A Companion to Literary Evaluation

Notes on Contributors vii Introduction 1 Richard Bradford 1 Literary Values 8 Peter Lamarque 2 Complexity as a Criterion for the Evaluation of Literature 42 Anja Müller-Wood 3 Schooled Aesthetic Asymmetries: (Back)firing the Canon in Secondary Education 57 D.J. Howells 4 Defining Literature: The Route to Aesthetic Evaluation 76 Paolo Euron 5 Kathleen Raine: The Less Received 92 Andrew Keanie 6 "Is (This) Translation Any Good?": The Evaluation of Literary Translation 110 Giuseppe Sofo 7 The Algorithm of Beauty: Aesthetic Judgment as a Science 120 Madelena Gonzalez 8 Literary Value and the Question of Insight on Humanly Relevant Matters 135 Emanuela Tegla 9 How Books Get Reviewed: Evaluation and the Freelance Journalist 150 D.J. Taylor 10 A Lifetime of Evaluation 156 Penelope Stenning 11 Evaluating Unfinished Novels: Octavia E. Butler and the Improbability of Justice 166 Rafe McGregor 12 "How to Bring So Goode a Matter into a Better Forme": The Value of the Horse in Early Modern Writing 179 Elisabetta Deriu 13 Reading Performance for the Values Underpinning Production 195 Amanda Finch 14 Bridging the Gap between Page and Performance Poetry 212 Karen Simecek 15 Aesthetics and Efficacy in Applied and Community Theater 226 Dónall Mac Cathmhaoill 16 Antonin Artaud Beyond Judgment: A Radio Reading of "To Have Done With The Judgement of God" with Local Prisoners 243 Gary Anderson and Niamh Malone 17 "Chief of the Second Rate": James Shirley and Dramatic Value 259 Heidi Craig 18 "The Glories of our Blood and State" and The Lady of Pleasure: The Genius of [Counterfactual] Britain's National Writer--James Shirley 271 Kevin De Ornellas 19 Evaluating Literary Evaluation 287 Peter Barry 20 The Horrible Legacy of Modernism 299 Richard Bradford 21 Evaluating Poems 331 Amy Burns and Richard Bradford Index 346

RICHARD BRADFORD is Research Professor at Ulster University, UK, and Visiting Professor at the University of Avignon, France. His 40 books cover topics as varied as stylistics, Russian Formalism, crime writing, the history of English poetry, modern fiction, and literary aesthetics. His recent works include literary biographies such as Devils, Lusts and Strange Desires: The Life of Patricia Highsmith and Tough Guy: The Life of Norman Mailer.

MADELENA GONZALEZ is Chair of Anglophone Literature at the University of Avignon, France, where she heads the Master's program in English Studies and the multidisciplinary research group "Cultural Identity, Texts and Theatricality" (ICTT). She has published widely on contemporary Anglophone literature, theater, and culture. She is co-editor of Aesthetics and Ideology in Contemporary Literature and Drama.

KEVIN DE ORNELLAS is Lecturer in English Renaissance Literature at Ulster University, UK. He served as Associate Editor for the two-volume Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature and authored The Horse in Early Modern English Culture: Bridled, Curbed, and Tamed. He has published 20 peer-reviewed essays, dozens of book and play reviews, and hundreds of encyclopedia articles.