Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Before the advent of Critical THEORY, literary criticism was commonly regarded as the formulation and defense of value judgments about works of literature by people widely read in both literature and criticism. Their institutional location was often universities and colleges, and like literary journalists (but unlike critical theorists) they tended to see their work as “secondary” to the “primary” Texts of literature. However much it might be despised by writers, literary criticism could be perceived as the socially useful application of quality controls to literary production by experts whose job is to ensure that the highest standards are maintained.This construction of literary criticism rests on two assumptions. First, that “literature” is an identifiable commodity, easily distinguishable not only from “nonliterature” but also from inferior versions of itself, such as “popular literature” and “subliterature.” And second, that “literary value” can be defined in such generally acceptable terms that it can be appealed to by literary critics as a criterion for distinguishing good writing from bad. Both assumptions have undergone radical critiques since Northrop Frye ridiculed in his Anatomy of Criticism (1957) the promotional and demotional games played by literary critics with literary texts.Earlier theories of literature are “essentialist” in their contention that a literary work ... log in or subscribe to read full text