In graduate school, I noticed I'd read enough works on the history of the novel to say many things about works I hadn't read. I called this "bull crit"; the two main works I did it with were "Madame Bovary" and "Ulysses" (both of which I've since read). In my Master's seminar on Toni Morrison this past term, I asked the students what they knew about Dostoevsky. None of them knew his works well, but many turned out to their own surprise to be able to say a lot about them – and I joined the bull crit with comments on "The Brothers Karamazov", which I know only from reading about it. (Andrew Shields, #111words, 16 June 2021)
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