What is the function of a critic? So far as I am concerned, he can do me one or more of the following services:
(1) Introduce me to authors or works of which I was hitherto unaware.
(2) Convince me that I have undervalued an author or a work because I had not read them carefully enough.
(3) Show me relations between works of different ages and cultures which I could never have seen for myself because I do not know enough and never shall.
(4) Give a 'reading' of a work which increases my understanding of it.
(5 ) Throw light upon the process of artistic 'Making'.
(6) Throw light upon the relation of art to life, to science, economics, ethics, religion, etc.
--W.H. Auden, The Dyer's Hand (1963)
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