Literature Criticism
Explore the largest open web collection of literary criticism
The criticism collections spans nearly 65,000 essays across more than 3,800 works, authors, and topics. Entries extend all the way back to 1901, comprising a rich collection of literary criticism over more than a century. Read more about the collection.
Popular
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Julius Caesar
by William Shakespeare
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To Kill a Mockingbird
by Harper Lee
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Macbeth
by William Shakespeare
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Things Fall Apart
by Chinua Achebe
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Animal Farm
by George Orwell
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Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
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The Great Gatsby
by F. Scott Fitzgerald
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Frankenstein
by Mary Shelley
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The Gift of the Magi
by O. Henry
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Hamlet
by William Shakespeare
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1984
by George Orwell
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The Odyssey
by Homer
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The Lottery
by Shirley Jackson
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Pride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
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A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare
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Gulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift
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The Tell-Tale Heart
by Edgar Allan Poe
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The Merchant of Venice
by William Shakespeare
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Our Mutual Friend
by Charles Dickens
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Beowulf
by Anonymous, Unknown
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Oedipus Rex
by Sophocles
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A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
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Othello
by William Shakespeare
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Twelfth Night
by William Shakespeare
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The Handmaid's Tale
by Margaret Atwood
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Iliad
by Homer
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William Shakespeare
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The Raven
by Edgar Allan Poe
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain
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The Fall of the House of Usher
by Edgar Allan Poe
Notable Critics
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Helen Vendler
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Harold Bloom
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Edmund Wilson
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Northrop Frye
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T. S. Eliot
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Terry Eagleton
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Elaine Showalter
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Cleanth Brooks
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René Wellek
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Henry James
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George Steiner
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Kenneth Burke
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Susan Sontag
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F. R. Leavis
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Virginia Woolf
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Lionel Trilling
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William Hazlitt
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Algernon Charles Swinburne
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Samuel Johnson
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Jean-Paul Sartre
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Georg Lukács
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Stephen Greenblatt
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Matthew Arnold
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Edgar Allan Poe
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Ralph Waldo Emerson
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James Russell Lowell
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Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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Raymond Williams
About the Criticism Collection
The criticism collection is sourced from several volumes of highly regarded literary criticism series, including Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, Contemporary Literary Criticism, Drama Criticism, Poetry Criticism, Shakespearean Criticism, Short Story Criticism, and many more. These collections span more than a century of diverse literary analysis. Most entries include a thorough introduction to the topic at hand, and also include coverage of historical subjects, such as the Salem Witch Trials or Winston Churchill. Schools of criticism are also represented, including Marxist Criticism and Contemporary Feminist Criticism. The largest collection of all? William Shakespeare, of course.
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