Essayer's instruments LitCrit at Troynovant:
closer readings of the analytical process
in and around literary criticism;
listed by Title

By in and around Literary Criticism we mean here literary essays or reviews which glance at critical principles or the critical process itself as well as the created works at hand, or reviews of works themselves critical. Note that reviews or essays developing some point or aspect of literature are not necessarily listed here.

Some partly overlapping lists at Troynovant:
PictureLike: projecting some light on moving pictures
ReFuture: history of science fiction & progress of fantasy
WordPoints: pointed more toward language, writers, & publishing


That Shelley was an excellent scholar, a man well read in many fields, and that he was fundamentally intellectual rather than emotional, is not widely realized. Mary Shelley's modest contention that Shelley was as notable a philosopher as poet has been smilingly put aside as the exaggeration born of a wifely devotion. One gathers, indeed, from many commentators that Shelley was a kind of inspired idiot, producing beautiful poetry without clearly knowing what he was about.

It is unlikely that beautiful poetry was ever so produced.

Carl Grabo
A Newton Among Poets
Shelley's Use of Science in Prometheus Unbound


  
Advertisement Touching a Holy War Francis Bacon RW Franson
Art of Fiction, The Ayn Rand RW Franson
As Good as The Lord of the Rings
  An Epic Failure of Comparison
RW Franson
Atlas Shrugged as Science Fiction
  Two Reviews in Astounding, 1958
RW Franson

Bring Her Down
  How the American Media
  Tried to Destroy Sarah Palin
Gina Dalfonzo NO Coulter
Broadway Babies Say Goodnight
  Musicals Then and Now
Mark Steyn RW Franson

Carl Barks and the Art of the Comic Book Michael Barrier RW Franson
Citizen of the Galaxy Robert A. Heinlein RW Franson
Coolidge Summer White House
  Postcard, aoa 13 August 1928
VH Franson

Demigoddess of the Mind
  James H. Schmitz's heroine
  Telzey Amberdon
RW Franson

East Europe Reads Nietzsche Alice Freifeld,
  Peter Bergmann
  & Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal 
RW Franson

Every Crowd Is Crazy
  Kipling's Political Theme in "As Easy as A.B.C."
WH Stoddard

Faust
  A Tragedy
  (translated by Walter Arndt)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe RW Franson
Federation of the Hub, The
  Self-Maintaining Science Fiction Universe
JH Schmitz
Fountainhead, The
  [an Aristotelian view]
Ayn Rand WH Stoddard
Four-Day Planet H. Beam Piper RW Franson

Galadriel and Ayesha WH Stoddard

Heinlein's Missed Bestsellers RW Franson
Horatius at Khazad-dum WH Stoddard

Ideas of Ayn Rand, The Ronald E. Merrill RW Franson
In Search of Wonder
  Essays on Modern Science Fiction
Damon Knight RW Franson
Inspector General, The [film] Nikolai Gogol / Henry Koster / Danny Kaye RW Franson

Jane Austen in the South Seas
  or, Centrifugal versus Centripetal Criticism
RW Franson
John Galt, Man of Letters RW Franson

Laodicean, A
  or, The Castle of the De Stancys.
  A Story of To-Day.
Thomas Hardy RW Franson
Law and Institutions in the Shire WH Stoddard
Leo Strauss and Nietzsche Laurence Lampert RW Franson
Let There Be Light Robert A. Heinlein RW Franson
Life and Value in Ayn Rand's Ethics WH Stoddard
Looking Through a Paradigm Darkly
  Was Dominque's rape in The Fountainhead
  actually rape? Why ... or why not?
W McElroy

Man Who Traveled in Elephants, The  Robert A. Heinlein RW Franson
Miracle and Other Christmas Stories Connie Willis RW Franson
Mirror of Myth, The
  Classical Themes & Variations
Jasper Griffin RW Franson
Move the Stones of Rome to Rise
  Hearing Mark Antony
RW Franson

Nietzsche's Task
  An Interpretation of
  Beyond Good and Evil
Laurence Lampert RW Franson

Our Accretive Creation, the Man of Steel
  America's "Superman" Myth
K Spell

Participatory Fiction WH Stoddard
Peace Offering, The Saki RW Franson
Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote Jorge Luis Borges RW Franson
Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein, The Farah Mendlesohn WH Stoddard
Psychohistorical Crisis Donald Kingsbury WH Stoddard

Reckless Love Elizabeth Lowell RW Franson
Right to Die, A Rex Stout RW Franson
Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century
  Volume 1, 1907-1948: Learning Curve
William H. Patterson, Jr. RW Franson

Scofflaw: Prohibited Anachronism?
  Overflight Textual Note

RW Franson
Self-Published Authors
  in the Printed-Paper Era
RW Franson
Sidon in the Mirror, The Connie Willis RW Franson
Simbelmyne
  Mortality and Memory in Middle-Earth
WH Stoddard
Structural Aspects of Atlas Shrugged LH Hunt

Telzey Amberdon series James H. Schmitz RW Franson
Tolkien and Chivalry S Farrell
Topless in Ilium Wolcott Gibbs RW Franson

Where the Red Fern Grows Wilson Rawls RW Franson
Why Superheroes Wear Capes WH Stoddard
Will in the World
  How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare
Stephen Greenblatt RW Franson
  

  
[A seaport in Cyprus; outdoors near the harbor.]

Desdemona:

What wouldst write of me, if thou shouldst praise me?

Iago:

O, gentle lady, do not put me to 't,
For I am nothing if not critical.

William Shakespeare
Othello, 2.1.120-122

  
Local Habitation and a Name, A
the inspiration of words by reality
  


  
Science fiction, like romance, was once scorned as badly written, formulaic, lurid escapist fare best read in closets. Then, in the nineteen fifties, there was a rash of AftertheBomb science fiction books. Either directly or indirectly, these books criticized the course of modern civilization. Their stories predicted disaster for the human race. Endlessly.

Voila. The genre of science fiction became politically and intellectually correct, a wellwritten body of literature with a proper appreciation of man's raging greed, stupidity, and futility. Gone were the garish covers of little green men hauling busty blondes off to far corners of the galaxy for an eternity of slap and tickle. Gone were the heroic rescuers of said blondes. In their place were caring and despairing antiheroes who tried and tried and tried to make things right, only to finally fail, going down the tubes with a suitable Existential whimper.

The critics loved it.

Ann Maxwell
"Popular Fiction: Why We Read It, Why We Write It"
  

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