open.substack.com/pub/dredging...

#WritingCommunity #Storytelling #CharacterWriting #WritingCraft #LitCrit #MediaAnalysis #FilmAnalysis #Superman #DCComics #ParagonHero #Philosophy #Ethics #Empathy #ModernCulture

Do #litcrit pals recall the Chelsea House "Prophets of Sensibility: Precursors of Modern Critical Thought" reprints? Back in the day I paid $2.98 for Hazlitt's Literary Remains.

So ... you get what you pay for. This 📘 disintegrated on my lap as I flew Toronto-Boston today, covering me in dry glue.

in a world of social media trolls, C.S. Lewis helps us think about the problem of judging a book by its author instead of its argument I have a book on the way to print. Woo! and hoo! I thought my dominant feeling would be pride when I finally spoke those words. I probably will feel pride when, in the tradition of authors for the …

Trumpkin Derangement Syndrome and Book Review Bulverism
apilgriminnarnia.com/2026/03/20/t...
#writing #literature #litcrit

Jaspreet Singh Boparai discusses "Caravaggio and Us" in The Editor's Desk (January 2026) with R.R. Reno. #LitCrit https://fefd.link/xbo84

Sign and Symptomatic Reading: Gravity's Rainbow, Operative Paranoia, and the Ideology of Close Reading Or, what a dash-ing text you have there.

More from the vault: open.substack.com/pub/accordin... #literature #litcrit

On Reading Heidegger Hermeneutic Cyclicality in "The Origin of the Work of Art" (1935, 1950).

Just something pulled out of the vault for the nerds out there. #philosophy #Heidegger #LitCrit accordinglee.substack.com/p/on-reading...

Top Ten Novels in English I expect to catch hell for this, as I did for my Top 50 Artists of the Rock Era and, more sparingly, my Top 100 Albums, but that’s part of the fun :) 1. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens 2.…

#litcrit #dickens #woolf #austen #toptenlists #greatnovels #englishnovel #writingcommunity
shakemyheadhollow.wordpress.com/2026/01/05/t...

The Hollow Center: A Psychological Profile of Olivia Nuzzi — With a Guide for Memoirists Who Want… When a Narrator Goes Missing and Nobody Files a Report

medium.com/@leighlovesh...
Olivia Nuzzi’s memoir as a masterclass in what happens when you have plot, lighting, and metaphors—but no actual self. . 🧠✍️ If the narrator never shows up, the memoir becomes the alibi. #WritingCommunity #Memoir #Psychology #AmWriting #LitCrit #WritersLife

Alfie Sloane (1944–1998) A Literary Parasite's Guide to Fifty Years of British Letters, Bad Debts, and Beautiful Lies

A new entry for the most unreliable Encyclopaedia imaginable: the man who claimed he shaped postwar British literature but never published a word of his own...

#booksky #literaryhistory #litcrit #HistoryIsAFiction #shortfiction

callingtheabyss.substack.com/p/alfie-sloa...

Finch, Dr. Alastair (1955–? ) A Biography of Almost

On procrastination, perfectionism, and the terror of "good enough." New Calling the Abyss entry: the story of a man who writes perfectly but cannot finish.

#booksky #literaryhistory #litcrit #HistoryIsAFiction #shortfiction

callingtheabyss.substack.com/p/finch-dr-a...

Fantasy’s Present Pasts – Call for Papers and Sessions – Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic

CFP: Fantasy’s Present Pasts
The inaugural European Conference on the Fantastic
23–25 June 2026 @uofglasgow.bsky.social

Proposals invited for papers on how speculative genres engage with the interplay of past & present. Deadline 12 December
#litcrit #fantasy
fantasy.glasgow.ac.uk/index.php/20...

#SciFi #booksky #litcrit
A video about how mass production for bland tastes tarnished Science Fiction
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewaw...

Why Are We Still Reading Jane Austen (But Not Mary Brunton)? - Yale University Press H. J. Jackson— Up to 1860, the career paths of Jane Austen and Mary Brunton were strikingly similar. If Brunton had an advantage in the reviews and reference books, Austen—who... READ MORE

Novelist Mary Brunton (1778–1818) – an almost exact contemporary of Jane Austen – was born #OTD, 1 Nov, in Orkney. Prof HJ Jackson considers what factors might have contributed to Austen’s present fame, & Brunton’s neglect
#C18 #litcrit
1/2
yalebooks.yale.edu/2017/07/14/w...

cover of 1993 paerback of Culture and Imperialsim with uncredited design -- fragments of torn texts photographed on pigmented paper

Edward Said was born 90 years ago in Jerusalem, Mandatory Palestine so there is a birthday to celebrate in all its contradictions, come on people who read, sometimes act, mourn, still look forwards. I just read Culture and Imperialism, 1993 - 'contrapuntal reading' has a future. #EdwardSaid #litcrit

Robert Louis Stevenson's The Body Snatcher The core of Robert Louis Stevenson's famous story The Body Snatcher probably derives from an urban legend from the Edinburgh region. It was written in the Scottish village of Pitlochry, where Stevenso...

