The Best Literary Criticism Books 2024

1. War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film (Paperback)

Superhero adventure comics have a long history of commenting upon American public opinion and government policy, and the surge in the popularity of comics since the events of September 11, 2001, ensures their continued relevance. This critical text examines the seventy-year history of comic book superheroes on film and in comic books and their reflections of the politics of their time. Superheroes addressed include Batman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, Superman, the Fantastic Four and the X-Men, and topics covered include American wars, conflicts, and public policy. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

War, Politics and Superheroes: Ethics and Propaganda in Comics and Film (Paperback)

2. Beautiful & Pointless, (Paperback)

"David Orr is no starry-eyed cheerleader for contemporary poetry; Orr's a critic, and a good one. . . . Beautiful & Pointless is a clear-eyed, opinionated, and idiosyncratic guide to a vibrant but endangered art form, essential reading for anyone who loves poetry, and also for those of us who mostly just admire it from afar." --Tom Perrotta Award-winning New York Times Book Review poetry columnist David Orr delivers an engaging, amusing, and stimulating tour through the world of poetry. With echoes of Francine Prose's Reading Like a Writer, Orr's Beautiful & Pointless offers a smart and funny approach to appreciating an art form that many find difficult to embrace.

Beautiful & Pointless, (Paperback) Author: Harper Perennial ISBN: 9780061673467 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2019-03-21 Page Count: 240

3. Langston Hughes 9780791096123

Poet, playwright, novelist, and public figure, Langston Hughes is regarded as a cultural hero who made his mark during the Harlem Renaissance. A prolific author, Hughes focused his writing on discrimination in and disilusionment with American society. This work features critical essays that create a well-rounded portrait of this American writer. ISBN: 9780791096123 ISBN10: 0791096122 Contributors: Bloom, Harold,

LANGSTON HUGHES [9780791096123]

4. The Sexual Labyrinth of Nikolai Gogol (Paperback)

Through careful textual readings of Gogol's most famous works, Karlinsky argues that Gogol's homosexual orientation--which Gogol himself could not accept or forgive in himself--may provide the missing key to the riddle of Gogol's personality. "A brilliant new biography that will long be prized for its illuminating psychological insights into Gogol's actions, its informative readings of his fiction and drama, and its own stylistic grace and vivacity."--Edmund White, Washington Post Book World

Through careful textual readings of Gogol's most famous works, Karlinsky argues that Gogol's homosexual orientation—which Gogol himself could not accept or forgive in himself—may provide the missing key to the riddle of Gogol's personality. "A brilliant new biography that will long be prized for its illuminating psychological insights into Gogol's actions, its informative readings of his fiction and drama, and its own stylistic grace and vivacity."—Edmund White, Washington Post Book World

5. Deep Skin: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Art (Hardcover)

Elizabeth Bishop, who constructed poems of crystalline visual accuracy, is often regarded as the most painterly of twentieth-century American poets. In Deep Skin, Peggy Samuels explores Bishop's attraction to painters who experimented with dynamic interactions between surface and depth. She tells the story of the development of Bishop's poetics in relation to her engagement with mid-century art, particularly the work of Paul Klee, Kurt Schwitters, and Alexander Calder.Contemporary conversations about the visual arts circulating among art historians and reviewers shaped Bishop's experience and illuminated aesthetic problems for which she needed to find solutions. The book explores in particular the closest intellectual context for Bishop, her friend Margaret Miller, who worked as a research associate and later associate curator at the Museum of Modern Art. Samuels traces a complex and rich four-way metaphor in her portrait of Bishop's methods: surface of verse, surface of painting, skin, and interface between mind and world.The visual arts helped Bishop to develop a new model for lyric: the surface of verse becomes a threshold that opens in two directions--to nature and to the interior of the poet. Bishop's poetics is very much about the touch of the materials of the mind and world inside the materiality of verse. Translating and revising some of the concepts from the visual arts in her own linguistic medium, she begins to experiment with modulation, absorption, and incorporation across multiple registers of experience.

Deep Skin: Elizabeth Bishop and Visual Art (Hardcover)

6. The Cambridge Introduction to T. S. Eliot, (Paperback)

T. S. Eliot is not only one of the most important poets of the twentieth century; as literary critic and commentator on culture and society, his writing continues to be profoundly influential. Every student of English must engage with his writing to understand the course of modern literature. This book provides the perfect introduction to key aspects of Eliot's life and work, as well as to the wider contexts of modernism in which he wrote. John Xiros Cooper explains how Eliot was influenced by the intellectual climate of both twentieth-century Britain and America, and how he became a key cultural figure on both sides of the Atlantic. The continuing controversies surrounding his writing and his thought are also addressed. With a useful guide to further reading, this is the most informative and accessible introduction to T. S. Eliot.

The Cambridge Introduction to T. S. Eliot, (Paperback) Author: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9780521547598 Format: Paperback Publication Date: 2006-09-25 Page Count: 142