The title gives something away: that The Ambassadors will be a novel about power, about relations of power, and about … More
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388. (A.E. Housman)
One of Housman’s most poignant poems: Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked … More
387. (Henry James)
James appeals to the concept of life with the most brazenly airy of gestures, and his novels are also open … More
386. (Christopher Ricks)
Christopher Ricks’ Along Heroic Lines is his best work of criticism since Essays in Appreciation, which is also the collection … More
381. (Aristotle)
As often in Aristotle, what seems empirical is in fact metaphysical realism. The Poetics used to leave me baffled—like others—by … More
371. (William Wordsworth)
What opens when “pattern,” rather than “form” is allowed to guide our reading of literature? It might be thought a … More
370. (Samuel Johnson)
Lately, I’ve been thinking—as a teacher and reader of criticism—about how criticism depends on discerning and working out various puzzles. … More
366. (John Milton)
In a work of literature, rightness of feeling coincides with a feeling of rightness; authors apprehend just what and how … More
330a. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
In the prior post, written around a year ago, I took up the chapter of Biographia Literaria in which Coleridge … More
351. (Sonia Sanchez)
One divide in post-1950, maybe post-1960, American poetry could be said to grow out of the claims of the eye. … More