Ruth Richardson discusses how “The Body-Snatcher” shows Robert Louis Stevenson’s

“acute analysis of degrees of guilt; the complicit socialisation of maleness… the dark silences that can exist in social relations that pass as bonhomie”
#C19th #litcrit #Halloween
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Pls note, #litcrit Bsky, the bolded statement here from Frances Ferguson: "I have increasingly come to think that Clarissa is the single most important literary work in the history of British literature—& that it keeps holding its own". This is gospel truth, guys. Why aren't you already reading it?

From Melodrama to Melancholy Two Genres, One Human Pulse

Soap operas shout. Nordic noir broods in silence.
But deep down, both reveal the same human longing.
A new essay—about drama, dread, and what makes us tick.
Now on Medium.
👇

#culturetalk #deepthoughts #litcrit #humancondition #smartcontent #mediumessay

medium.com/@alex.buday/...

#litcrit pals, a really interesting question about the history of discipline from a graduate student here, a question that has me totally stumped:
"which journal in literary criticism was the first to implement modern peer review?" (I think he might mean blind review)
Thank you for your suggestions!

It may be “syncretism”
But is it poetry?
It lacks, like, mysticism. . .
God lives at the Y on Coney!

—LF #litcrit #poetry

BOOK NEWS: Examining domestic servants in contemporary South Asian fiction Postcolonial Servitude: Domestic Servants in Global South Asian English Literature   By Ambreen Hai Oxford UP, 2024 ISBN: 9780197698006 http...

BOOK NEWS
Examining domestic servants in contemporary South Asian fiction
Recent release from ‪@oxfordacademic.bsky.social‬
journalofmodernliterature.blogspot.com/2025/09/book...
#BookSky #postcolonial #SouthAsia #litcrit

Ridley at Uni I never studied creative writing at university—economics and finance swallowed my schedule whole. With only a few electives to spare, I chose philosophy instead. Still, I managed a couple of critic…

Never took creative writing at uni—finance swallowed that dream. What I got instead: feminist critiques, penguins, and a final essay signed “My name is not David Grace.”

ridleypark.blog/2025/09/01/r...

#WritingCommunity #AuthorLife #LitCrit #Philosophy #AmWriting #English #Writing #nostalgia

a woman with cat whiskers on her face and the words " kitty gifs " below her ALT: a woman with cat whiskers on her face and the words " kitty gifs " below her

Beauty, as myth.
Not essence—structure.

#Barthes #GretaGarbo #ZooeyDeschanel #MediaTheory #Philosophy #Mythologies #BeautyAsSign #NowReading #LitCrit

I deconstructed/annotated "Blood Will Tell" by BR Davenport, which is a shitty, white supremacist version of "Jekyll and Hyde" but speaks volumes about white fragility after the Civil War. #literature #history #booksky #civilwar #racism #litcrit #antiracist #americanhistory

I deconstructed "Blood Will Tell" by B.R. Davenport (1902), which is basically a white supremacist version of "Jekyll and Hyde." White fragility in the wake of the Civil War. app.milanote.com/1TGNSF10T7zp... (link to my version) #booksky #history #blackhistory #whitesupremacy #litcrit

Sometimes a title alone qualifies a book for my project. "White Queen of the Cannibals" is about missionary Mary Slessor's time in Nigeria, and it's a racist/colonialist jamboree. app.milanote.com/1TGNSF10T7zp... (link to my deconstructed version) #booksky #history #africanhistory #litcrit

Just added "Captain Blood" by Rafael Sabatini (1922) to the Library. This book was SO much fun! PIRATES!!! Buckles are swashed left and right, and not too much problematic content to talk about. app.milanote.com/1TGNSF10T7zp... (link to my version) #booksky #litcrit #feminism #deconstructed #radfem

I added "Pagan Passions" to the Library of Amazonia, which means that I deconstructed it and provided commentary about the embedded #sexism and #misogyny. Gotta love pulp sci fi, in which the authors could imagine anything except for not hating women! #booksky #litcrit #feminism #radfem #gender

I deconstructed "Pagan Passions" by Garret & Harris (1959), in which a mortal man is temporarily made a Greek god in order to officiate at an orgy. Classic pulp sci fi - ridiculous and full of sexism! app.milanote.com/1TGNSA1iQTXc... (link to my version) #booksky #scifi #pulp #litcrit #feminism

I deconstructed the 1962 pulp sci fi novel "Sex Life of the Gods" by Michael Knerr. I love how pulp sci fi authors could imagine anything and everything except a world without misogyny. app.milanote.com/1TGNSA1iQTXc... (link to my version) #booksky #litcrit #feminism #radfem #gender