I WANT to talk about the historical interpretation of literature — that is, about the interpretation of literature in its social, economic, and political aspects. To begin with, it will be worth while ...

J onathan Kramnick’s book Criticism and Truth is more modest than its title suggests. Essentially an apologia for the nuts-and-bolts work of literary studies, it is best described not as “ambitious” — ...

Yousaf Hasan is a man of great intellect and integrity. Born in Kala Gujran, Jhelum, the Urdu and Punjabi language poet and critic, started writing literary criticism under the guidance of Ahmed ...

“Criticism,” according to Northrop Frye, “is badly in need of an organizing principle, a central hypothesis which, like the theory of evolution in biology, will see the phenomena it deals with as ...

Anyone who has taught a college literature course has likely heard a student say, “Can’t I just enjoy the book?” This frustration with literary theory is common. Many undergraduates feel that theory ...

Of the character sketches that the English satirist Samuel Butler wrote in the mid-seventeenth century—among them “A Degenerate Noble,” “A Huffing Courtier,” “A Small Poet,” and “A Romance Writer”—the ...

Comparative Literature Studies publishes comparative critical essays that range across the rich traditions of Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America, and that examine the literary relations ...

In an interview in yesterday’s Independent, Stothard, chair of the U.K.’s prestigious Man Booker Prize for literature, stated that book blogging has traditional criticism “on the decline”—though he ...

As theories of literary criticism in Urdu are being maligned and violently discarded, here’s an attempt to unravel the reasons Literary criticism in general and contemporary Urdu criticism in ...