Double Agent: The Critic and Society [Paperback]

Morris Dickstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 1996

Double Agent is a watershed in the recent revival of interest in the role of the public critic and intellectual who writes about culture, politics, and the arts for an intelligent general audience. Offering acute portraits of critics both famous and neglected, Dickstein traces the evolution of cultural criticism over the last century from Matthew Arnold to New Historicism. He examines the development of practical criticism, the rise and fall of literary journalism, and the growth of American Studies, and rereads the work of critics like Arnold, Walter Pater, I.A. Richards, Roland Barthes, Edmund Wilson, R.P. Blackmur, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, and George Orwell. In essays and books that are themselves works of literature, these writers made criticism central to the public sphere, balancing social and literary values, politic commitment and aesthetic judgment. Though marginalized or ignored by academic histories of criticism, their example has proved immensely valuable for younger critics eager to find a personal voice and reach a wider public. Dickstein concludes with a lively and provocative dialogue that weighs the claims of recent literary theory and the importance of renewing public culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dickstein ( Gates of Eden ) here collects his essays, lectures and reviews in a look at "socially oriented" criticism and cultural studies ranging from the 19th century to today. However, the book's real focus is "that heroic period" of modern English and American criticism which, he says, lasted roughly from 1920 to 1960, when "public" critics and intellectuals practiced "literary and journalistic traditions"xii viewed by the author as superior to today's "blind alley" of academic specialization.6 The book's first half sets the context for these writers in terms of Matthew Arnold's critical standards; the pathway opened by the New Criticism; and the "almost forgotten" journalism of a century ago, which serves for Dickstein as a model of future criticism. The second half consists of portraits of critics "who could still imagine they had some nonprofessional readers": Alfred Kazin, H. L. Mencken et al. While Dickstein fondly recalls "a world where newspapermen could be more literate than most academics," he does not hesitate to enumerate the flaws of the writers (e.g., Mencken, Van Wyck Brooks) who inhabited this world. And his tendency to attack the "reckless zeal" of theoreticians is more than balanced by the most effective part of the work--a concluding "dialogue" that explores debates on current literary thought and more in a remarkably undidactic fashion.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

In an attempt to discover what direction criticism will take after structuralism and deconstruction, Dickstein ( The Gates of Eden , LJ 4/15/77) has written a historical study of humanistic literary criticism, as derived from and best exemplified by the English critic Matthew Arnold. Humanistic critics, he argues, are engaged with the social and moral nature of writing. After identifying Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, and Edmund Wilson as especially important to this tradition, Dickstein discusses various other critics, academic criticism, the rise of literary theory, and the nature of journalistic criticism. A final, brilliant dialog on criticism and historicism reviews the book's main argument. An excellent survey of modern criticism. This is recommended for serious literary collections.
- Gene Shaw, Elmwood Park Lib., N.J.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 244 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 5, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195111370
• ISBN-13: 978-0195111378
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,942,769 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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