Literature and our Experience

I have to say I truly enjoyed the article on literature and lit. criticism. As a professional writing major, I haven’t had much experience with literature studies except for an undergrad Shakespeare class and the required freshman lit course. I love reading and am wholly enthusiastic about plunging deeper into this “new world” over the [...]

Read Full Post »

critical theory (and that’s not all!)

So OK, if literary criticism is about our literary interpretations, and critical theory is about finding the lenses through which we see (and, um, interpret) those interpretations, then are these two different schools of thought side by side, or is this one box inside another?  Maybe both. 
I guess I can understand both approaches.  On one [...]

Read Full Post »

Literature, Criticism and Interdisciplinarity

I just finished reading Taylor’s “Literature and Literary Criticism”, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I especially enjoyed his thoughts about the literary canon, and his assertions that the canon is always in flux, more a product of current social conditions and philosophies than a static, nonsensical list of dead white guys.
“One of the fundamental observations of [...]

Read Full Post »

I’m a Literary Man, So Help Me God!

Please take my blog for this week to be a continuation of my blog for last week; I’m trying to reconcile the same concerns.
 
I just finished reading Taylor’s article on “Literature and Literary Criticism,” and I’m more than a little nervous because so far I consider it to be the most effective introduction in the [...]

Read Full Post »