{"id":56049,"date":"2024-05-02T10:00:21","date_gmt":"2024-05-02T15:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=56049"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:48","slug":"interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/","title":{"rendered":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Guillory is an award-winning teacher and scholar. His varied and influential work includes \u00a0Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History<\/em> (Columbia University Press, 1983) and the field-transforming Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 1993). His brilliant new book, Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study<\/em>, argues that modern literary study remains anxious about the century-old professionalism that betrays the discipline\u2019s relation to its amateur precursor, criticism. He discusses it here with John Plotz of Brandeis and Public Book<\/em>\u2019s coeditor in chief, Nicholas Dames. Dames is author of such prize-winning books as Amnesiac Selves<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2001) and The Physiology of the Novel<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2007), and most recently The Chapter: A Segmented History from Antiquity to the Twenty-First Century<\/em> (Princeton University Press, 2023).<\/p>\n

A longer version of this interview<\/a> aired recently on\u00a0Recall This Book<\/em><\/a>, a podcast partnered with\u00a0Public Books.\u00a0<\/em>You can listen to the interview\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0by subscribing to\u00a0Recall This Book<\/em>\u00a0on\u00a0iTunes<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, or wherever you listen to podcasts.<\/p>\n

\n

John Plotz (JP): <\/strong>John, Recall This Book<\/em> usually kicks off with the author laying out key questions or key claims of the book.<\/p>\n

John Guillory (JG): <\/strong>The basic idea of the book is implied in the title, Professing Criticism<\/em>. I wanted to show ultimately that there was something odd, something anomalous about this discipline of literary criticism, and that the idea of professing criticism is in some ways a contradiction. If we look at the longer history of the study of literature\u2014going back to antiquity, where the study of literature meant actually the study of all forms of writing that had any value whatsoever in the perception of readers in antiquity\u2014it\u2019s only at the very end of the 20th century that we got something that is professional, that can be called criticism, that has to do specifically with the judgment of literary works.<\/p>\n

I was interested in exploring the ultimate and very difficult and maybe even intractable consequences of this dual history in which we have forms of literary study that are not disciplinarized, not professionalized, and in which we have a form of engagement with literature. Namely, something called criticism<\/em>. It emerged in the 17th century and had mainly to do with judging works of literature. But only in the period between the World Wars was it taken up in the university and submitted to all of the procedures and rituals of professionalization. In consequence of that, it became a discipline.<\/p>\n

\u201cProfessing criticism\u201d is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically. But the book is really an attempt to engage repeatedly and from different angles and in relation to different areas of the discipline with that tension, contradiction, with the seeming impossibility of professing criticism.<\/p>\n

Nicholas Dames (ND): <\/strong>I\u2019d love to pick up a dyad in the last chapter of the book: between interpretation<\/em> and judgment<\/em>. Regarding the professional prestige or importance of interpretation, you say \u201cwe [scholars] do not like to acknowledge\u2026that literary artifacts do not need to be interpreted.\u201d Can you say more about that distinction between interpretation and judgment? Or interpretation and understanding?<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong> Interpretation is a relation to texts that we can consider to be very old. In fact, aboriginal. We\u2019re always engaged with texts and particularly complex texts with an effort to understand them. That often requires a complicated procedure. It comes to be known as interpretation.<\/p>\n

Interpretation has its own history, but criticism in its origins was not a procedure of interpretation. It was, from its beginnings in the 17th century, all about judgment. And it was only in the 20th century that judgment and interpretation came to converge in a practice, which was the practice of \u201cNew Criticism\u201d in the US and \u201cPractical Criticism\u201d in England.<\/p>\n

ND:<\/strong> That discarding of judgment, though, John, it feels to me\u2014this is coming out of your analysis, but also just my sense of having been in the profession a while\u2014never quite complete. So judgment becomes the shadow activity or the secret of the discipline. I\u2019m wondering if \u2026 You do think, I assume, that there are costs to this, to the severance from judgment?<\/p>\n

JG: <\/strong>Yes. I do think that there are costs. There have been costs for us. One of the costs\u2014a number of people are pointing this out now, because we\u2019re in a renaissance of judgment in the discipline. It\u2019s becoming an activity, again, that people are trying to perform and also to make sophisticated.<\/p>\n

But the cost of it, we\u2019ve come to realize, is that interpretation is something that isn\u2019t obviously necessary for most readers of literature, as also for consumers of the other arts. It isn\u2019t the case that people encounter novels and plays and poems and feel the need, after those encounters, after those engagements, to say what they think they mean. Literary critics, who started out as principally the ones who showed you how to judge, have gone off in this other direction and become interpreters. They\u2019ve been cut off as a result from the mass readership of literature.<\/p>\n

