criticism

criticism, critique, review, blurb, puff are comparable when meaning a discourse (as an essay or report) presenting one's conçlusions after examining a work of art and especially of literature. None of these terms has a clearly established and narrowly delimited meaning, but, in general, each can be distinguished from the others with reference to its leading implications and its place in usage.

Criticism is of all these terms the most nearly neutral and the least capable of carrying derogatory connotations. The proper aim and the content of a criticism have never been definitely fixed and are still subjects of controversy, but the term usually implies an author who is expected to have expert knowledge in his field, a clear definition of his standards of judgment, and an intent to evaluate the work under consideration

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read every criticism of a new play the day following its first per- formance

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Criticism is more often applied to the art, craft, or collective writings of such writers or speakers than to the individual article

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this feeling, that contemporary judgments are apt to turn out a little ludicrous . . . has converted much criticism of late from judgment pronounced into impression recorded— Galsworthy

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I go on the assumption that a review is simply a short piece of criticism, and that it should be as good criticism as its writer can make it— Matthiessen

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Because of this tendency to restrict the use of criticism to its general sense, critique is sometimes preferred as a designation of a critical essay, especially of one dealing with a literary work; but currently it is often avoided as an affectation

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Jeffrey's critiques in the Edinburgh Review

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Review is now the common designation of a more or less informal critical essay dealing particularly with new or recent books and plays. The term is frequently preferred by newspaper and magazine critics as a more modest designation of their articles than criticism or critique and as permitting less profound or exhaustive treatment or as requiring only a personal rather than a final judgment of the merits and faults of the work. Review generally suggests literary criticism of a less pretentious kind, giving in general a summary of a book's contents and the impressions it produces on the reviewer

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the Sunday editions of many newspapers have a supplement devoted to book reviews

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Blurb is applied chiefly to a publisher's description of a work printed usually on the jacket of a book for the purposes of advertisement

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as a term of reprobation for fulsomeness on the "jackets," or dust- cloaks, of new books, blurb is a peach of the first order— Montague

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Puff, a word once common for any unduly flattering account (as of a book or play), in current use applies especially to a review that seems obviously animated by a desire to promote the sale of a book or the success of a play regardless of its real merits or to one that is markedly uncritical in its flattering comments

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puffs . . . with which booksellers sometimes embroider their catalogs— John Carter

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