William E. Cain

Biography

William E. Cain is Mary Jewett Gaiser Professor of English at Wellesley College. He is a co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Literary Theory and Criticism (2nd ed., 2010), and, with Sylvan Barnet, he has co-authored a number of books on literature and composition.

See Work

CRITICISM / Spring 1986

Criticism and History

By William E. Cain

In The Beauty of Inflections, Jerome J. McGann sounds a compelling call for “socio-historical” criticism of literature. His book addresses Keats, Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade,” and the...

CRITICISM / Spring 1982

A Model for Criticism

By William E. Cain

Robert Boyers has written a subtle and rewarding study of R. P. Blackmur. He comments well on the central terms and concepts in Blackmur’s criticism, and he provides sharp and sensible examinations of the famous essays on Yeats, Eliot...

CRITICISM / Summer 1980

Revolutionary Criticism

By William E. Cain

Grant Webster provides a detailed account of the New Critics and the New York Intellectuals; and he supplements these central sections of his book by analyzing the nature of critical schools and by supplying an excellent bibliography and...

CRITICISM / Summer 1979

Marveling At Empson’s Ways

By William E. Cain

But while William Empson is often praised and his influence noted in many places, he remains an elusive figure, a modern marvel whose “brilliance” we admire even as we feel somewhat uneasy about it.

CRITICISM / Summer 1978

Trilling In Our Time

By William E. Cain

Unfortunately, Robert Boyers, in his Lionel Trilling, succumbs to this temptation to imitate his subject’s style; and this fault gravely weakens his attempt to renew Trilling’s value for modern criticism and culture.