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In a book that emphasizes the critical importance of seeing works of art in conversation with each other, I have perhaps not attended as much as I might have to the conversation that takes place within criticism itself. Aspiring to reach a wider readership than I typically have in the past, I have not always specified precisely how arguments in this book might matter to the various subfields in which they are explicitly or implicitly situated. To be sure, the book has plenty of footnotes—perhaps too many to suit the taste of some readers—but they tend not to stake claims within a larger critical discussion, nor even to admit the extent of my debts to it. A book premised on the value of criticism should fully acknowledge the importance of existing critical work to its making. I hereby offer that acknowledgment.

This book has also profited by conversations in the most literal sense of the term with many friends and colleagues over the years. At Chicago, I would like to salute Tim Campbell, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Maud Ellmann, Frances Ferguson, Norma Field, Berthold Hoeckner, Patrick Jagoda, Heather Keenleyside, Jo McDonagh, Rochona Majumdar, Françoise Meltzer, Tom Mitchell, Dan Morgan, Richard Neer, Debbie Nelson, Salomé Aguilera Skvirsky, Jacqueline Stewart, Ken Warren, Lisa Wedeen, David Wellbery, John Wilkinson, and the late Marshall Sahlins. At Chicago, too, I was able to teach courses related to the topics of this book to the most intellectually committed students imaginable—courses on film and fiction, Irish literature and cinema, literary typologies, satire, melodrama, the literature of empire, media aesthetics, and, to be sure, Romanticism. It was a great boon to co-teach some of these courses with such talented colleagues as Martha Feldman, Jennifer Pitts, and Christiane Frye. Beyond Chicago, I wish to acknowledge colleagues whose learning and critical acumen I have come to depend on: Dudley Andrew, Ian Baucom, Homi Bhabha, Bradin Cormack, Peter de Bolla, Ian Duncan, Penny Fielding, Debjani Ganguly, Luke Gibbons, Sara Guyer, Paul Hamilton, Bill Keach, Margaret Kelleher, Rashid Khalidi, Declan Kiberd, Nigel Leask, Sandra Macpherson, Simon Schaffer, Laurie Shannon, Vincent Sherry, Ron Thomas, Domietta Torlasco, Katie Trumpener, and Clair Wills. I will sorely miss my conversations about criticism over the years with the late Seamus Deane in the bar of Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel. Beyond the academy, I have enjoyed discussing films, over Zoom during the pandemic, with the brainy Hyde Park Film Group, who have helped me to imagine how to broaden the reach of this book. It was Iain McCalman who encouraged me to try such a book in the first place, though he is unsurpassed in his ability to craft one.

Very special thanks are due to that “fit audience … though few” who read and commented on the entire manuscript once it was drafted. This generous crew includes two press readers, Deidre Lynch and Garrett Stewart, as well as Claire Connolly and Joseph Bitney. Together they saved me from errors large and small and decidedly improved the book overall. My friend Bill Brown, alas, was unable to read a full draft of this book, as he has so generously done for me in the past, but he did offer some shrewd advice about it, for which I am all the more grateful in the circumstances. My thanks go to Allyson Field and Michael Chandler for giving me the benefit of their considerable wisdom on the Spike Lee chapter. Eleni Towns did a timely bit of archival work for me on that same chapter. Catherine Chandler helped with matters of tone and tact, and her sons, Jack and Sam, have been a constant reminder of what it means to live and learn with what the great critic William Hazlitt called gusto. Elizabeth Chandler, beyond everything else, read and listened to much of this book, and assessed a number of key passages for clarity. Her judgments were unfailingly helpful. I’ve learned most intimately about doing criticism from the teaching and generosity of four scholars (only one officially my teacher): in literary studies, Jerome McGann and the late Marilyn Butler; in film studies, Tom Gunning and the late Miriam Hansen. To them as well, as the poet wrote, “I may have owed another gift”: the example of how to take real pleasure in such work. This book is dedicated to my students at the University of Chicago, from whom I have learned much about criticism, to be sure, but also, especially in recent years, about resilience in the face of challenging times for the humanities. Many have succeeded in becoming the teachers of others, some the authors of books of their own, but the pride I take in all of their accomplishments is both enormous and unwarranted.

I was invited to rehearse some of the arguments and commentaries of this book publicly in a variety of venues. Among them I wish to acknowledge the CRASSH Center at Cambridge; the Humanities Research Center at the Australian National University; the Glasscock Center at Texas A&M; the University of Iowa; the University of Cardiff; Yale University; Chawton House; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Pennsylvania; Northwestern University; Princeton University; Trinity College Dublin; and the Paris Center of the University of Chicago. It was particularly helpful to deliver a version of Chapter 1 as the plenary address to a large public audience for Humanities Day at Chicago some years ago. I thank my hosts for these opportunities, and the audiences for some searching questions. Thanks, too, to Deans Martha Roth and Anne Robertson for granting the research time to complete this book. I should add that it consists almost entirely of previously unpublished material, but a version of my discussion of Seamus Heaney’s “Casualty” appeared in Critical Inquiry 41 (Winter 2015). At Wiley-Blackwell, I have worked with many editors and members of staff, from Emma Bennett, who first commissioned the book, to Liz Wingett, who saw it through the press. I thank them all for their flexibility and professionalism. Last by not least, Eric Powell, my research assistant, logged hundreds of hours on this book in the course of both my researching it and preparing it for publication. The book owes a great deal to his meticulous work on it.