Literary Criticism336 ENG

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Dr . Muhammad Fahmy Raiyah

Etymology1580s: Critic is "one who passes judgment," from M.Fr. critique (14c.), from L. criticus "a judge, literary critic," from Gk. kritikos "able to make judgments," from krinein "to separate, decide." Meaning "one who judges merits of books, plays, etc.“ 17th and 18th centuries: the critic was considered a judge who finds the faults and merits of a literary work.

Definitions“The art of interpreting art” (Walter Pater)

The critic is “An interpreter between the inspired and the

uninspired” (Thomas Carlyle)

“A disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world”

(Mathew Arnold)

“The good critic is he who narrates the adventure of his soul among masterpiece” (Anatole France)

Functions Different critical approaches are like different lenses that critics use to view and talk about art and literature. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions. Criticism can help form judgments about literature and help readers appreciate and enjoy a literary work.

Qualifications of the Critic

Natural aptitude Freedom from bias and prejudice Knowledge (including knowledge of literatures in

other languages) Training and technical skill

Criticism and Literature The critical faculty is not lower than the creative.

The critic was considered a disappointed teacher who can teach but cannot do. A piece of criticism can be superior to the work that

prompted it. Tradition vs innovation and experiment.

The harmful effect of prescriptive criticism. Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare The Romantic poets and the negative critics.

Genius always succeeded, and literature triumphed over criticism.

Brief History of Literary Criticism

Classical CriticismPlato

Art must play a role in the perfect Greek Republic. Poets may stay as servants of the state if they teach piety and virtue, but the pleasures of art are condemned as corrupting to citizens. If art does not teach morality and ethics, then it is damaging to its audience. Plato’s ideas about art and literature are classified as moral criticism.

AristotleAristotle’s Poetics is the earliest work of

literary theory.Tragedy stimulates the emotions of

emotions of pity and fear, as the audience identify with the plight of the protagonist. The resultant effect is that of purgation, or what he calls Catharsis.

Sir Phillip SidneySidney wrote Apology for Poetry in about 1580.The function of poetry is to teach and delight.Literature has the primary aim of giving

pleasure.

Neo-Classical Literary Criticism It dominated Europe during the 16th, 17th, and

18th centuries. It started in Italy, then spread to France and

England. It emphasized the role of criticism as judgment.

Right judgment leads to right enjoyment. It stressed the rules of the ancients codified by

Aristotle and his followers. Aristotle’s Poetics was considered the master key

to literary treasures.

“Aristotle is our emperor, the perpetual dictator of all the fine arts.” (Scaliger)

Be Homer's Works your Study, and Delight,

Read them by Day, and meditate by Night,

(Alexander Pope)

Neo-Classical criticism advocates judgment based on standards.

It resists the free play of the critical faculty.

It controlled the imagination of writers for a long time.

During the Neo-classical age (Augustan), literature was subservient to criticism. Literature suffered from the restrictions imposed upon it by the critical conventions of that time. Literature written in conformity to a definite code will reveal lack of freedom and spontaneity.

John Dryden (1631-1700): The first modern English prose. The first systematic application of critical

standards to the enjoyment of literature He accepted the Classical tenets which

were generally accepted in the Continent. His test of literary worth was conformity to the practice of Greece and Rome as illustrated in Aristotle’s Poetics and Horace’s Ars Poetica.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744) & Samuel Johnson (1709-1784): They maintained the classical position, according to which

literature is to be judged by the rules.

Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets and Prefaces to Shakespeare are the first instances in English practical criticism. He was the first to offer detailed commentaries on particular authors.

The rules are not artificial; they are derived from nature:Those rules of old discovered, not devis’d,Are nature still, but nature methodis’d.

(Alexander Pope)

Romantic Literary Criticism It flourished at the beginning and the end of the 18th

centuries. It was a revolution against Classical criteria.

It emphasized the value of a literary work in itself, apart from any external standards.

It ascertains the viewpoint and intentions of the writer.

It ignored ancient authorities and the doctrines of Aristotle in assessing a literary work.

Romantic criticism is entirely subjective. The critics expresses what he feels about the work, regardless of what others say about it.

The romantic critic imposes new readings that cause readers to see the literary work in new lights. He can even create it anew.

Its extreme subjectivity, not guided by objective rules, can lead to extreme and misleading views.

William Wordsworth (1770-1850): Freedom from submission to the classics. Criticism seeks what the author has to give, judging

him on his own ground instead of applying a “foreign measure to his genius.

In Preface to Lyrical Ballads, he attacks the Neo-classical poetic diction.

“every author, as far as he is great and at the same time original, has had the task of creating the taste by which he is to be enjoyed.”

Victorian CriticismMatthew Arnold (1822 – 1888): Arnold's most significant literary thinking is contained in the essays The Function of Criticism at the Present Time and The Study of Poetry. Arnold says that criticism should be a means of learning the great values, or the “dissemination of ideas, a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.” He considered the most important criteria used to judge the value of a poem were “high truth” and “high seriousness”. Arnold advocated scientific objectivity in the study of literature. He sought for literary criticism to remain free of any external considerations outside the work itself. The appreciation of a literary work should be of “the object as in itself it really is." Psychological, historical and sociological background are irrelevant.Knowledge of the literature of the past is a valuable means of measuring and assessing the literature of today. Arnold advises that we should 'have always in mind lines and expressions of the great masters, and apply them as a touchstone to other poetry'. He suggests that his touchstone method should provide the basis for a 'real' rather than an 'historic' or 'personal' estimate of poetry.

The Twentieth Century

In the first half of the twentieth century, the key critical names in Britain were F. R. Leavis, T. S. Eliot, William Empson, and I. A. Richards.

  T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965)

Eliot's most significant and enduring contribution to critical ideas is the notion of the of poetic “impersonality”, developed in his essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” The idea of impersonality was partly Eliot's way of rejecting the idea of poetry as mere self-expression. Eliot attacks the ideas of originality, self-expression, and the emphasis on the individual, which derived from Romanticism. Poetry, for Eliot, is not a pouring out of personal emotion and personal experience, but a transcending of the individual by a sense of tradition which speaks through, and is transmitted by, the individual poet. The best parts of a poet's work, he says, are not those which are most original, but those in which the voice of his predecessors can be most clearly heard speaking though him. Hence, there is a large distinction to be drawn between the mind of the individual, experiencing human being, and the voice which speaks in the poetry.

Modern Schools of Literary CriticismFormalism and New Criticism (1920s-present)Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism(1930s-

present)Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)