As the Nobel Committee gets ready to admit a new writer into the pantheon, our critic asks: Is greatness overrated? Critic’s Notebook As the Nobel Committee gets ready to admit a new writer into the ...

Following the incredible success of the YouTube channel Great Art Explained in 15 minutes, arts writer James Payne has launched a brilliant new series offering a fresh look at world literature. copies ...

G.K. Chesterton, the great British writer and Catholic convert of the early 20th century, recognized this in an almost ...

Great literature feels like recognition. It's that jolt when a character from 1925 describes exactly how you felt last Tuesday. It's the way a single sentence can make you laugh and break your heart ...

Amid the current hysteria of toppling statues and renaming things, we keep mindlessly expanding the cancel culture. We are now seeing efforts to ban classics of Western and American literature. These ...

Does the literary canon speak to our time? Of course it does. Whatever else it is, The Odyssey is an account of post-traumatic stress disorder. Romeo and Juliet offers enduring insights into teen ...

When Ilan Stavans, a professor at Amherst College, was investigating summer camps for his two young sons, he noticed a recurring trend: the majority of the camps were focused around sports or outdoor ...

Roosevelt Montás was born in a rural village in the Dominican Republic and immigrated to the United States when he was eleven years old. He attended public schools in Queens, where he took classes in ...