BEGINNING OF LITERARY CRITICISM
The Literary Criticism simply started from classical
Literature, from Plato and Aristotle’s theories. In section we will dealing
with the Idea of Literary Criticism, Its beginning and modern criticism.
Sir Philip Sidney
Sir Philip Sidney is one of the first critical voices in
English seriously engaged with defining poetry in terms of beauty, meaning and
human interest. His reference point was the Renaissance view of art that had
necessitated an affirmation of non-medieval, secular art. More than half a
century later, John Dryden probed in his criticism the question of heroic
writing with a view to explaining the usefulness of "some instructive
moral" in ancient classical writing.
Dryden
Dryden also explained some of the formal peculiarities of
writing such as blank verse and rhyme and chose to introduce dignity or
elevated thought through the use of the latter. However, English Literary criticism
till the eighteenth century was largely descriptive and self-justificatory.
Literary criticism or criticism of literature evolved from
the practice of explaining, analyzing, discussing or simply talking about
plays, poems, novels. This implies that at a certain point of time, writing
posed difficulties to the common reader and needed elucidation by an expert.
At the same time, literary writing tended to influence
ordinary people's behavior by offering comment on the principles governing
their lives. In many a situation, literary work became controversial and
invited censure. Writers as such supported or opposed social interests through
their writings and for that reason became prone to attacks from powerful
sections in society. This was the case, for instance, in the seventeenth
century England in the wake of great social upheavals. The example that comes to
mind is the English Civil War, preceded by intense parliamentary debates and
followed by divisions in opinion about the desirability of Restoration.
The eighteenth century gave rise to those considerations of
poets and dramatists, those elaborate dissertations on literary trends by
Samuel Johnson in the form of essays and 'Lives'. It appeared as though it
became necessary for the English society of the day to uphold or reject certain
kinds of vision in literature.
Johnson
Johnson found the comic vision in Shakespeare worthy of deep
appreciation. The very idea of the comic and the tragic in literature owed its
origin to a large number of writers and thinkers looking towards the ancient
classical texts for inspiration and guidance. Those texts, particularly of
Aristotle, had placed writing under well-defined categories such as comedy and
tragedy.
Literary criticism, the way we know today, assumed its
specific shape in the eighteenth century. At the core of this criticism stood
the vision of the author and the role and function of literature, with Johnson
expecting the writer to educate the reader and create a climate of positive
social values.
Literary Criticism : THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
The eighteenth century critical opinion denied individuals, for
to the author whose job according to it was to protect, maintain and conserve
the values of social expansion and progress. This critical opinion sought to
impose on literature a kind of social code. Later, this opinion was taken as
narrow and restrictive.
William Wordsworth
Wordsworth's 'Preface to the Lyrical Ballads' is entirely
devoted to critiquing the eighteenth century neoclassical view of literature
according to which the writer was supposed to follow clearly laid down
principles of expression and composition. Further, Wordsworth drew attention to
the fact that the established writing of the period gave no credence to the
lives of ordinary people. However, as Wordsworth showed in his argument,
writing would have no deep meaning and appeal unless it established vital links
with the common masses-the toiling millions in the countryside or the poor
deprived folk in urban centers. The second important thing in Wordsworth focused
on the individuality of the writer, his/her peculiar sensibility and mental
make-up. The question of the writer evolving into a creative being in the
process of living through higher time had not been accepted as significantly in
the eighteenth century.
Romantic movement
The Romantic movement against its historical background
which registered great courageous interventions (the American War of
Independence and French Revolution) by organized masses to re-shape society
according to new tradition.
At the back of Wordsworth's mind was the need of the writer
to individually evolve higher stand on huge social issues. It was suggested
that the interests and concerns of a writer shaped the creative mind to work in
a particular way. This is how Wordsworth explained his view.
Literary Criticism : NINETEENTH CENTURY
The critical essays for Literary Criticism Matthew Arnold wrote - 'The Study of Poetry'
and 'Function of Criticism at the Present Time,' for example, whether this
criticism written in the second half of the nineteenth century made specific
points about changes that literature could effect during its time.
Matthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold's essays expect us to go into the
appreciation of literature for the purpose of assessing and evaluating
literature, as an important critical task. This clearly implies that Arnold was
setting standards for what he considered good literature and that through this
act he wished to tell the writer his/her role in the society of the time.
The whole, the nineteenth century critical thought in
England is marked by this concern for understanding and interpreting society
and evolving a code for the educated middle Theory classes in view of the
cultural-ideological requirements of the day.
