El plaer insubstituïble de llegir

Abstract

Taking as a reference T. S. Eliot’s and W. D. Auden’s reflections on the critic’s function, the author of this article approaches the nature of literary criticism and comes to the conclusion that it is a literary genre. As Francisco Rico put it: “Any literary criticism is valid provided that it is literally valid”. Even more precisely, it is a biographical genre, because, as every regular reader knows well, our appreciation of a book strongly depends on our personal circumstances. To balance stylistic concern and biographical experience, a professional critic needs a third factor: common sense.