Literary Critique, Modernism and the Transformation of Theorydemonstrates the non-linear temporalities and trajectories through which theory operates. Italian Theoryacts asthe fulcrum of a more inclusive and lesscombative notion of critique. This 'living thought'cuts across the translation of European thought into Anglo-American theory and carries with it lingering modernist motifslinked to feminist and psychoanalytic criticism. While connecting to the 'post-critique' debate, the study focuses on recovering the ethical underpinnings of critique. Mena Mitrano demonstrates that before being a specific method or disciplinary practice, critique is a stance towards others including indocility, receptiveness, openness to transformation, awareness of relationality, attention to language, attunement to the body, distance, displacement, externality and wonder.