The article is an extensive review of Joseph North’s book Literary Criticism: A Concise Political History. The author divides the 20th and 21st century literary studies into two orientations: critics and researchers, showing that the domination of the research perspective from the 80s led to a paradoxical depoliticization of criticism and deprivation of its intervention potential. To restore the critical potential, North postulates a return to materialistic aesthetics under the sign of I.A. Richards, which allows him to cross the research horizon in a gesture of intervention into a common reality, justified by a specific aesthetic experience.
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