\n

JP: <\/strong>This might be a distinction without a difference. Is your understanding that scholars are still implicitly practicing judgment, but only with this super-added layer of interpretation upon it? Or that they\u2019ve literally discarded the judgment?<\/p>\n

JG: <\/strong>What I wanted to show was that by the later 1960s, judgment was returning in the mode of, not the criticism of the literary work, but the criticism of society<\/em>\u2014interpreting literary works in order to arrive at a judgment of society.<\/p>\n

What happened was what I call the \u201creassertion of criticism,\u201d but the reassertion of criticism with this different end, with this different purpose. Some of that judgment redounded back on literary works, so that it was possible for a number of scholars to judge the literary works themselves as morally and politically objectionable. That\u2019s presented us with this perennial problem of, when we do talk about literary works in the context of the criticism of society, what do we want to say about the value of literary works themselves in that context?<\/p>\n

Is the value of the literary work its capacity to disclose aspects of society that need to be judged adversely? Or is the value of the literary work its transcendence of those conditions in society that need to be pointed out, condemned, and ultimately be averted?<\/p>\n

ND: <\/strong>The way you present it in your book, it\u2019s\u00a0as if this question of judgment and its place becomes also tied into a social psychology of what a literature professor is. Is it that we repress judgment?<\/p>\n

JG: <\/strong>Reviewers have never lost this capacity to make judgments of contemporary work. Of course, that\u2019s what criticism was originally. In the 18th century, when people were writing criticism, they were writing criticism about contemporary work. The assumption always was that if it was ancient, it was good. The problem that we have is that it\u2019s very difficult for us to distinguish between what we do when we judge that, because it\u2019s something that we\u2019re wanting to do more and more of.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s behind that lateral movement of those who were trained in literary study in the academy out into the internet, where the activity mixes some aspects of scholarship with aspects of reviewing.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think that a paradigm has especially gelled yet, but I do think that\u2019s an interesting new phenomenon. Because prior to this, these two things have just pulled apart. Reviewing is where judgment takes place, and it\u2019s with reference to contemporary work. Scholarship is where interpretation takes place, and it can be contemporary and also historical, but it doesn\u2019t necessarily involve judgment of the work itself. Rather, it involves judgment in the transferred sense of judgment of society, the critique of society. That\u2019s where we went.<\/p>\n

But at the present time we\u2019re trying to recover a capacity to straddle the scholarly and the critical within reviewing. And to bring that practice back into scholarship in some way.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Stop Reading like a Critic<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Matthew <\/a>\n \n Matthew Rubery <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

ND:<\/strong> The chapter on \u201cmonuments and documents\u201d is something we both find really helpful to think about. I bring it up because even within the scholarly realm, we are confronting a situation where we\u2019re not sure what the value of the historical purview is anymore. That\u2019s constantly being called into question. Perhaps you were trying to offer a way of thinking about the value of history that would be usable for us now and not embarrass us with its naivet\u00e9 or make us feel more conservative than we want to feel.<\/p>\n

Your book offered a set of tools. I can use the distinction between monument and document to think about what I want, how I would defend the value of history in what I do.<\/p>\n

JP: <\/strong>Nick\u2019s given a positive spin on the power of that chapter for helping us think about the recoverability of history. But I also appreciate, John, that you want to say that there\u2019s a rift here between monumentality and documentality, which is not going to be easily resolved.<\/p>\n

JG: <\/strong>When I first came upon this distinction in [Erwin] Panofsky, I thought it was a brilliant insight and explained a lot of things to me. But I also guessed that when I would work this up into a contemporary presentation of the humanities and an attempt to shift the emphasis of humanities discourse from assertions of the value of the humanities, that it was going to be problematic to have this double concept. Because everything that is studied in the humanities is both monument and document. Or potentially both monument and document.<\/p>\n

I wondered (and of course, my worries were confirmed as my worries always are) if this was just going to be difficult to assimilate. Particularly, the language: monument<\/em> has become a disgraced concept. Or a concept in which the disgrace of figures from the past is literally embodied. I worry that great works of literature, art, music, might become associated or even identified with monuments like the monument of Cecil Rhodes, which was in South Africa, which was the target of the \u201cRhodes Must Fall\u201d movement. That is a movement we can see echoed in the US, for example in the toppling of Confederate monuments all over the South and elsewhere, monuments that should never have been put up in the first place.<\/p>\n

