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Literature Glossary

Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.

Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.

Criticism

Definition:

Thumbs up. Thumbs down. With these two simple hand gestures, Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert revolutionized film criticism.

Literary criticism functions the same way. Simply put, it's the practice of judging literature based on its merits.

What merits? Well, that's up to the individual critics. Opinionated readers have been duking it out over the written word since Plato first said, "This essay stinks!" and his buddy Socrates was like, "Really? I loved it! Actually, I'm thinking about embroidering it on this throw pillow." You know, except in Greek.

While critics may never be able to agree on what's good, criticism itself is valuable because it allows us to go deep, analyze a text, and scope out other people's viewpoints. That's why you have all of those class discussions. Because—who knows?—you just might learn something.

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