Introduction

Literary criticism, if it is a discipline, is surely that discipline which has been most exclusively concerned with the question of its own function. The main subject within criticism seems always to have been “The Function of Criticism,” and one could construct a brief history of the field simply by tracing the sequence of major essays bearing that title. Such a study would suggest that the sense, within criticism, of its own importance has, up to a certain point, risen in direct proportion to the cultural marginalization – or professionalization – of criticism as a whole.