What has emerged from this discussion of the reform of English Literature at A-level is that the tension between the specialist discipline of English and the private act of reading is still ongoing. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this tension took two easily distinguishable forms: the intellectual authority that was used to… Continue reading The place of criticism: A wider view
Tag: Literary criticism
The resistance to knowledge
The reluctance of AQA Specification A to embrace the critical and theo- retical possibilities of the new subject criteria came as no real surprise. Since the new specifications were launched, there have been a number of objections to the critical principles they represent: to the idea that the study of literature should involve anything other… Continue reading The resistance to knowledge
F. R. Leavis: The university and the sage
Richards’s sense of the narrowness of literary scholarship is apparent in the direction taken by his career. After the publication of Practical Criticism in 1929, he spent relatively little time in Cambridge: in 1934, he was commissioned by the General Education Board in New York to recom- mend a set of improvements in the teaching… Continue reading F. R. Leavis: The university and the sage
The importance of difficulty
On one level, it is easy to see both Murry’s humanism and Woolf’s visions as a means of self-promotion, resting as they do on a personal engagement with the text rather than the detached, analytical methods of the newly professionalised humanities. This, of course, leaves both Woolf and Murry open to many of the charges levelled… Continue reading The importance of difficulty
Virginia Woolf: Criticism as private experience
It is difficult to approach Virginia Woolf without being conscious not only of her Modernism, but also of her relationship to the concept of a feminine sensibility. Because many of Woolf’s subjects are women, and because the method of reading she advocates is linked closely to her attempts to explore the ‘unknown and uncircumscribed spirit’13… Continue reading Virginia Woolf: Criticism as private experience
Literary criticism: The influence of scholarship
These attempts to define the nature of literary knowledge took place in a society where the audience for, and purpose of, literary criticism were undergoing a number of changes. A brief outline of these changes will enable the debates about criticism to be set in context, and illuminate the source of many of the tensions… Continue reading Literary criticism: The influence of scholarship
The importance of Classics: The literary tradition
These suspicions about the academic validity of the study of English literature were also apparent at Cambridge, where once again they crystal- lised around the inauguration of a professorship, the King Edward VII Professorship of English Literature. This Professorship was established in 1910 as the result of a donation from the newspaper magnate Sir Harold… Continue reading The importance of Classics: The literary tradition
Oxford and Cambridge: The development of criticism
Unlike London and the regional institutions, Oxford has played a central role in accounts of ‘the rise of English’. It is easy to see why this is the case. For one thing, its story has the attraction of controversy, in the form of the lengthy battle against the university authorities that was led by the… Continue reading Oxford and Cambridge: The development of criticism
Literary Scripturism
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Character" (1866) If there is anything in art that can take the place of religion, we should like to see it. Josiah Gilbert Holland, Every-Day Topics, 2nd series (1882) That American thought before 1865 was markedly religiocentric is a scholarly… Continue reading Literary Scripturism
Planning Your Essay
If you have actively reread the work you plan to write about and have made notes or annotations, you are already well on your way to writing your paper. Your mind has already begun to work through some initial impressions and ideas. Now you need to arrange those early notions into an organized and logical… Continue reading Planning Your Essay