Pleasing Myself: From Beowulf to Philip Roth

by Frank Kermode

Frank Kermode has a strong claim to be Britain's most distinguished literary critic. Over the course of a long career, he has written on a enormous variety of English literature, most recently William Shakespeare's plays. This collection should be of keen interest to lovers of that literature, and also to those interested in post-war British intellectual life. For as much as these essays exemplify the tension, the patience and the insight of a great critic, in their defense of proportion and clarity they are also works of ethical importance.

Genres: Essays, Literature

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Sir John Frank Kermode was a highly regarded British literary critic best known for his seminal critical work The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, published in 1967 (revised 2003).

Reviews

[Christina Widmann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Calm, even-handed reviews of a variety of scholarly books.
One flaw, if I am allowed to accuse Sir Frank Kermode of having one: His essays contain a detailed retelling and resume of each author's points. Sometimes I find it hard to distinguish between the retelling and the opinion, that is, between the thoughts of a book's author and the thoughts of the reviewer.