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. Reviews or essays developing some point or aspect of literature are not necessarily listed here.

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

  
[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

  
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"