“On this matter of criticism, something that appalls me is the idea going around now that the practice of criticism is opposed to the literary impulse. Is necessarily opposed to it. Sure, it may be a trap, it may destroy the creative impulse, but so may drink or money or respectability. But criticism is a perfectly natural human activity and somehow the dullest, most technical criticism may be associated with full creativity. Elizabethan criticism is all, or nearly all, technical– meter, how to hang a line together– kitchen criticism, how to make the cake. People deeply interested in an art are interested in the ‘how.’ Now I don’t mean to say that this is the only kind of valuable criticism. Any kind is good that gives a deeper insight into the nature of the thing– a Marxist analysis, a Freudian study, the relation to a literary or social tradition, the history of a theme. But we have to remember that there is no one, single, correct kind of criticism, no complete criticism. You only have different kinds of perspectives, giving, when successful, different kinds of insights. And at one historical moment one kind of insight may be more needed than another.”

Robert Penn Warren, from The Writer’s Chapbook