The Languorous Critic

Insofar as criticism is an art of love, its prevailing mood is languor: a paradox of enthusiasm and enervation, ravishment and reflectiveness, eloquence and speechlessness, savoring and sadness. How might we define this languorous mood as a critical disposition? What could it help us to see? What is a languorous critical style? How has it been celebrated and maligned? This essay looks closely at languor as an intellectual mood in the work of Roland Barthes, the critic who is its greatest theorist, and Walter Pater, the critic who is its greatest stylist.