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The Morality of Conrad’s Imagination
December 1, 1982
In a letter written as he was beginning Lord Jim, Conrad describes the problem of discerning and firmly holding the values by which life may be lived, and his remarks identify an issue central to the reading and criticism of his works: the difficulty of defining Conrad’s values.
The Composition of The Sound and the Fury
December 1, 1982
by Leon Howard
William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury has been, during the last fifty years, one of the most widely discussed American novels. Critics have made numerous efforts to define its meaning and have found innumerable things to say about its structure.
Responses to Frederick Turner
December 1, 1982
by Aaron Kramer, David Perkins, Diane Wakoski, Donald Hall, Louis Simpson, Robert Bly, Theodore Weiss
The following is a synopsis of and responses to Frederick Turner’s article ” ‘Mighty Poets in their Misery Dead’ : A polemic on the Contemporary Poetic Scene,” which appeared in the Fall, 1980 issue of The Missouri Review.
On Certain Slants of Light Slipping “Zippy Zappy,” From Williams
December 1, 1982
This essay began from my musing upon a claim, recently made, that there is no great poetry today, and that, in large part, because our poets are ignorant of contemporary philosophy and science.
Twilight (a possible story by William Faulkner)
December 1, 1982
by Leon Howard
and Roskus came
and said to come to supper and Caddy said,
It’s not supper time yet, I’m not going.
The Primacy of the Author
September 1, 1982
A colleague of mine has recently published a book which he calls Criticism in the Wilderness. I am not surprised at his title. He might well have decided to call it Criticism on the Battlefield, for ours is a day in which the critics, notoriously a splenetic lot at best, have at each other with hammer and tongs.
Sounding the Past: A Discussion wiht Cleanth Brooks
September 1, 1982
by Joseph M. Ditta, Ronald S. Librach
In the spring of 1982, under the auspices of the Paul Anthony Brick Lecture Committee, we were able to interview Professor Brooks. Much to our delight, what began as a highly formal occasion — with tapes and microphones strategically placed chairs — swiftly developed into a relaed and far-ranging discussion of matters launched by the topic of his three lectures: the contemporary state of literary criticism.
Pynchon, Beckett, and Entropy: Uses of Metaphor
June 1, 1982
Thomas Pynchon’s work is extraordinary eclectic in its interests, but his use of entropy as a metaphor has emerged, over the past ten years or so, as the pre-eminent single concern of critics of his work.
Meaning, Revelation and Tradition in Language and Religion
June 1, 1982
Paul Ricoeur, in his book The Symbolism of Evil, referring to a certain sentence on which he is about to expatiate, begins: “That sentence, which enchants me…” Well, there is a sentence which enchants, and has always enchanted me.
Directions for Criticism: Geoffrey Hartman and Stanley Fish
June 1, 1981
This content is not currently available online.
Art and Artistry in Morgana, Mississippi
June 1, 1981
This content is not currently available online.
Literary Criticism: Thomas Byers
December 1, 1980
by Thomas Byers
This entire piece is not available online
“Mighty Poets in Their Misery Dead”: A Polemic on the Contemporary Poetic Scene
March 1, 1980
One of the peculiarities of out present literary age is that future times will find it remarkably difficult to say of us that “history proved us wrong.” The reason for this is that we take so few real stands on the literary quality of contemporary works.
Anapostrophe: Rhetorical Meditations Upon Donald Justice’s “Poem”
March 1, 1980
This poem is not addressed to me, but it was not written except to teach me the meaning of its disregard. Its message could not have been more swift and deadly.
The Authentic Duplicity of Thom Gunn’s Recent Poetry
March 1, 1979
by Merle Brown
This critique is currently not available online.
John Ashbery: The Effort to Make Sense
March 1, 1979
by David Fite
This critique is currently not available online.
“Lines Converging and Crossing”: The “French” Phase of William Carlos Williams
September 1, 1978
This critique is not currently available online: In the spring of 1922, the Little Review published a special number devoted to Francis Picabia. Aside from Picabia’s own Dada compositions (poems, paintings, the manifesto “Anticoq”), the issure included such items as …
For Interpretation
September 1, 1978
This critique is not currently available online. Man, we are fond of saying, can be defined as a language-using being; perhaps it would be more to the point to note that language is man-using. For man does not really have …
