379. (Leo Tolstoy)

Hadji Murat should be a tragedy—it is not. That is the crucial fact about it. Tolstoy refused to write tragedy, here…

378. (William Empson)

I’m curious to know the extent to which, if at all, Empson was involved in deciding the cover of Some Versions…

The relations of poetry to pattern are diverse. A poem is patterned by conventions of rhyme, exists in a…

What did Tennyson add to English poetry? Or Wordsworth? Or Swinburne? It’s not a trivial question in the way a…

The Turn of the Screw is the turn of the key into the heart of Henry James’ fiction; it is…

Though Titus Andronicus is probably felt to be Shakespeare’s worst play by many, The Merry Wives of Windsor is held in a special place…

Modernism is a disputed word. Critics nowadays remind us that there are many modernisms, and rightly, since there are many…

It is pleasant to suppose that Shakespeare ended his career in a series of collaborations with Fletcher: Henry VIII, which Shakespeare…

What opens when “pattern,” rather than “form” is allowed to guide our reading of literature? It might be thought a…

Lately, I’ve been thinking—as a teacher and reader of criticism—about how criticism depends on discerning and working out various puzzles.…