ENGL 318
Literary Taste and After Taste Spring 2024
Division I

Why are some literary works acclaimed or neglected when they first appear, and why do their critical assessments change–sometimes drastically–over time? What does it mean to think of a work as ‘before its time? What is the relation between critical trends and their affinity for particular literary styles? In thinking about these issues, we will consider a few crucial instances: modernist poets and New Critics’ celebration of Donne and Marvell over Milton in the early 20th century; 18th and 19th century writers’ fascination with medievalism and the Gothic; deconstructionist critics’ absorption with Romantic poetry; Marxist and neo-Marxist critics’ qualified embrace of realism and critique of postmodernism; and recent and contemporary debates about the relation of aesthetic forms to representations of race, ethnicity, and gender.