“The more rigorously criticism historicizes a work of art, in the sense of lodging it in the context of the moment of its production, the less likely it becomes for criticism to be able to explain either its own subsequent interest in the work or the possibility of lay—that is, nonacademic—interest in reading it.”

Source: Fiction Sets You Free: Literature, Liberty and Western Culture (2007), pp. 5-6.

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Russell Berman17

American academic 1950

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Russell Berman17

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