Talk:Literary criticism/Archive 1

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--LiteratPJ 05:18, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

why does this page go to the .com site? isnt' the site fully migrated? dennis

This shouldn't really redirect to Literary theory, since theory is usually described as the philosophical study of the methods of literary criticism -- the redirect was conflating the theory with its object. I've tried to explain this in the article, but it could probably be clearer. More contributions would be welcome. (Famous critics? Kinds of criticism/different aesthetics in more detail?) But this is a start, at least.

Rbellin 07:19, 20 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Which-hunting
You may wish to note H.W. Fowler (most notably the last paragraph) and Sir Ernest Gowers.

Proposal for Book Reviews by Wikipedians
Might it not be an intellectually profitable idea to have on this page a link pointing to a page where Wikipedia users might post links to book reviews they write? They might name the pages the same as the books' titles, and then list/post links to those pages on a page named Book Reviews by Wikipedians. Please consider this idea for the future.


 * Wikipedia is not the place for original research such as book reviews, but this would be a good idea for a project on the sister site WikiSource. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:19, 7 Jan 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree, book reviews are a good idea but a distinctly seperate idea then literary criticism. A review is POV by nature, but criticism seems to be akin to a 'disection' of the book's fundamentals (character, plot, setting, metaphor, style, syntax etc.).


 * ??? Huh? A book review IS literary criticism. How can you really "separate" the two? Literary criticism can include POV, it could be one line, or be the length of a novel (and in some cases, ARE books). Colonel Marksman 20:05, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Stub?
Isn't this article (and I feel it's a very nice summary) a stub? ;) &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by JECompton (talk &bull; contribs) 20 Sept 2005.
 * It certainly needs expansion, but it's more than what we usually call a stub. -- Jmabel | Talk 18:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that it's a stub. This article, though quite informative and interesting, is not adequate. For example, it mentions Plato and states that Plato thought that poiesis was 'secondary', but it doesn't explain. Strictly speaking, Plato thought of poetry as 'twice removed' from the Ideal Forms, an imitation of an imitation. Furthermore, I think it is insufficient to say that 'much more could be said on pre-19th century literary criticism'. Then it needs to be said! :-) I think overall this article is indeed somewhat of a stub and needs tidied up and expanded. &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by WKelly (talk &bull; contribs) 28 Nov 2005.

Why in nine hells does "Liberal Humanism" redirects to this article?!
 * It doesn't. Indeed, there has never been an article Liberal Humanism. And someone seems now to have fixed the odd redirect from Liberal humanism. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this really is a stub, if only because it has nothing to say about non-western literary criticism--as if this were a subject strictly limited to Europe and the US. I linked a work from Chinese lit crit here, but it will prove to be altogether useless unless this eventually includes something less "Eurocentric." Nostalgiphile 05:19, 8 February 2006 (UTC)


 * So write it. But not every incomplete article is a stub. See Stub. - Jmabel | Talk 01:23, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Western scholarly tradition
Related to which, now we have "Literary criticism is deeply ingrained within, among other cultural institutions, the Western scholarly tradition." I suppose. I really can't make sense of what "among other cultural institutions" is supposed to mean here. - Jmabel | Talk 08:12, 8 October 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm all for removing that sentence, as it appears completely meaningless. In fact, I will do so now. The user who inserted it appears to be testing the boundaries of what is considered vandalism, having started with "Literary criticism is gay" and stepped slowly down from there. -- Rbellin|Talk 14:42, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

So.... what do they do?
I think I've never read a "literary critic". How's it? What does it talk about? (it'd be nice to comment it in the article, anyway) --euyyn 00:15, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

meaning of "criticism"
your average very lay reader might be confused by the word "criticism" in "literary criticism" because it's common meaning is to diss something. Maybe the first paragraph should explain it doesn't just mean dissing literature. --86.148.56.121 21:18, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Wikipedia is not a dictionary. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:20, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Articles in Wikipedia should be accessible to the widest possible audience. --86.148.56.121 21:23, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
 * If you'd like to add a link in the lead section to the article critic, that seems reasonable. But this is a perfectly ordinary word in a reasonably common use, not by any stretch a specialized piece of technical jargon that needs to be defined before being used (which is what the policy you linked addresses).  Readers who don't know that might be better served by the Simple English Wikipedia. -- Rbellin|Talk 21:27, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Bakhtin sentence removed
I have removed a sentence (obviously appended) from the end of the New Criticism section. It introduced Mikhail Bakhtin and named a few of his critical ideas without any elaboration. It did not belong under New Criticism (not even in connection with Russian Formalism). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.125.46 (talk) 05:35, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

See also: Deconstruction
216.16.236.2 (talk) 02:25, 4 March 2009 (UTC) Isn't it incorrect, according to this statement, to refer to deconstruction as a 'strategy.'

