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/lit/ - Literature

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6097097 No.6097097 [Reply] [Original]

Can literary criticism be an art? If yes, then can you recommend some critics that have real literary merits and maybe post some excerpts of their work?

>inb4 please don’t name Harold Bloom: he might have a lot of culture and learning, but he writes very badly and many of his opinions are gross exaggerations and mystic rhetoric about the craft of writing.

>> No.6097189

>>6097097
Simone Weil - The Iliad or The Poem of Force.

>> No.6097191

William Empson

>> No.6097202

"On the Knocking at the Gate, in Macbeth" by Thomas de Quincey
http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/20973/

>> No.6097284
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6097284

>>6097097
My favorite is Mark van Doren.

Two PDFs of his articles, "This Decade" (on the literature of the 20s) and "The Good Teacher" (not literary criticism, but he was mostly known for his teaching).

>a.pomf.se/qfuqro.pdf
>a.pomf.se/lgallx.pdf

Also really enjoy Guy Davenport, Walter Benjamin, Gass and Brodsky.

>> No.6097288

>>6097284
>My favorite is Mark van Doren.

my nigga, my nigga, my nigga

Have you ever read his "Shakespeare"? One of the best books of all time about the dramatist.

>> No.6097314

>Can literary criticism be an art?

No.

>> No.6097354
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6097354

>>6097288
Yup, that's the first thing I picked up by him. NYRB Classics introduced it to me.

It did a far better job at getting me to appreciate Shakespeare than any professor I've had.

>> No.6097426

>>6097354

thanks for those links, btw

>> No.6097465

>>6097097
Yes
Oscar Wilde
Read the Critic as an Artist