Why Is Russian Literature Great?
From the nineteenth century to the present day, the tradition of Russian literature, above all in narrative, has produced a body of classics cherished throughout the world. Even those who have never read a single line of Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, or Anton Chekhov nonetheless carry a familiar image: the Russian novelist as a bearded […]
Why Literary Criticism Needs Philosophy
When we speak of “literary criticism” today, two approaches usually come to mind. Each is embodied in a distinct type. The first is the “sensitive” critic, who writes primarily about his or her own emotional responses to literary works. In this view, criticism is not a rigorously intellectual activity, comparable to a science, but a […]