Famous Critics

1533-1592 · French

French essayist and skeptic who questioned dogma, custom, cruelty, and human certainty

• religious fanaticism
• dogmatism and certainty
• cruelty and torture

1667-1745 · Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish satirist who savaged English misrule, corruption, and human folly

• English rule of Ireland
• political corruption
• religious hypocrisy

1694-1778 · French

French Enlightenment writer who attacked the Church, intolerance, and blind optimism

• the Catholic Church
• religious intolerance
• superstition

1737-1809 · English-American

Revolutionary pamphleteer who attacked monarchy and church in the name of reason

• monarchy
• hereditary government
• organized religion

1759-1797 · English

English philosopher who attacked the subjection of women and the denial of their education

• the subordination of women
• denial of women's education
• Edmund Burke's conservatism

1835-1910 · American

American humorist whose satire skewered racism, empire, and pious hypocrisy

• slavery and racism
• American imperialism
• religious hypocrisy

1842-1914 · American

Caustic journalist and story writer whose cynical wit exposed hypocrisy and cant

• war
• hypocrisy
• politics

1854-1900 · Anglo-Irish

Anglo-Irish wit who used comedy to expose Victorian hypocrisy and moral cant

• Victorian hypocrisy
• bourgeois morality
• class snobbery

1862-1931 · American

American journalist who documented lynching and exposed its use as racial terror

• lynching
• racial terror
• white supremacy

1867-1936 · American

Chicago humorist who satirized politics through the Irish saloonkeeper Mr. Dooley

• machine politics
• imperialism
• political hypocrisy

1868-1963 · American

American scholar and activist who dissected the color line and white supremacy

• racism
• white supremacy
• segregation

1874-1936 · Austrian

Austrian satirist who waged war on the corrupt press and the abuse of language

• the popular press
• corruption of language
• war and militarism

1880-1956 · American

Acid-tongued American journalist who ridiculed religion, democracy, and middle-class piety

• organized religion
• fundamentalism
• American democracy

1881-1936 · Chinese

Chinese writer whose fiction and essays attacked Confucian tradition and social decay

• Confucian tradition
• feudal culture
• national character

1893-1967 · American

Sharp-tongued poet and critic who skewered high society and gender pretensions

• social pretension
• gender and power
• romantic illusion

1903-1950 · British

British writer who exposed totalitarianism, imperialism, and the corruption of political language

• totalitarianism
• Stalinism
• British imperialism

1905-1975 · American

Literary and cultural critic who examined the moral limits of American liberalism

• American liberalism
• the liberal imagination
• literature and morality

1906-1975 · German-American

German-American theorist who explained totalitarianism and the banality of evil

• totalitarianism
• Nazism
• Stalinism

1906-1982 · American

Cultural critic and editor who attacked mass culture and middlebrow taste

• mass culture
• middlebrow culture
• Masscult and Midcult

1912-1989 · American

Novelist and critic whose satire skewered liberal intellectuals and their pieties

• liberal intellectuals
• New York intellectual life
• Stalinism and fellow travelers

1913-2008 · Martinican

Martinican poet who co-founded Negritude and indicted European colonialism

• colonialism
• European hypocrisy
• racism

1913-1994 · American

Novelist and essayist who probed race, invisibility, and American identity

• race and invisibility
• African American identity
• American democracy

1924-1987 · American

American essayist and novelist who indicted racism and probed identity and sexuality

• American racism
• race relations
• white moral evasion

1925-2012 · American

American novelist and essayist, an acid critic of empire, politics, and public morality

• American empire
• the political establishment
• sexual and moral hypocrisy

1925-1961 · Martinican

Martinican psychiatrist and theorist who dissected colonialism, racism, and revolt

• colonialism
• anti-Black racism
• the psychology of oppression

1930-2013 · Nigerian

Nigerian novelist who reclaimed the African story from colonial and racist narratives

• colonialism
• Western cultural imposition
• racism in Western literature

1933-2004 · American

American essayist and cultural critic of art, photography, illness, and modern taste

• photography and visual culture
• aesthetics and taste
• illness and its metaphors

1934-2021 · American

American essayist and reporter who coolly diagnosed American myths and disorder

• 1960s counterculture
• American political myth
• media and narrative

1935-2003 · Palestinian-American

Palestinian-American literary critic who founded postcolonial studies with Orientalism

• orientalism
• Western imperialism
• colonial scholarship

1940-2015 · Uruguayan

Uruguayan writer who exposed five centuries of the plunder of Latin America

• imperialism
• exploitation of Latin America
• US intervention

1949-2011 · British-American

Anglo-American polemicist who attacked religion, tyranny, and sacred public figures

• organized religion
• Henry Kissinger
• Mother Teresa