A Future for Criticism [Hardcover]

• Offers a brief, lively, and accessible account of a new direction for critical practice, from one of Britain's most prominent literary theorists and critics
• Proposes a new path for future criticism, more open to reflecting on the pleasures of fiction
• Written in a clear, jargon-free style, and illustrated throughout with numerous examples

Preface xi

1 Pleasure: Have we neglected it? 1

Fiction for pleasure 1

The case of tragedy 3

The English curriculum 6

Cries of joy 7

‘Aesthetic’ pleasure 9

The Pleasure of the Text 12

Modernist unpleasure 14

Gaiety 15

2 Piety: Haven’t we overdone it? 18

Criticism on the defensive 18

Classic defences 22

The advent of theory 24

Law 28

The superego 29

Neurosis 30

Complacency 31

Culture and Anarchy 32

Artefacts and pleasure 33

Critical writing 34

3 Biography: Friend or foe? 37

Life and art 37

Biography in theory 39

What the authors say 42

New Historicism 43

Shakespeare’s life 44

Fact or fiction? 46

Shakespeare’s memory 47

Romance 51

The death of the reader 52

4 Realism: Do we overl#g