Description
The Origins of Modern Criticism is the first of two e-seminars drawn from Michael Janeway's popular course offered jointly by Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism and School of the Arts. Cultural criticism—ranging from reviews of the latest film, book, or concert to the broadest kind of reporting and commentary on cultural issues—is a feature of democratic culture that we take almost for granted. For the past century and a half, in England and America, vital debates about our cultural and political health have been carried forward within this complex arena.

In this first e-seminar, Professor Janeway demonstrates how contemporary debates about the role of the arts in a democracy, about the need to expand our artistic canon, about the ability of the arts to transcend borders and open minds, took shape in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in England and the United States. The seminar presents important critical essays by six key critics:

• Matthew Arnold, "The Function of Criticism at the Present Time"


• Oscar Wilde, "The Critic as Artist"


• George Bernard Shaw, "Little Eyolf," "Henry James and Oscar Wilde," and "The Classes and Musical Culture"


• Mark Twain, "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"


• Henry Adams, "The Virgin and the Dynamo"


• H. L. Mencken, "The National Letters"


Professor Janeway provides commentary that discusses these writers' critical styles and stances as well as their cultural and historical contexts.