John Guillory
{{Short description|Literature professor and academic}}
{{for|the American football player|John Guillory (American football)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = John David Guillory
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = John David Guillory
| birth_date = {{Birth year and age|1952}}
| birth_place = United States
| death_date =
| death_place =
| other_names =
| occupation = Literary critic, author
| years_active =
| known_for =
| notable_works =
}}
John David Guillory (born 1952) is an American literary critic whose "distinguished career has transformed the ways in which the discipline of literary studies understands itself."{{Cite web |title=Four distinguished alumni awarded Wilbur Cross Medals {{!}} Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences |url=https://gsas.yale.edu/about/news-announcements/four-distinguished-alumni-awarded-wilbur-cross-medals |access-date=2024-10-10 |website=gsas.yale.edu |language=en}} He is the [https://as.nyu.edu/people/silverprofessors/the-julius-silver-legacy.html Julius Silver] Professor of English{{Cite web |title=People |url=https://as.nyu.edu/marc/people.john-guillory.html |access-date=2024-09-15 |website=as.nyu.edu}} Emeritus{{Cite web |title=Emeritus/Retired Faculty |url=https://as.nyu.edu/departments/english/people/faculty/emeritus-faculty.html |access-date=2024-09-18 |website=as.nyu.edu}} at New York University. Guillory has focused his scholarship on rhetoric,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2017 |title=Mercury's Words: The End of Rhetoric and the Beginning of Prose |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/26420601 |journal=Representations |issue=138 |pages=59–86 |doi=10.1525/rep.2017.138.1.59 |jstor=26420601 |issn=0734-6018}} the sociology of criticism,{{Cite journal |last1=Guillory |first1=John |last2=Williams |first2=Jeffrey J. |date=2004 |title=Toward a Sociology of Literature: An Interview with John Guillory |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/429407 |journal=Minnesota Review |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=95–109 |issn=2157-4189}} the history of the humanities,{{Cite web |title=Reflecting on the Evolution of the Humanities: An Interview with John Guillory |url=https://www.jhiblog.org/2024/06/10/reflecting-on-the-evolution-of-the-humanities-an-interview-with-john-guillory/ |access-date=2024-09-15 |website=JHI Blog |language=en-US}} and early media studies,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=January 2010 |title=Genesis of the Media Concept |url=https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/648528 |journal=Critical Inquiry |language=en |volume=36 |issue=2 |pages=321–362 |doi=10.1086/648528 |issn=0093-1896}} especially the work of Marshall McLuhan,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2015 |title=Marshall McLuhan, Rhetoric, and the Prehistory of Media Studies |url=https://affirmationsmodern.com/index.php/up-j-a/article/view/50 |journal=Affirmations: of the Modern |volume=3 |issue=1|page=78 |doi=10.57009/am.50 |doi-access=free }} Walter Ong,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2021-09-02 |title=Reading Ong reading McLuhan |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0950236X.2021.1964762 |journal=Textual Practice |language=en |volume=35 |issue=9 |pages=1487–1505 |doi=10.1080/0950236X.2021.1964762 |issn=0950-236X}} and I. A. Richards.{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2023 |title=The Words on the Screen: I. A. Richards as Media Theorist |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/modern-language-quarterly/article-abstract/84/4/509/383768/The-Words-on-the-Screen-I-A-Richards-as-Media?redirectedFrom=PDF |journal=Modern Language Quarterly |volume=84 |issue=4 |pages=509–527 |doi=10.1215/00267929-10779264}} He has also written extensively on Renaissance figures such as Spenser,{{Citation |last=Guillory |first=John |title=Poetic Authority. Spenser, Milton, and Literary History |date=2019-05-06 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.7312/guil92340/html |access-date=2024-09-15 |publisher=Columbia University Press |language=en |doi=10.7312/guil92340 |isbn=978-0-231-88822-6}} Shakespeare,{{Citation |title="To Please the Wiser Sort" Violence and Philosophy in 'Hamlet' |date=2013-10-28 |work=Historicism, Psychoanalysis, and Early Modern Culture |pages=92–119 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203949498-10 |access-date=2024-09-15 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9780203949498-10 |isbn=978-0-203-94949-8}} Marlowe,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2014 |title=Marlowe, Ramus, and the Reformation of Philosophy |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/article/553631/summary |journal=ELH |volume=81 |issue=3 |pages=693–732 |doi=10.1353/elh.2014.0039 |issn=1080-6547}} Bacon,{{Citation |last=Guillory |first=John |title=The Bachelor State: Philosophy and Sovereignty in Bacon's 'New Atlantis' |date=2009-01-10 |pages=49–74 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9781400827152.49/html?lang=en |access-date=2024-09-15 |publisher=Princeton University Press |language=en |doi=10.1515/9781400827152.49 |isbn=978-1-4008-2715-2}} Milton,{{Citation |last=Guillory |first=John |title=The Father's House: 'Samson Agonistes' in its Historical Moment |date=2019-01-03 |work=Re-Membering Milton |pages=148–176 |url=http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780429029493-7 |access-date=2024-09-15 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9780429029493-7 |isbn=978-0-429-02949-3}} and Hobbes.{{Cite web |date=2017-02-23 |title=The Flights (and Fights) of Virtual Motion: Professor John Guillory gives a talk on Thomas Hobbes (by Peter Tasca) – The Blotter |url=https://wp.nyu.edu/the_blotter/?p=71 |access-date=2024-09-15 |language=en-US}}
Life
Guillory "grew up in New Orleans in a working-class Catholic family, and attended Jesuit schools."{{Cite news |last=Schuessler |first=Jennifer |date=2023-02-03 |title=What Is Literary Criticism For? |language=en-US |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/arts/john-guillory-literary-criticism.html |access-date=2023-02-03 |issn=0362-4331}} He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Tulane University in 1974, and earned a PhD in English from Yale University in 1979.{{cite web | title=Monuments and Documents: On the Object of Study in the Humanities | website=Humanities Institute at Stony Brook | url=https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/humanities/_pdf/hfedocs/Guillory2013.pdf | access-date=18 October 2022 }} His doctoral thesis, "Poetry and Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History,"{{cite thesis |first=John |last=Guillory |title=Poetry and Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History |year=1979 |oclc=917951510}} was subsequently revised as his first monograph.{{Cite book |last=Guillory |first=John |url=https://cup.columbia.edu/book/poetic-authority/9780231055413 |title=Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History |date=May 1983 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-05541-3}} Guillory taught at Yale University{{Cite journal |last1=Guillory |first1=John |last2=Williams |first2=Jeffrey J. |date=2004 |title=Toward a Sociology of Literature: An Interview with John Guillory |url=https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/4/article/429407 |journal=Minnesota Review |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=95–109 |issn=2157-4189}} (1979–89), Johns Hopkins University{{Cite web |title=Johns Hopkins Magazine - April 1994 Issue |url=https://pages.jh.edu/jhumag/494web/arts.html |access-date=2023-02-01 |website=pages.jh.edu}} (1989–97), and Harvard University (1997–99) before moving to New York University in 1999.{{cite web | author=Scott Heller | author2=Alison Schneider | author3=Katharine Mangan | title=Noted Scholar Moves From Harvard to NYU for Geographic Reasons; UNLV's Business Dean Cites Research Deficiencies in Leaving; Yale Grants Tenure to 3 Women | date=29 January 1999 | url=https://www.chronicle.com/article/noted-scholar-moves-from-harvard-to-nyu-for-geographic-reasons-unlvs-business-dean-cites-research-deficiencies-in-leaving-yale-grants-tenure-to-3-women/ | access-date=18 October 2022 }} He has served on the Executive Committee of the Folger Shakespeare Library; on the Supervisory Board of the [https://englishinstitute.yale.edu/about-institute English Institute]; on the Editorial Board of the journals [https://profession.mla.org/about-profession/ Profession] and English Literary History; and on the [https://www.mla.org/About-Us/Governance/Executive-Council/Members-of-the-Executive-Council-1997-present Executive Council], the Prize Committee for [https://www.mla.org/Resources/Career/MLA-Grants-and-Awards/Winners-of-MLA-Prizes/Annual-Prize-and-Award-Winners/Modern-Language-Association-Prize-for-a-First-Book-Winners First Book Publication], the [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/pmla/article/abs/final-report-of-the-mla-committee-on-professional-employment/57FEDD816B5760947B506D063DE09CB2 Committee on Professional Employment], and the Committee on the Bibliography of the Teaching of Literature{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=2002 |title=The Very Idea of Pedagogy |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/25595741 |journal=Profession |pages=164–171 |doi=10.1632/074069502X85121 |jstor=25595741 |issn=0740-6959}} for the Modern Language Association.
