Critical Quarterly

Critical Quarterly is a peer-reviewed academic journal in the humanities published by Wiley-Blackwell. The editor-in-chief is Colin MacCabe.

1 History
2 References
3 External links

History

Early Years

Critical Quarterly was established in 1958 by its first editors C.B. Cox and A.E. Dyson.^[1] Cox's intellectual formation was in the Department of English Literature at the University of Cambridge, then dominated by the figure of F.R. Leavis. The latter's legacy was a notable feature of Critical Quarterly's early years, when it published work by a new generation of scholars including Raymond Williams, David Lodge, and Frank Kermode.^[2] In some respects the journal sought to modify Leavis' project; in particular Cox and Dyson felt that Leavis and his acolytes tended unfairly to ignore contemporary writing, partly because of their unshakeable belief in the "myth of a culture in decline".^[3] The early years of the journal were notable for the inclusion of contemporary poetry, and Critical Quarterly helped to launch the careers of Sylvia Plath (who won one of the first poetry competitions), Thom Gunn, Philip Larkin, and Ted Hughes.^[2]

The Black Papers

The Black Papers on education - named after government white papers - were published by Critical Quarterly starting in 1969. These were collections of essays that were critical of the drive towards comprehensive eduction, and proved particularly inflammatory in the context of the student activism of the late 1960s with its democratising rhetoric. Contributors included Kingsley Amis, Robert Conquest, Geoffrey Bantock, Jacques Barzun, Iris Murdoch, and Rhodes Boyson. The Black Papers caused considerable controversy, reasserting traditional educational values at a time when liberal educational reforms were in the ascendancy.^[4] While Cox later described his views on education in this period as those of a "moderate progressive", at the time, the black papers were widely denounced by the left as reactionary. The debate was a rancorous one and Richard Hoggart resigned in protest from the editorial board of Critical Quarterly after the publication of the first black paper.^[5] Critical Quarterly itself became embroiled in a national debate about declining educational values, and Dyson evoked Matthew Arnold in its pages:

"If Arnold were to return in 1969 ... he would be horrified to discover anarchy subverting the temple of culture itself. What would he make of the Jacobinism rampant in our educational theory, or of the spectacle of universities becoming the new home of the mob? What would he make of the inroads made by romantic egotism on disciplined learning, or of the theory that 'self-fulfilment' is the chief end for which education exists?"^[6]

Dyson acknowledged that this represented a partial reversal of the journal's earlier rejection of Leavisite cultural pessimism: perhaps, after all, this was a culture in decline.^[3]

MacCabe editorship

In 1987, after nearly 30 years of Cox's editorship, Colin MacCabe took over as editor, announcing some new ambitions for the journal in "Aims for Critical Quarterly".^[7] The Year's Work in English Studies for 1987 noted that "CritQ certainly had seemed for many years to be stuck in a rut, even if a pleasant and occasionally lively one, and one looks forward to the new team's effort to revamp the project entirely."^[8] MacCabe's name was at that time strongly associated with the (at times controversial) importation of various structuralist and post-structuralist ideas into the study of English Literature, and - whilst largely sticking to its original ethos - the journal moved in more theoretical directions at the same time as expanding into adjacent disciplines, notably film studies, cultural studies, and history, alongside its more traditional focus on literary criticism. Its website now claims that the journal "addresses the whole range of cultural forms so that discussions of, for example, cinema and television can appear alongside analyses of the accepted literary canon." ^[9] Under MacCabe's editorship, Critical Quarterly has published the work of Fredric Jameson, Slavoj Zizek, Jacqueline Rose, and Paul Gilroy, among many other prominent scholars.