Missing Something: A Review Essay on Joseph North’s Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History

ABSTRACT

This is a review essay of Joseph North’s Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History. I interrogate many of North’s claims, most notably his argument about the way a shift from literary criticism to literary scholarship has blunted the capacity of people working in literary studies to engage in a socially critical praxis. I use his book as an occasion to explore the relationship between literary studies (as ‘knowledge’) and the meaning-making that occurs within English classrooms when students engage with the texts chosen for study. I argue that North’s failure to make connections between English teaching and the literary critical projects of people like I.A. Richards, F.R. Leavis and Raymond Williams ultimately limits the reach of his book. For each of these critics, literary criticism was deeply embedded in an educational project that extended far beyond the confines of the academy, and their literary criticism might usefully be reread in these terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Literary criticism
• English teaching
• close reading
• the aesthetic
• cultural politics
• education

Acknowledgments

My thanks to Monica Brady, Philip Mead and John Yandell for providing commentary on a draft of this essay.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. My focus in this essay will primarily be on North’s reading of Richards, Leavis and Williams, as these are the critics who have been most important for my own education. I think it is fair to say that critics like I.A. Richards and especially F.R. Leavis loomed larger in degree programmes in Australia in the post-war period than the American ‘New Critics’, as John Docker’s essay, ‘How I became a teenage Leavisite and lived to tell the tale’, playfully reveals (see Docker 1984, In a Critical Condition: Reading Australian Literature, Ringwood, Victoria: Penguin).

2. A fuller account of Nurjahan’s teaching can be found in Doecke and Yandell 2020.

3. I am indebted to John Yandell for this insight.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Brenton Doecke

Brenton Doecke is Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Australia. He has published widely in the fields of English curriculum and pedagogy, teacher education and literary studies. He is currently engaged (with Larissa McLean Davies, Philip Mead, Wayne Sawyer and Lyn Yates) in a major Australian Research Council project on the role that literary knowledge might play in the professional learning and practice of early career teachers.