criticism.
-- Jonathan Culler, Cornell University

Joseph North offers a bold and counterintuitive perspective on the history of criticism: that the turn toward reading texts in cultural-historical contexts is not a sign of the radicalization of literary studies but rather the opposite. North argues for a return to criticism—defined as a concern with aesthetic education and the cultivation of subjectivity—in order to revitalize literary studies and reconnect it to social and political life. Literary Criticism sparkles with intelligence and is assured and incisive throughout. A real pleasure to read.
-- Rita Felski, University of Virginia

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Critical Revolution Turns Right Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2. The Scholarly Turn Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
3. The Historicist / Contextualist Paradigm Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
4. The Critical Unconscious Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	124
Conclusion: The Future of Criticism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	195
Appendix: The Critical Paradigm and T. S. Eliot Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	249

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Audience: General/trade;College/higher education;Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 272

eBook

Published: May 8, 2017
ISBN: 9780674978522