In Search of Authenticity

The article looks at what we mean by the word authenticity in literary criticism, considering the work of a number of artists whose writing ranges across various genres. It suggests that authenticity is intimately linked with our sense of the author's inspirations and compulsions. The repeated appearance of the same dynamic , the same mix or conflicts of values across a number of different texts, suggests an engagement that is authentic in the sense that it is bound up with the author's very personality