John Guillory’s “Cultural Capital,” published amid the 1990s canon wars, became a classic. In a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on his field’s deep funk. By Jennifer Schuessler Thirty ...

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 ...

Adam Szetela’s That Book Is Dangerous! makes the case that we exist in the “Sensitivity Era”. According to Szetela, American literature – in particular literature for young people – is threatened by a ...

For years, the writer flirted and exchanged ideas with Amélie Bosquet—until her ideas threatened his work. Criticism has a way of surviving without infrastructure, but there is no replacement for ...