Making the Cut. The forthcoming enormous Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism establishes critical theory as a basic component of the college-level study of literature and sets the canon, even after the publisher had the editors cut a number of figures from the book, complaining that its size would make it too expensive and unwieldy to market widely. But it is much more theory than literary criticism, the editors having concluded that it would be difficult to include examples of ‘close reading’ of texts with which a less-broadly-read audience might not be sufficiently familiar. One critic opines:

“Criticism
implies some engagement with writing, but there’s almost none of
that here. Norton anthologies have always been about
literature. This reflects a really unfortunate trend toward the
study of ideas about ideas about literature. It’s metacriticism,
really.” Chronicle of Higher Education [via Robot Wisdom]