To say that deconstruction is a strategy (akin to method) is also to say that you can make it happen. More to Derrida's definition; the text deconstructs itself and we simply react. Resolution? Cut the statement and let the article speak for itself.

Ronald Dworkin
Why in the world is Dworkin quoted as an authority in this article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.26.67 (talk) 16:24, 5 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes, that should clearly be deleted as irrelevant. -- Rbellin|Talk 17:47, 5 June 2009 (UTC)

This definition is confusing
Literary criticism is important because, like the banks of the river, it shapes and grooms the purpose and nature of literary works.

So... does this mean that whenever an author sets out to write a new novel, they don't get to choose the purpose for it? They have to consider what literary critics think of it, or else the author's own purpose doesn't mean anything?

I'm also confused by that word "literary". It probably doesn't include things like science fiction, but I'm not sure. What's a literary work?LogicalDash (talk) 08:42, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * I have little idea what that sentence was meant to convey, and have reverted its recent addition along with some other garbled and unencyclopedic prose. -- Rbellin|Talk 16:46, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

As a literary critic, can I quickly add that science fiction definitely falls under its scope, at least the academic version of it - basically we ysually mean literature to mean ‘texts’ Pharalope45 (talk) 10:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

Need more non-European sources
I'm not sure if LitCrit from other cultures should get its own section, but it seems to me that we should acknowledge the long history of criticism among Indian, Middle Eastern, Chinese and Japanese cultures, as well as the more recent developments in Africa, Latin America, etc. Aristophanes68 (talk) 00:08, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Question re: Category:Literary critics
I've posted a question on how to organize Category:Literary critics over at Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Literature. Please chime in. Thanks! Aristophanes 68  (talk)  17:11, 20 June 2011 (UTC)

Literary criticism criticism
http://xkcd.com/451/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.138.16.77 (talk) 04:15, 18 July 2008 (UTC)


 * How is this relevant? 2603:6010:11F0:3C0:4111:6F56:6969:3736 (talk) 03:03, 6 October 2022 (UTC)

Could someone look in at a novel's article page?
, others: Could you look in on Sophie's Choice (novel), and see if you can think of individuals in your respective writing communities, that might give some attention to this article? It is a sensitive article, insofar as Styron took a view, in the book, that has been very controversial, vis-a-vis his view of the Holocaust. When I arrived at the article, it did not even mention the controversy, and I have added it. But this is not my area of expertise, and what is needed is an English Prof, or a Holocaust literature expert, that can sensitively provide a balanced perspective on the book, from published sources. (I spent some time in my editing, in adding an extensive Further reading list of sources I could find.) I am simply not an expert in 20th century cultural history, or literature, or literary criticism, to be able to undertake these revisions. Cheers, good luck. Le Prof Leprof 7272 (talk) 17:55, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

What about the rest of the world?
This page almost exclusively looks at Western (or North American, Anglo-Saxon and Roman) traditions of literature... fredericknoronha (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2016 (UTC)

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Should "popular criticism" (book reviewers) have a separate article or articles? (Update: Wait, I guess there is one - or a start of one)
Although the "more popular critics," such as New York Times reviewers, are mentioned in paragraph 3, the whole rest of the article seems to be entirely concerned with the kinds of discussion and discussants one finds in academic circles. I don't say that this is a bad thing, but wouldn't it be a good idea if there were an article which dealt more fully and directly with the whole practice of reviewing books for the guidance of readers of newspapers and other periodicals (and now websites)? Someplace where one could mention, for example, the reviews in People Magazine or on Slate. Or in the New York Times, for that matter. And comparable non-US venues.

My own interest in the question arose from my interest in contributing an article on Louise Maunsell Field, a book reviewer for the New York Times who wrote hundreds of reviews between 1920 and 1943 and who indeed is cited in several Wikipedia articles on the authors and the works she reviewed. But does she fit comfortably in with Adorno, Sartre, Harold Bloom and all these folks? I sort of doubt it. By the way I note that the article on Michiko Kakutani has never gotten categorized in the list of literary critics associated with the existing article, and I think this is sort indicative of something - that is, that people pretty much realize that this article, along with the list of "literary critics," is about academic criticism, and that the book reviewers belong elsewhere. At the moment if someone wants to find out something about the most influential book reviewers in the US (or of course anywhere else) in such and such a decade, there's nothing that I know of yet on Wikipedia that attempts to answer the question.

What do people think of this? Separate article - or try to squeeze the book reviewers past and present into the existing article, in between and alongside the academics?

LATER EDIT: Okay, I have now discovered that there is already a Book Review article in existence that is very sketchy at the moment but which can bear some of this weight - with some work. However, it really ought to be Wikilinked from here, in the intro section and in "See Also" - so I am going to do that. Theodulf-W (talk) 19:46, 10 December 2014 (Later edit: 11 December)(UTC)