The Arts and Sciences of Criticism

What can we expect of literature? And what should the role of criticism be? This collection reflects on developments in criticism and the different modes of knowledge that underwrite literature: a science model and its place in the university versus other ways of conceiving knowledge for which the arts have traditionally been seen as vehicles. Discussion ranges widely with contributions from leading academics as well as those outside the literary academy, including essays by the novelists Doris Lessing and David Lodge. All the essays are concerned with what literature, and therefore criticism, is or aims to be.