Abstract
The four essays in this issue are lectures delivered at the University of Dayton during the summer of 1965 by Elliott Coleman, the director of the creative writing program at Johns Hopkins University, and three distinguished graduates of that program, Joseph T. Skerrett Jr., John Wesley Jones, and Rev. Louis Reile, S.M. Considered together, they present a good picture of one significant segment of literary criticism as it is practiced today.
As writers themselves, these men can help us look at literature from a viewpoint we rarely enjoy, that of the practicing artist. They take us inside the literary work to examine how it is made, where it came from, what it does. And because they must think through their craft, they ask some of the hard questions: what is prose? and poetry? what reality does literature mirror? how does the artist justify his existence?
They ask not only hard questions, but as men who are both writers and critics, they ask large ones.
Recommended Citation
Means, Michael H.
(1967)
"Introduction: The Practice of Criticism Today,"
University of Dayton Review: Vol. 4:
No.
1, Article 2.
Available at:
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol4/iss1/2
