Tacit attention

This essay proposes the concept of ‘tacit attention’ as a lens through which to reread the early disciplinary formation of English literary criticism. Drawing on Michael Polanyi’s notion of tacit knowledge it argues that the foundational figures of English criticism all relied upon highly cultivated modes of perceptual discrimination, without explicitly theorising the attentional habits they presumed. The essay traces how each figure engaged with the problem of distraction, either by sublimating attention into other terms – such as ‘response’ or ‘impersonality’ – or by suppressing it in favour of tradition or evaluative seriousness. Rather than treating these omissions as failings, the essay explores them as historically strategic disavowals, which nonetheless encode an attentional discipline at the heart of literary pedagogy. It situates this inquiry within contemporary concerns about digital distraction, judgment, and the future of the humanities. Reframing literary criticism as an attentional practice – tacit, tradition-bound, and culturally situated – it argues for the continued relevance of critical judgment in an era increasingly dominated by algorithmic capture and cognitive fragmentation

Cognitive reframing · Criticism · Discipline · Perception · Situated · Tacit knowledge · Lexicography and Language Studies · Multilingual Education and Policy · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism