What is Literature ? what is Literary Criticism? and what is Theory?
What is Literature Sometimes simple questions flummox us
simply because we take certain things and ideas, about which questions cannot
be asked, for granted.
The term "Literature", as Raymond Williams, with
whose work you may already be familiar, has reminded us, is of a comparatively
recent origin. Originally, it referred to, as indeed it still does, my written,
printed matter on any subject. We still refer to medical
"literature", talk about availability or otherwise of
"literature" on a subject etc. Earlier it signified something similar.
It is from this source that the term, "literate" was derived.
Sometime in the 19th century it began connoting specifically what
was earlier covered under the broad rubric of "poetry". As an
academic discipline, "classics" and "rhetoric" preceded it.
Literature's critical meaning is still visible in the use of the word
"literature".
Matthew Arnold (1822-88) gave it the final statement of its
meaning in his famous essays. Now in its specialized use it means what poetry
used to signify in earlier times. It includes all imaginative writing: poetry,
fiction, drama. The rise of the notion of literature is intimately related to the
growth of the print industry, when texts were easily duplicated in the wake of
the steam-run printing machines during the Industrial Revolution (1750-1850) in
Europe. Books became main commodities as the capitalist market economy
generated a middle class which had the leisure and the literacy to read books.
The idea of literature grew along with another similar concept, of culture. A very
simple relationship between these: Agriculture->Industrilization->leisure->literature-
>culture
What is Literary Criticism
This too is one of
those awkward questions about which I have already told you. When someone asks
you whether you like a particular book, a novel, a short story, and you say
"yes" or "no" you are on the threshold of literary
criticism. When she asks you why, and then you attempt an answer trying to
rationalize your perception, you are "doing" literary criticism,
albeit at a rudimentary level. Similarly, you do film or art criticism.
Understanding and interpreting literary experience, even when not articulated
can be literary criticism. Now, this can be an amateurish response.
Alternatively, it could also be a highly sophisticated, professional one of the
kind we generally read in review columns or journals. English poets and critics
whose works you read have battled over the question of the relative superiority
or otherwise of criticism over creation: Wordsworth and Arnold, for example.
Some enduring criticism has also come into being by way of "Defense of
Poetry". You already know of some of these, such as Sidney's (1554-1586)
and Shelley's (1792-1822) Essays. The classical criticism of the Greeks and
Romans grew around attacks on and defense of the position of poets in a civil society.
"Aesthetics" and "Poetics" were terms that were earlier
used before the vogue of "Criticism" set in. You can find brief
histories of such common words ii Raymond Williams's book entitled keywords.
And then, more recently, "theory" was introduced into our
departments.
What is Theory
Theory creates the sense in a systematic way to consider the
literature. A THEORY provides a system by which experience can be organized and
made sense of, or at least into something which will be comprehensible. All
theories are constructed against the threat of chaos, which is the absence of
system or organizing principles, to make sense of what comes to us, however,
provisional and imperfect that sense may have to be. That is the basis of all
dogma, religious and political alike.
In their philosophical writing, Hobbes (1588-1679) and Locke
(1632-1704) talk about "wit" and "judgement" and illustrate
their general theory by referring to (among other categories of knowledge, like
History,) poetry. Hobbes says, "In a good poem. both Judgement and Fancy
are required. Judgement without Fancy is wit, but Fancy without Judgment
not." The eighteenth century philosopher, Kant (1724-1804), had talked
about "Aesthetic Judgment" as opposed to "Moral Judgment",
and described it as "purposiveness without purpose". Wordsworth's (1770-1850)
theory of literature in his "Preface" to the Lyrical Ballads is as
much literary criticism as "Theory” : the Romantic theory of poetry.
Literary Movements
- English Renaissance
- American Romanticism
- British Romanticism
- Children’s literature
- 18th Century Literature
- Gothic Literature
- Harlem Renaissance Literature
- Magical Realism
- Medieval English Literature
- Modernist & Post Modernist Literature
- Naturalism
- Postcolonial Literature
- Surrealist Literature
- Science Fiction
- Transcendentalist Literature
Literary Critics
- Aristotle
- Walter Benjamin
- Judith Butler
- Noam Chomsky
- Jacques Derrida
- Michel Foucault
- Sigmund Freud
- Antonio Gramsci
- Raymond Williams
- Plato
- Edward Said
- Ferdinand de Saussure
- Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
- Friedrich Nietzsche
In this quiet short Idea of literary Theory and Criticism
have the real meaning which leads the real beginning.
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