A COMPANION TO LITERARY EVALUATION

The first critical survey devoted solely to literary evaluation

When we read a novel, watch a play, or hear lyric poetry in performance, we intuitively make a private assessment of its artistic qualities. Yet it is commonly assumed within academia that literature cannot be defined. Consequently, the question of "is it any good" is hardly ever addressed in the world of literary studies.

Bridging the gap between the non-academic literary world and the university, A Companion to Literary Evaluation helps readers balance instinctive judgment and reasoned assessment to articulate how or why a particular author, playwright, or poet inhabits an exalted position while others do not. A diverse panel of contributors explores key issues from various perspectives, including analytical aesthetics, the philosophy of literature, opinionated bias, and common sense. It covers topics from lyric poetry, newspaper reviewing, literary translation, and the question of Shakespeare's genius, to the simple notion of how a life of reading books alters our sense of what is good and what is not.

Throughout the book, easily accessible chapters emphasize the importance of maintaining clarity of values in the evaluation of literary works, illustrate how seemingly divergent perspectives sometimes overlap, discuss the impact of Modernism, the teaching of evaluation in schools, relativism versus subjectivism in assessing literary value, and more.

Incorporating methodologies that demonstrate why literature can be treated as something different from other forms of language, A Companion to Literary Evaluation is a must-read for undergraduates, research students, lecturers, and academics in search of fresh perspectives on standard literary critical issues.

RICHARD BRADFORD is Research Professor at Ulster University, UK, and Visiting Professor at the University of Avignon, France. His 40 books cover topics as varied as stylistics, Russian Formalism, crime writing, the history of English poetry, modern fiction, and literary aesthetics. His recent works include literary biographies such as Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith and Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer.

MADELENA GONZALEZ is Chair of Anglophone Literature at the University of Avignon, France, where she heads the Master's program in English Studies and the multidisciplinary research group "Cultural Identity, Texts and Theatricality" (ICTT). She has published widely on contemporary Anglophone literature, theater, and culture. She is co-editor of Aesthetics and Ideology in Contemporary Literature and Drama.

KEVIN DE ORNELLAS is Lecturer in English Renaissance Literature at Ulster University, UK. He served as Associate Editor for the two-volume Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature and authored The Horse in Early Modern English Culture: Bridled, Curbed, and Tamed. He has published 20 peer-reviewed essays, dozens of book and play reviews, and hundreds of encyclopedia articles.

Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
Richard Bradford
1 Literary Values 8
Peter Lamarque
2 Complexity as a Criterion for the Evaluation of Literature 42
Anja Müller-Wood
3 Schooled Aesthetic Asymmetries: (Back)firing the Canon in Secondary Education 57
D.J. Howells
4 Defining Literature: The Route to Aesthetic Evaluation 76
Paolo Euron
5 Kathleen Raine: The Less Received 92
Andrew Keanie
6 "Is (This) Translation Any Good?": The Evaluation of Literary Translation 110
Giuseppe Sofo
7 The Algorithm of Beauty: Aesthetic Judgment as a Science 120
Madelena Gonzalez
8 Literary Value and the Question of Insight on Humanly Relevant Matters 135
Emanuela Tegla
9 How Books Get Reviewed: Evaluation and the Freelance Journalist 150
D.J. Taylor
10 A Lifetime of Evaluation 156
Penelope Stenning
11 Evaluating Unfinished Novels: Octavia E. Butler and the Improbability of Justice 166
Rafe McGregor
12 "How to Bring So Goode a Matter into a Better Forme": The Value of the Horse in Early Modern Writing 179
Elisabetta Deriu
13 Reading Performance for the Values Underpinning Production 195
Amanda Finch
14 Bridging the Gap between Page and Performance Poetry 212
Karen Simecek
15 Aesthetics and Efficacy in Applied and Community Theater 226
Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill
16 Antonin Artaud Beyond Judgment: A Radio Reading of "To Have Done With The Judgement of God" with Local Prisoners 243
Gary Anderson and Niamh Malone
17 "Chief of the Second Rate": James Shirley and Dramatic Value 259
Heidi Craig
18 "The Glories of our Blood and State" and The Lady of Pleasure: The Genius of [Counterfactual] Britain's National Writer--James Shirley 271
Kevin De Ornellas
19 Evaluating Literary Evaluation 287
Peter Barry
20 The Horrible Legacy of Modernism 299
Richard Bradford
21 Evaluating Poems 331
Amy Burns and Richard Bradford
Index 346