John David Guillory (born 1952) is an American literary critic best known for his book ''Cultural Capital'' (1993). He is the Julius Silver Professor of English at

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

Life

Guillory "grew up in New Orleans in a working-class Catholic family, and attended Jesuit schools." Guillory gained his BA at

Tulane University Tulane University, officially the Tulane University of Louisiana, is a private university, private research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. Founded as the Medical College of Louisiana in 1834 by seven young medical doctors, it turned into ...

, and a PhD in English from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in 1979. His PhD, ''Poetry and Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History'', was subsequently published as a monograph. Guillory taught at

(1979–89),

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private university, private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hem ...

(1989–97), and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1997–99) before moving to New York University in 1999. Guillory's book ''Cultural Capital'' (1993) argued that "the category of 'literature' names the cultural capital of the old bourgeoisie, a form of capital increasingly marginal to the social function of the present educational system". After an opening chapter on the debate over the

literary canon The term canon derives from the Greek (), meaning "rule", and thence via Latin (language), Latin and Old French into English. The concept in English usage is very broad: in a general sense it refers to being one (adjectival) or a group (noun) of ...

, ''Cultural Capital'' took up several 'case studies':

Thomas Gray Thomas Gray (26 December 1716 – 30 July 1771) was an English poet, letter-writer, classics, classical scholar, and professor at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Pembroke College, Cambridge. He is widely known for his ''Elegy Written in a Country ...

's ''

Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard ''Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'' is a poem by Thomas Gray, completed in 1750 and first published in 1751. The poem's origins are unknown, but it was partly inspired by Gray's thoughts following the death of the poet Richard West in 1742 ...

'', the

close reading In literary criticism, close reading is the careful, sustained interpretation of a brief passage of a text. A close reading emphasizes the single and the particular over the general, effected by close attention to individual words, the syntax, t ...

New Criticism New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as ...

, and

literary theory Literary theory is the systematic study of the nature of literature and of the methods for literary analysis. Culler 1997, p.1 Since the 19th century, literary scholarship includes literary theory and considerations of intellectual history, mo ...

after Paul De Man. Guillory viewed the rigour of 'Theory' as an attempt by literary scholars to reclaim its cultural capital from a newly ascendant technical professional class. Its unconscious aim was "to model the intellectual work of the theorist on the new social form of intellectual work, the technobureaucratic labour of the new professional-managerial class." A final chapter gave a history of the concept of

value Value or values may refer to: Ethics and social * Value (ethics) wherein said concept may be construed as treating actions themselves as abstract objects, associating value to them ** Values (Western philosophy) expands the notion of value beyo ...

from

Adam Smith Adam Smith (baptized 1723 – 17 July 1790) was a Scottish economist and philosopher who was a pioneer in the thinking of political economy and key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment. Seen by some as "The Father of Economics"——— ...

Barbara Herrnstein Smith Barbara Herrnstein Smith (born 1932) is an American literary critic and theorist, best known for her work ''Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory''. She is currently the Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Lite ...

Awards and honors

1992: ''Best American Essays'' for "Canon, Syllabus, List" 1994
René Wellek Prize
from the American Comparative Literature Association for ''Cultural Capital,'' "an uncompromising study of the problem of canon formation itself and what that problem tells us about the crisis in contemporary education." 1997: Class of 1932 Fellow of the Council of the Humanities, Princeton University 2001: Tanner Lectures on Human Values at UC Berkeley, respondent to Sir Frank Kermode 2016
Francis Andrew March Award
from the

Association of Departments of English The Association of Departments of English (ADE) is an American professional organization under the auspices of the Modern Language Association. The ADE was founded by Warner Rice (then English chair at the University of Michigan), with the coopera ...

for "Distinguished Service to the Profession of English Studies." 2016
Golden Dozen Award
for teaching,

Books

*
Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History
'. Columbia University Press, 1983. * ''Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation''. University of Chicago Press, 1993

Special issue of "Genre,"
Thirty Years after John Guillory’s Cultural Capital
(April 2023), co-edited by

Merve Emre Merve Emre is a Turkish-American author, academic, and literary critic. She is the author of nonfiction books ''Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America'' (2017) and ''The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs ...

and Justin Sider. * (ed. with

Judith Butler Judith Pamela Butler (born February 24, 1956) is an American philosopher and gender theorist whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. In 1993, Butler ...

and

Kendall Thomas Kendall Thomas is Nash Professor of Law, and Director of the Center for the Study of Law and Culture, at Columbia Law School. He won a Berlin Prize Fellowship from the American Academy in Berlin The American Academy in Berlin is a private, i ...

)
What's Left of Theory?: New Work on the Politics of Literary Theory
'. Routledge, 2000. * '' Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study''. University of Chicago Press, 2022. *
On Close Reading
', with an annotated bibliography by Scott Newstok, University of Chicago Press, 2024.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Guillory, John 1952 births Living people American literary critics Sociologists of art Tulane University alumni Yale University alumni Harvard University faculty Johns Hopkins University faculty New York University faculty