Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism is a literary journal published by Brigham Young University. It provides an avenue for both undergraduate and masters students to publish their work and gain professional experience. Criterion seeks original, well-researched, and intellectually rigorous essays written from diverse critical perspectives and about texts from any time period or literary tradition. We work to encourage communication and scholarship among the student body by exposing them to a variety of viewpoints, perspectives, and literary works.
Criterion was created in 2007 under the direction of Dr. Matthew Wickman and Katherine Fisher with the intent to provide a space where undergraduates and masters students could share their literary criticism and gain professional experience. The journal’s name was inspired by The Criterion, a British literary magazine created and edited by T.S. Eliot. The journal ran from 1922 to 1939 and sought to reunify and elevate the European intellectual community, much as Criterion seeks to elevate the works of BYU students today.
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
Matthew Arnold, “A Function of Criticism at the Present Time”