Introduction

The introduction to this special issue provides the occasion and discusses the exigency of examining the political, aesthetic, historical, and pedagogical functions of literary criticism at this moment in the twenty-first century. By considering others who have taken up similar inquiries, notably Matthew Arnold, Edward Said, and Northrop Frye, this introduction takes stock of the current state of criticism and makes some projections about its future. It discerns that critical practice is often a function of mood. To that end, it identifies how four moods "urgency, buoyancy, hopelessness, and scholasticism" hover over the functions of criticism at the present time.