On Academic Literary Criticism (Novel Readings)

About the Author

Rohan Maitzen

I am an English professor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I blog at Novel Readings. More information about me can be found at my home page.

About This Index

I began blogging at Novel Readings in January, 2007. This index page provides a guide to the majority of the substantive reviews and commentaries posted there. The usual format of a blog, always presenting the most recent content first, implies (misleadingly, in my view) that older content becomes less relevant and interesting as it recedes into the archives. Searching by 'label,' though it gathers related content, similarly enforces the primacy of the latest installment--even though the most recent post most likely builds on a chain of thoughts and references developed over time and thus best followed in chronological order.

Because I have conceived of Novel Readings not (or not just) as a news feed on my latest reading, teaching or thinking, but also as a repository of ideas and readings, I hope here to off-set this bias towards the recent by organizing the content of the blog according to a different principle or image: as an interrelated set of constantly evolving or expanding chapters. Each 'chapter' heading is followed by a chronological series of links to posts at Novel Readings, then--or, on occasion, to posts at The Valve, where I have been a contributor since March 2008. I hope that by offering this alternative approach to navigating the blog that I can enhance its usefulness, not only to myself by making it easier to locate and track the unfolding of ideas I'm not finished with yet, but also to visitors. To paraphrase a famous philosopher, Novel Readings (like every blog) will not therefore have been, (nor will it ever be) a book--but it is something like one, a malleable, unstable, diffuse one, in ways that this Index helps display.

Index to Novel Readings‎ > ‎

On Academic Literary Criticism

Denis Donoghue, The Practice of Reading (April 3, 2007)

Academic Criticism Criticized (and Defended) (May 16, 2007)

More on the Purpose of Criticism (July 20, 2007)

Brian McRae, Addison and Steele are Dead (August 7, 2007)

More on Professional vs. Public Criticism (August 9, 2007)

Academics and Literary Culture (September 5, 2007)

Mad as Hell--at Literary Critics? (September 9, 2007)

"An Actual Literary Critic"? (October 18, 2007)

"Why I Teach Literature" (February 29, 2008)

The Dead (Critics, That Is) (March 14, 2008)

Literary Criticism in/and the Public Sphere (The Valve, April 27, 2008)

The Death of the Critic: Reprise (May 23, 2008)

"Ruined by the Academics": More on the Decline of Criticism (July 15, 2008)

Posner on the "Decline of Literary Criticism" (November 20, 2008)

Weak Reading; or, That's Not What It's About (March17, 2009)

Exploring Key Concepts in Post-Colonial Studies (March 30, 2009; x-posted)

More on Post-Colonial Criticism (April 14, 2009)

Post-Colonialism Redux (July 13, 209; x-posted)