"Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature" - says the dictionary.
In my opinion it's necessary to see over the Modern literary criticism. The main goal would must to be the philosophical discussion which we could perceive a global vision of man and universal topics. Its methods uses the same global vision on the world. All the systems and cultures...
Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory what it doesn't happen. Literary Theory and Criticism show us a distinction between literary theory and literary criticism. I consider literary criticism a application of literary theory.

In my review on this theme I considered a great form to understand the difference in terms of a definition of this concepts among several literatures.