But the word \u201cmonument,\u201d the concept of monuments, has another history altogether, in which this narrow use of monuments for nefarious political purposes that you see in the South in the period of Jim Crow \u2026 that\u2019s an anomaly. If you think about the other context, like the context of the \u201cMonuments Men,\u201d who saved all of that wonderful art from the Nazis during World War II. That\u2019s the concept of monument that Panofsky was working with. This is the concept of Yeats, \u201cmonuments of unageing intellect.\u201d There was for Panofsky a way of taking these two data. You\u2019re working always as a humanities scholar with objects that you value in some way. Not because they\u2019re intrinsically good but because they\u2019re intrinsically memorable, because they constitute our history.<\/p>\n

And then, you have all of the documents that we bring around those monuments, those objects of memorialization, and use in order to gain insight into those monuments. You need both. Panofsky saw brilliantly that the objects of humanities scholars shifted around constantly. Such that the same object that in one context was a document functioning as a document could function as a monument in another context. I thought that was extremely useful.<\/p>\n

There is the problem with the monuments concept, but the theoretical problem that lies behind that is the one that you were pointing to. When we look at these objects over the long term, what are we looking at really? History seems very central, and yet not exclusively history in the sense of past time.<\/p>\n

This is Michael B\u00e9rub\u00e9\u2019s objection in his review of Professing Criticism<\/em><\/a> with this particular chapter: he saw this as the reduction of humanities to history. You can see that in Panofsky, maybe. But a better conception, at least I hope, was the one that I came up with of long time<\/em>, in which you have past, present, and future. And all objects within that scope of long time are the objects of humanities research, of humanities enterprises.<\/p>\n

So any object you study in the present may not have historical documentation that you could bring to the study of it, but you are studying it because it\u2019s situated in long time. Because at some future point, this object will become the monument that you want to invest in and say, \u201cThis is a valuable thing to invest our time and our research into, because it belongs to this sequence of long time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

JP: <\/strong>If this conversation could be a series of loops, this would actually be a wonderful time to return back to judgment and to think about the concept of judgment in the terms that you\u2019re describing, John, which is always about the general or the universal concept intersecting with a particular.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m really remembering this from Arendt\u2019s account of judgment in her response to Kant. But that notion that, when we say judgment<\/em>, we\u2019re not really talking about an empyrean view from above for all time. We\u2019re talking about, \u201cHow does this particular instance usefully relate? What general categories do we need to bring to bear on this one object?\u201d The account you\u2019re offering here of the aesthetic is helping us think about the one-by-oneness of our act of judgment.<\/p>\n

JG: <\/strong>Exactly. Every instance is different. This is one of the reasons I wanted to use the example of the Holocaust at the end of the humanities essay, because this is something that no one would have the slightest defense of who was a credible human being.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a monument. It is something that needs to be remembered and addressed and understood. How do you distinguish that monument from the kind like the Mona Lisa<\/em>, to take the most iconically monumental of monuments? Or anything like that, that has a seemingly ineradicable substantiality?<\/p>\n

Judgment can occupy this spectrum from the strongest possible affirmation of the value of a monument, of preserving it, to the strongest possible deprivation, which at the same time posits the necessity of memorialization. We cannot forget the Holocaust, but our not forgetting the Holocaust is different from our not forgetting a monument like the Mona Lisa<\/em> or King Lear<\/em> or Joyce\u2019s Ulysses<\/em>.<\/p>\n

ND: <\/strong>What you\u2019re referring to with the case of the monument is something that has to be alive for us. You have a great term to describe the passage of monuments into documents. At one point, you call it \u201cstonification.\u201d It\u2019s where the thing ossifies, it literally turns into a statue. That\u2019s the moment where it ceases to live. There\u2019s a Pygmalion aspect to this distinction.<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong> It becomes forgettable.<\/p>\n\n

\n\n
Related readings<\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n
\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n\n
\n Interviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n John Plotz on Earthsea, Anarchism, and Ursula K. Le Guin<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n John Plotz <\/a>, et al.\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

JP: <\/strong>This is probably a great moment to turn to Recallable Books, where I invite you both to name an older book that those who enjoyed this conversation might also enjoy reading.<\/p>\n

