Literary Significance and Criticism
Charlotte Spivack points out that the story's winter theme precedes and produces the story's androgyny theme.
Susan Wood deems the story notable because of its scientific extrapolation of topics such as sub-lightspeed travel and alien biology, topics which "provide a framework for powerful psychological studies."
Read more about this topic: Winter's King
Famous quotes containing the words literary, significance and/or criticism:
“In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Of what significance the light of day, if it is not the reflection of an inward dawn?—to what purpose is the veil of night withdrawn, if the morning reveals nothing to the soul? It is merely garish and glaring.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art—and, by analogy, our own experience—more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)