Citing Sources Introduction Literary criticism is the evaluation of literary works.
Literary criticism can take several forms.
A criticism can compare a literary work with other works published during the same period. A criticism can compare one work of an author to other works also by that author. A criticism can compare a theme in the literary work of one author to the literary works of other authors who use the same theme. Most literary criticism is published in scholarly journals that are available primarily in print. Very few scholarly journals on literary criticism exist in electronic form.