dear undergraduates

at an elite university taking an upper-level class on literary criticism,

It's time for you all to learn that "literary cricitism," even in the narrowest, most Eurocentric sense of the term, does not mean "judging whether a book is good or bad" or "saying what is wrong with the literature." "Criticism" in an academic sense does not mean "criticizing" and it does not mean reviewing. Some literary critics might sometimes write book reviews, and some literary criticism performs valuations of various kinds...but literary criticism still does not mean criticizing literature. It just doesn't. The words "critic" and "criticism" have a different meaning in this context than in their more common usage. A literary critic is not to literature as a movie critic is to movies. So please don't center your arguments around the claim that "in this class we are trying to expand the definition of literary criticism beyond the negative sense of criticizing what is wrong with a work of literature" or that "some of these authors, unlike traditional literary critics, do more than evaluate whether a book should be successful or not."

thanks very much,
your TA