Arnold's criticism did not mark any radical departure from
the existing trends but he did specify the function of good writing as well as
theoretical-intellectual work. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in
English literature were a period of specific cultural evolution under which
rational thought as an agency of change came to be firmly established. The
development of prose from a medium of ordinary conversation to that of a
sophicated thoughtful activity and a complex representation of mental processes
of highly sensitive individuals proves this point beyond doubt.
At the same time, literature assumed such an independent
identity that it became the focus of critical debate as never before, not
merely in aesthetic terms but also in relation to the life of the common people
with a mission and a sense of collective behavior. Because of this, we cannot
separate literature from those great movements in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries that swept the whole continent of Europe.
It was essential, therefore, that writers reflected more and
more on the nature of their involvement and the way in which this involvement
induced them to select one literary form in preference to another. The
important word here is 'involvement', the deep concern that writers have about
their surroundings - it is this that is at the back of all his/her creative endeavor.
The nineteenth century English criticism is driven by this significant urge in
a thinking and culturally active individual. Critical essays of Wordsworth,
Coleridge, Shelley, Ruskin, Water Pater and Matthew Arnold deal in their own
peculiar ways with this issue.
Literary Criticism : 20th Century THE FIRST WORLD WAR
The case of the twentieth century criticism is different
from earlier Literary Criticism’s. It is not exactly an outcome of concerns for
society and its problems such as inequality, deprivation, injustice, racism,
gender distinct and so on - things that had been the focus of critical comment
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Strange though it may seem, the
twentieth century criticism has remained obsessed with literature as an art, an
aesthetic endeavor, in isolation from the surroundings in which literary works
(novels, poems, dramas) are produced.
T.S. Eliot
A major critical influence in the early twentieth century
was T.S. Eliot whose essays brushed aside the idea of history or social
dilemmas and instead propagated contemporaneity and circular time in
literature.
Eliot was instrumental in taking literature away from an
actually existing world into a domain that transcended time and place. His main
emphasis was on man and his condition in a moral-religious universe. His kind
of critical perception, in accompaniment with that of Ezra Pound shunned change
and targeted social critique. It is also interesting to note that the early
twentieth century criticism rejected Romanticism completely and looked for
inspiration either towards the neoclassicism of the eighteenth century or Jacobinism
of the seventeenth century. Combine this with a distrust for the Renaissance
values of humanism and rational approach and the picture becomes complete - of
a critical mission that lauded permanence and , unchangeability in preference
to development and progress.
These new critical biases of the early twentieth century had
their roots in the First World War and the emergence of Socialist Russia
projecting the ordinary worker's and peasant's capabilities. Suddenly it became
clear to a significant part of the English writing and critical thought around
that time that attacking radicalism in all its manifestations was essential to
conserve and protect the entrenched class interests. Thinkers swore by reform, change and progress in
environment, as against recognition of decay, human predicament or moral void.
Also, for the first time, literary criticism became proactive, aggressive and
intolerant in that it assumed the mantle of educating minds and sensibilities
along certain well-defined principles and prejudices. 'Sensibility' denoted - upper class individual who sought enrichment
through literature. Eliot's idea of sensibility, dissociated or
well-integrated, moved further away from modernity, a Renaissance category,
into medievalism where human beings were untouched by doubt and self-doubt.
First World War important for two reasons:
1) one, this point
marked the final crisis of capitalism;
2) two, it got inextricably linked with an
alternative system called socialism under which the common ordinary people took
the reins of power in their own hands and displacing privileged sections from centers
of influence. For these reasons, western thought, ideological and
philosophical, shifted from the nineteenth century humanism that swore by the
concept of social roles. It is interesting to note that the whole of modernist
thought took the peculiar psychological direction under which the individual
occupied the center of stage as never before. Here comes to mind the romantic
individual of the nineteenth century who identified himself with the common
people (Wordsworth) and questioned courageously the static inane ethos of
bourgeois tradition. Instead, the modernist individual stood alone, denied the
existence of a positive center in society and took to self-pity.
Think of the
modernist criticism of T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound that sought to propound the
idea of circular time as well as impersonality. Also examine the efficacy of
psychology in understanding human behavior. Under modernist critical thought,
psychology alone determined the day-to-day actions and responses of the
individual. In literature, the protagonist, mostly a male, thought and acted as
an individual and consciously tried to set himself apart from the ordinary
goings-on of the environment.
In fact, modernist thought and writing worked hand-in-hand,
each strengthening the appeal of the other. Mark how assiduously and
painstakingly modernist criticism analyzed symbols, metaphors and images not
just in poetry but also in prose works and gave the impression that the
formation of images in the writer's mind, was more important than the object
that the writer's mind captured.
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