Guillory's book Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation{{Cite book |last=Guillory |first=John |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3634644.html |title=Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation |publisher=University of Chicago Press |location=Chicago, IL |language=en}} (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".{{cite book | first=John | last=Guillory | title=Cultural Capital | year=1993 | publisher=University of Chicago Press | page=186 }} Cited in {{cite web | first=Marc | last=Redfield | title=Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man | website=Romantic Circles | date=May 2005 | url=https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/deman/redfield/redfield.html | access-date=18 October 2022 }} After an opening chapter on the debate over the literary canon,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=1991 |title=Canon, Syllabus, List: A Note on the Pedagogic Imaginary |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935123 |journal=Transition |issue=52 |pages=36–54 |doi=10.2307/2935123 |jstor=2935123 |issn=0041-1191}} Cultural Capital took up several 'case studies': Thomas Gray's Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, the close reading of New Criticism,{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=1983 |title=The Ideology of Canon-Formation: T. S. Eliot and Cleanth Brooks |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1343411 |journal=Critical Inquiry |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=173–198 |doi=10.1086/448242 |jstor=1343411 |issn=0093-1896}} and literary theory after Paul De Man.{{cite web | first=Marc | last=Redfield | title=Professing Literature: John Guillory's Misreading of Paul de Man | website=Romantic Circles | date=May 2005 | url=https://romantic-circles.org/praxis/deman/redfield/redfield.html | access-date=18 October 2022 }} 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,"{{cite book |last=Guillory |first=John |title=Cultural Capital |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1993 |page=186}} Cited in {{cite book |last=Ruth |first=Jennifer |title=Novel Professions: Interested Disinterest and the Making of the Professional in the Victorian Novel |publisher=Ohio State University Press |year=2006 |page=11}} "as Barbara and John Ehrenreich termed it."{{Cite journal |last=Emre |first=Merve |date=2023 |title=Introduction: Thirty Years after 'Cultural Capital' |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/genre/article/56/1/1/369226/Introduction-Thirty-Years-after-Cultural-Capital |journal=Genre |volume=56 |issue=1 |pages=1–13|doi=10.1215/00166928-10346769 }} While the title phrase "cultural capital" invokes the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Guillory has said that "The book that I’m always trying to point people toward is Alvin Gouldner’s work The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class. That’s where I originally started to think about the issue of the professional managerial class and the possibility of thinking about literary study in the context of the sociology of professions."{{Cite web |last=Swoboda |first=Jessica |date=2024-05-02 |title=Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism |url=https://www.publicbooks.org/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism/ |access-date=2024-09-18 |website=Public Books |language=en-US}} A final chapter gave a history of the concept of value from Adam Smith to Barbara Herrnstein Smith.
Guillory's Professing Criticism: Essays on the Organization of Literary Study (2022) was an "attempt to disabuse literary scholars, literary professionals, from the idealizations that we cling to so strongly and don’t want to give up."{{Cite web |last1=Dames |first1=Nicholas |last2=Plotz |first2=John |date=2024-05-02 |title=Interpret or Judge?: John Guillory on the Future of Literary Criticism |url=https://www.publicbooks.org/interpret-or-judge-john-guillory-on-the-future-of-literary-criticism/ |access-date=2024-09-15 |website=Public Books |language=en-US}} Critic Stefan Collini called the volume "the most penetrating, and in some ways most original, study we have of the forces that have shaped the history of literary study, especially in the US."{{Cite news |last=Collini |first=Stefan |date=2022-12-01 |title=Exaggerated Ambitions |url=https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v44/n23/stefan-collini/exaggerated-ambitions |access-date=2024-09-15 |work=London Review of Books |language=en |volume=44 |issue=23 |issn=0260-9592}}
In December 2024, Guillory delivered the keynote address at [https://www.zfl-berlin.org/event/john-guillory-nyu-scholarship-activism-and-the-autonomy-of-social-spheres.html The Leibniz Center for Literary and Cultural Research (ZfL)] on "Scholarship, Activism, and the Autonomy of Social Spheres," described as "an attempt to clarify a longstanding controversy in the history of humanities scholarship in the university, namely its relation to political activism, and to the political in general."{{Cite web |title=John Guillory (NYU): Scholarship, Activism, and the Autonomy of Social Spheres - ZfL Berlin |url=https://www.zfl-berlin.org/event/john-guillory-nyu-scholarship-activism-and-the-autonomy-of-social-spheres.html |access-date=2024-10-26 |website=www.zfl-berlin.org}}
In May 2025, Guillory gave the British Academy Lecture at Queen's University Belfast, titled: "'It’s not what you know, it’s who you know': The Problem of Social Capital,"{{Cite web |date=2019-09-17 |title=13.05.2025 British Academy Lecture {{!}} School of Arts, English and Languages {{!}} Queen's University Belfast |url=https://www.qub.ac.uk/schools/ael/events/BRITISHACADEMYLECTUREProfessorJohnGuilloryNewYorkUniversityNYU.html |access-date=2025-04-11 |website=www.qub.ac.uk |language=en}} applying "Bourdieu’s theory to an analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel The Great Gatsby (1925), with the aim of establishing the relation between cultural capital and social capital as two forms of 'knowing.' This relation correlates Gatsby's desire for social capital, which he uses to pursue Daisy Buchanan, as part of Fitzgerald's bid for the text’s canonical status as a 'great' American novel."
Guillory is currently writing a book entitled Freedom of Thought: Philosophy and Literature in the English Renaissance.{{Cite web |title=Four Graduate School alumni awarded 2024 Wilbur Cross Medals {{!}} Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences |url=https://gsas.yale.edu/about/news-announcements/four-graduate-school-alumni-awarded-2024-wilbur-cross-medals |access-date=2024-09-15 |website=gsas.yale.edu |language=en}}
Awards and honors
1992: Best American Essays{{Cite web |title=Best American Essays 1992 – Transition Magazine |url=https://transitionmagazine.fas.harvard.edu/1992/09/19/best-american-essays-1992-2/ |access-date=2023-02-01 |website=transitionmagazine.fas.harvard.edu |language=en-US}} for "Canon, Syllabus, List"{{Cite journal |last=Guillory |first=John |date=1991 |title=Canon, Syllabus, List: A Note on the Pedagogic Imaginary |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2935123 |journal=Transition |issue=52 |pages=36–54 |doi=10.2307/2935123 |jstor=2935123 |issn=0041-1191}}
1994: [https://www.acla.org/rené-wellek-prize-citation-1994 René Wellek Prize] from the [https://www.acla.org/about 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."{{Cite web |title=The René Wellek Prize Citation 1994 {{!}} American Comparative Literature Association |url=https://www.acla.org/ren%C3%A9-wellek-prize-citation-1994 |access-date=2023-02-01 |website=www.acla.org}}
1997: [https://dof.princeton.edu/about/endowed-professorships-preceptorships-fellowships/fellowships Class of 1932 Fellow] of the [https://humanities.princeton.edu Humanities Council], Princeton University{{Cite web |title=NYU Prof. to Discuss the Difference Between Professional and Lay Reading |url=https://communications.williams.edu/news-releases/nyu-prof-to-discuss-the-difference-between-professional-and-lay-reading/ |access-date=2023-02-01 |website=Office of Communications |language=en-US}}
2001: Tanner Lectures on Human Values at UC Berkeley,{{Cite web |title=2001-2002 Lecture Series {{!}} Tanner Lectures |url=https://tannerlectures.berkeley.edu/2001-2002/ |access-date=2023-02-03 |website=tannerlectures.berkeley.edu}} respondent to Sir Frank Kermode{{Cite web |last=Guillory |first=John |title="It Must Be Abstract" |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/7607/chapter-abstract/152619873?redirectedFrom=fulltext |access-date=2023-02-03 |website=academic.oup.com}}
2016: [https://www.maps.mla.org/content/download/41338/file/ADE-Cert-Guillory.pdf Francis Andrew March Award] from the Association of Departments of English for "Distinguished Service to the Profession of English Studies."
2016: [https://s18798.pcdn.co/the_blotter/wp-content/uploads/sites/2917/2016/12/Blotter_Spring16a.pdf Golden Dozen Award] for teaching, New York University
2024: [https://gsas.yale.edu/about/news-announcements/four-graduate-school-alumni-awarded-2024-wilbur-cross-medals Wilbur Cross Medal] "for exceptional scholarship, teaching, and public service," [https://gsas.yale.edu Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences] (GSAS)
Books
- [https://cup.columbia.edu/book/poetic-authority/9780231055413 Poetic Authority: Spenser, Milton, and Literary History]. Columbia University Press, 1983.
- Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation.{{Cite book |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo3634644.html |title=Cultural Capital |publisher=University of Chicago Press |language=en}} University of Chicago Press, 1993; [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/C/bo209142619.html Enlarged edition, 2023]. Special issue of "Genre," "[https://read.dukeupress.edu/genre/issue/56/1 Thirty Years after John Guillory’s Cultural Capital]" (April 2023), co-edited by Merve Emre and Justin Sider.
- (ed. with Judith Butler and Kendall Thomas) [https://www.routledge.com/Whats-Left-of-Theory-New-Work-on-the-Politics-of-Literary-Theory/Butler-Guillory-Thomas/p/book/9780415921190 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.
- [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo239363263.html On Close Reading], with an annotated bibliography and an online [https://www.closereadingarchive.org Close Reading Archive] compiled by [https://www.rhodes.edu/bio/scott-newstok Scott Newstok], University of Chicago Press, 2025.
References
{{reflist}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Guillory, John}}
Category:American literary critics
Category:Tulane University alumni
Category:Yale University alumni
Category:Harvard University faculty