Eric Griffiths (critic)
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Eric Griffiths is a British academic and literary critic. He was born in Liverpool into what he describes as a 'Welsh-speaking, chapel-going family', and educated at Cambridge University and Princeton University. He has been a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge since 1980. Before that he was a Research Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge.
Griffiths has not published heavily, but he is a reputed teacher; Vanessa Feltz is a former student of his. He has made a number of appearances in television documentaries, and is a controversialist: Helen Vendler is one antagonist, after criticising his long Introduction to Dante in English (2005).
The Printed Voice of Victorian Poetry (1989) remains his most substantial book. In loose terms he is a sceptic on literary theory, and a follower of the tradition of William Empson and Christopher Ricks. He was received into the Catholic Church in the early 1980s.