Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction begins by exploring the formal characteristics of philosophical and literary-critical writing. While showing that considerations of the relation between philosophy and form are germane to the book’s argument, the Introduction comes to focus in particular on literary criticism, detailing the ways in which the relation between literary criticism and its forms is distinctive, owing, in part, to the shared linguistic medium of literature and its criticism. The Introduction situates the book’s concern with the forms of literary criticism in relation to a range of recent institutional and intellectual contexts, including, for instance, the interest in ‘creative criticism’ and recent defences of ‘academic writing’. The book’s historical parameters are also laid out and justified here: while noting that many of the forms discussed in the book have ancient and early modern precedents, the Introduction offers a rationale for seeing the middle of the eighteenth century as a defining moment for subsequent criticism. Examples of the consideration of literary critical form in the work of Oscar Wilde and Walter Benjamin are examined before a brief overview of the book’s contents is offered in conclusion.