'''Литерату&#769;рная кри&#769;тика''' — область литературного творчества на грани искусства (художественной литературы) и науки о литературе (литературоведения). 

Занимается истолкованием и оценкой произведений литературы с точки зрения современности (в том числе насущных проблем общественной и духовной жизни); оказывает активное влияние на философию, эстетику. Часто носит публицистический, политико-злободневный характер. 

Жанры литературной критики: 
* рецензия, 
* критическая статья об отдельном произведении, 
* обзор, проблемная статья, 
* монография о современном литературном процессе. 

Как особый вид литературы и как самостоятельная профессия сложилась в Европе в первой половине Т. Карлейль, Ш. Сент-Бев, В. Г. Белинский).

'''Literary criticism''' is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists.

Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory, or conversely from book reviewing, is a matter of some controversy. For example, the ''Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses them together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, as criticism always deals directly with a literary work, albeit from a theoretical point of view.

Modern literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in The Nation'', and ''The New Yorker''.

== History of literary criticism ==
=== Classical and medieval criticism ===

Literary criticism has probably existed for as long as literature. Poetics'', a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art, in the 4th century BC. ''Poetics'' developed for the first time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, which are still crucial in literary study. Plato's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well.

Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts.

=== Renaissance criticism ===

The literary criticism of the Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism, proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla's Latin translation of Aristotle's ''Poetics''. The work of Aristotle, especially ''Poetics'', was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the latter eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's ''Poetics'' in 1570.

=== 19th-century criticism ===

The British Romantic movement of the early sublime. German Romanticism, which followed closely after the late development of German classicism, emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to the reader of English literature, and valued ''Witz'' &ndash; that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort &ndash; more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for critical writing than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold.

=== The New Criticism ===

However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism derive almost entirely from the new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the school of criticism known as authorial intention (to say nothing of the author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or reader response. This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves.

=== Theory ===
In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential ''Anatomy of Criticism''. In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on the basis of their adherence to such ideology.

In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness a rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory, influenced by structuralism, then post-structuralism, and other kinds of Continental philosophy. It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions.