My life has included a study of Shakespeare and to me it's very natural, but I know that it's not always accessible to other people.
The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
In my teens, I developed a passionate idolatry for a teacher of English literature. I wanted to do something that he would approve of more, so I thought I should be some sort of a scholar.
What is a Professor of Poetry? How can poetry be professed?
Funny way to spend your life, though, studying another chap's versifying.
The study of literature threatens to become a kind of paleontology of failure, and criticism a supercilious psychoanalysis of authors.
I love Shakespeare and the Greeks - learned a lot studying them at one time.
The study of social progress is today not less needed in literature than is the analysis of the human heart.
The writer studies literature, not the world. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write.
When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare.
It's a shame to be called "educated" those who do not study the ancient Greek writers.
Literary theory has become a parody of science, generating its own arcane jargon. In the process, tragically, it discourages love of literature for its own sake.
Linda Svendsen's 'Marine Life' was important. I was nearly 22. Larry Mathews discussed the book in a creative writing class. We examined her stories, figured out how they worked.
There are two methods for the literary study of any book - the first being the study of its thought and emotion; the second only that of its workmanship. A student of literature should study some of the Bible from both points of view.
A masculine education cannot spare from professional study and the necessary acquisition of languages, the time and attention which I have bestowed on the compositions of my countrymen.
For my students who are trying to learn the craft of writing in a writing class - contemporary literature is what's most useful.
T.S. Eliot was one of the first poets introduced to me when I started studying literature and has felt like a close friend ever since. No one nails urban despair quite like Eliot.
One of the great joys of my job is that you spend a huge amount of time investigating different areas of literature.
Much as there are things about our own life stories that we can learn only from the systematic study of our dreams, there are things about the human condition that we can learn only from a systematic study of literature.
I'm not sure I'm happy with words such as "task" or "role" when they are attached to literature.
The whole business of reading English Literature in two years, to know it in any reputable sense of the word - let alone your learning to write English - is, in short, impossible.
I had spent so much time studying literature at Stanford and the history of medicine at Cambridge in an attempt to better understand the particularities of death, only to come away feeling like they were still unknowable to me.