ND: <\/strong>I don\u2019t know if this counts as one that really needs recalling or not, but the one that comes to mind for me is Willa Cather\u2019s The Professor\u2019s House<\/em>, still the best treatment of what it means to be in the career of teaching something like literature. And one that, contrary to a lot of other books that take this up, is not comic. Nor is it suffused with self-pity.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> That\u2019s great. I was going to recommend Pictures from an Institution<\/em>, which is …<\/p>\n

ND: <\/strong>It is comic.<\/p>\n

JP:<\/strong> It\u2019s comic. In fact, it\u2019s subtitled A Comedy<\/em>. But it\u2019s also an attempt to think about what it means to be on a campus and to be teaching literature, trying to make literature. And it is suffused with gentleness. I completely agree with you, Nick, The Professor\u2019s House<\/em> is a greater work if it comes to judgment. And yet, there\u2019s something so delightful about the tone of Pictures from an Institution<\/em>. Over to you, John.<\/p>\n

JG:<\/strong> The book that I\u2019m always trying to point people toward is Alvin Gouldner\u2019s work The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class<\/em>. That\u2019s where I originally started to think about the issue of the professional managerial class and the possibility of thinking about literary study in the context of the sociology of professions. Particularly, the professions as constituting a central form of the organization of labor in modernity. It was where I began thinking about where to go with this deliberate disenchanting\u2014this disenchantment of the profession. The attempt to disabuse literary scholars, literary professionals, from the idealizations that we cling to so strongly and don\u2019t want to give up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":56050,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1193],"tags":[280,232,14,134,206,615,461,1714,1042],"pbpartner":[1457],"section":[],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-56049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interviews","tag-academia","tag-criticism","tag-history","tag-humanities","tag-interview","tag-literary-criticism","tag-reading","tag-recall-this-book","tag-university-of-chicago-press","pbpartner-recall-this-book"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInterpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Public Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1920\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1272\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Imani Radney\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Imani Radney\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/365b0e14e4631d98547aaccb15d08035\"},\"headline\":\"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":2891,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/04\\\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Academia\",\"Criticism\",\"History\",\"Humanities\",\"Interview\",\"Literary Criticism\",\"Reading\",\"Recall This Book\",\"University of Chicago Press\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Interviews\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/\",\"name\":\"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/04\\\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00\",\"description\":\"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/04\\\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2024\\\/04\\\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg\",\"width\":1920,\"height\":1272},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\",\"name\":\"Public Books\",\"description\":\"a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Organization\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#organization\",\"name\":\"Public Books\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/\",\"logo\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/pb_logo_2x.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2016\\\/08\\\/pb_logo_2x.jpg\",\"width\":212,\"height\":362,\"caption\":\"Public Books\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/logo\\\/image\\\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.facebook.com\\\/pages\\\/Public-Books\\\/201143656634392\",\"https:\\\/\\\/www.instagram.com\\\/public_books\\\/\"]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.publicbooks.org\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/365b0e14e4631d98547aaccb15d08035\",\"name\":\"Imani Radney\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books","description":"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books","og_description":"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d","og_url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/","og_site_name":"Public Books","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392","article_published_time":"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00","article_modified_time":"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00","og_image":[{"width":1920,"height":1272,"url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Imani Radney","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/"},"author":{"name":"Imani Radney","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/person\/365b0e14e4631d98547aaccb15d08035"},"headline":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism","datePublished":"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/"},"wordCount":2891,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg","keywords":["Academia","Criticism","History","Humanities","Interview","Literary Criticism","Reading","Recall This Book","University of Chicago Press"],"articleSection":["Interviews"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/","name":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism - Public Books","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg","datePublished":"2024-05-02T15:00:21+00:00","dateModified":"2026-01-17T02:10:48+00:00","description":"\u201c\u2018Professing criticism\u2019 is a contradiction and maybe even an impossibility. I\u2019d like to hope that it\u2019s not, that it\u2019s just an innovation, historically.\u201d","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/debby-hudson-asviIGR3CPE-unsplash.jpg","width":1920,"height":1272},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/","name":"Public Books","description":"a magazine of ideas, arts, and scholarship","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#organization","name":"Public Books","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/pb_logo_2x.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/pb_logo_2x.jpg","width":212,"height":362,"caption":"Public Books"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/logo\/image\/"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/Public-Books\/201143656634392","https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/public_books\/"]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/#\/schema\/person\/365b0e14e4631d98547aaccb15d08035","name":"Imani Radney"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56049"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61947,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56049\/revisions\/61947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56049"},{"taxonomy":"pbpartner","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pbpartner?post=56049"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=56049"},{"taxonomy":"pbseries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pbseries?post=56049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}