In 1993, John Guillory published “Cultural Capital,” a dense study of the then-raging canon wars that has become a stealth classic. Now, in a follow-up, “Professing Criticism,” he takes on an even bigger question: What is literary criticism — specifically, the kind of highly specialized, theoretically sophisticated textual readings generated by academic critics — really for?

But what literary criticism is not for, he argues, is what many of his colleagues think it is for: changing the world.

“When people read the book, I suspect they’re going to be upset,” he said in an interview. “They’re going to say, ‘You’re saying we don’t do anything, we accomplish nothing.’ That’s not what I’m saying.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/a...criticism.html