Literary criticism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary
criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and
methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been,
theorists.

Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory, or
conversely from book reviewing, is a matter of some controversy. For example, the Johns Hopkins Guide to
Literary Theory and Criticism[1] draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost
always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical
application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while
theory may be more general or abstract.

Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature
departments and publish in academic journals, and more popular critics publish their reviews in broadly
circulating periodicals such as the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review, the New York
Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The Nation, and The New Yorker.

Contents
1 History
1.1 Classical and medieval criticism
1.2 Renaissance criticism
1.3 Enlightenment criticism
1.4 19th-century Romantic criticism
1.5 The New Criticism
1.6 Theory
1.7 History of the book
1.8 Current state
2 Value of academic criticism
3 Key texts
3.1 The Classical and medieval periods
3.2 The Renaissance period
3.3 The Enlightenment period
3.4 The 19th century
3.5 The 20th century
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

History
Classical and medieval criticism

Literary criticism is thought to have existed as long as literature. In the 4th century BC Aristotle wrote the
Poetics, a typology and description of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of
art. Poetics developed for the first time the concepts of mimesis and catharsis, which are still crucial in literary
studies. Plato's attacks on poetry as imitative, secondary, and false were formative as well. Around the same
time, Bharata Muni, in his Natya Shastra, wrote literary criticism on ancient Indian literature and Sanskrit
drama.
Later classical and medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions
of hermeneutics and textual exegesis have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was
particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three Abrahamic religions: Jewish literature, Christian
literature and Islamic literature.

Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval Arabic literature and Arabic poetry from the
9th century, notably by Al-Jahiz in his al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin and al-Hayawan, and by Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz
in his Kitab al-Badi.[2]

Renaissance criticism

The literary criticism of the Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary
neoclassicism, proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation
of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts,
most notably, Giorgio Valla's Latin translation of Aristotle's Poetics. The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics,
was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro
was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570.

Enlightenment criticism

In the Enlightenment period (1700s to 1800s), literary criticism became more popular due to the invention and
use of the printing press. During this time period literacy rates started to rise in the public, no longer was
reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public and swiftness of printing,
criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it was
a form of entertainment.[3] Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear,
bold, precise writing and the more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs.[4] These critical
reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. Many works of Jonathan Swift were
criticized including his book Gulliver's Travels, which one critic described as "the detestable story of the
Yahoos".[4]

19th-century Romantic criticism

The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary
studies, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that
literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime. German Romanticism, which
followed closely after the late development of German classicism, emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation
that can appear startlingly modern to the reader of English literature, and valued Witz that is, "wit" or "humor"
of a certain sort more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought
renown to authors known more for their literary criticism than for their own literary work, such as Matthew
Arnold.

The New Criticism

However important all of these aesthetic movements were as antecedents, current ideas about literary criticism
derive almost entirely from the new direction taken in the early twentieth century. Early in the century the
school of criticism known as Russian Formalism, and slightly later the New Criticism in Britain and in the
United States, came to dominate the study and discussion of literature, in the English-speaking world. Both
schools emphasized the close reading of texts, elevating it far above generalizing discussion and speculation
about either authorial intention (to say nothing of the author's psychology or biography, which became almost
taboo subjects) or reader response. This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has
persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves.

Theory
In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism. In his works Frye noted that some critics
tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on the basis of their adherence to such ideology. This
has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example,
argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his adulterous affairs to reject classic
literature that condemned adultery.[5] Jrgen Habermas in Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (Knowledge and
Human Interests), described literary critical theory in literary studies as a form of hermeneutics: knowledge via
interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressionsincluding the
interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts.

In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late
1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness a rise of a more
explicitly philosophical literary theory, influenced by structuralism, then post-structuralism, and other kinds of
Continental philosophy. It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics,
though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature
rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions.

History of the book

Related to other forms of literary criticism, the history of the book is a field of interdisciplinary inquiry drawing
on the methods of bibliography, cultural history, history of literature, and media theory. Principally concerned
with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect
forms of textuality with their material aspects.

Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are: the
development of authorship as a profession, the formation of reading audiences, the constraints of censorship
and copyright, and the economics of literary form.

Current state

Today, interest in literary theory and continental philosophy coexists in university literature departments with a
more conservative literary criticism of which the New Critics would probably have approved. Disagreements
over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the
"rise" of theory, have declined. Many critics feel that they now have a great plurality of methods and
approaches from which to choose.

Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary
canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in minority and women's literatures, while some critics
influenced by cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or pulp/genre fiction. Ecocritics have drawn
connections between literature and the natural sciences. Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the
context of evolutionary influences on human nature. Many literary critics also work in film criticism or media
studies. Some write intellectual history; others bring the results and methods of social history to bear on reading
literature.

Value of academic criticism

The value of extensive literary analysis has been questioned by several prominent artists. Vladimir Nabokov
once wrote that good readers do not read books, and particularly those which are considered to be literary
masterpieces, "for the academic purpose of indulging in generalizations".[6] At a 1986 Copenhagen conference
of James Joyce scholars, Stephen J. Joyce (the modernist writer's grandson) said, "If my grandfather was here,
he would have died laughing ... Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man can be picked up, read,
and enjoyed by virtually anybody without scholarly guides, theories, and intricate explanations, as can Ulysses,
if you forget about all the hue and cry." He later questioned whether anything has been added to the legacy of
Joyce's art by the 261 books of literary criticism stored in the Library of Congress.[7]
Key texts
The Classical and medieval periods
Plato: Ion, Republic, Cratylus
Aristotle: Poetics, Rhetoric
Horace: Art of Poetry
Longinus: On the Sublime
Plotinus: On the Intellectual Beauties
St. Augustine: On Christian Doctrine
Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
Aquinas: The Nature and Domain of Sacred
Doctrine
Dante: The Banquet, Letter to Can Grande
Della Scala
Boccaccio: Life of Dante, Genealogy of the
Gentile Gods
Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of
The Renaissance period
Lodovico Castelvetro: The Poetics of Aristotle Translated and Explained
Philip Sidney: An Apology for Poetry
Jacopo Mazzoni: On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante
Torquato Tasso: Discourses on the Heroic Poem
Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning
Henry Reynolds: Mythomystes
John Mandaville: Composed in the mid-14th century--most probably by a french physician
The Enlightenment period
Thomas Hobbes: Answer to Davenant's preface
to Gondibert
Pierre Corneille: Of the Three Unities of Action,
Time, and Place
John Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
Nicolas Boileau-Despraux: The Art of Poetry
John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding
John Dennis: The Advancement and
Reformation of Modern Poetry
Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism
Joseph Addison: On the Pleasures of the
Imagination (Spectator essays)
Giambattista Vico: The New Science
Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry into
the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the
Beautiful
David Hume: Of the Standard of Taste
Samuel Johnson: On Fiction, Rasselas, Preface
to Shakespeare
Edward Young: Conjectures on Original
The 19th century
Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of
Ladies
Bharata Muni: Natya Shastra
Rajashekhara: Inquiry into Literature
Valmiki: The Invention of Poetry (from the
Ramayana)
Anandavardhana: Light on Suggestion
Cao Pi: A Discourse on Literature
Lu Ji: Rhymeprose on Literature
Liu Xie: The Literary Mind
Wang Changling: A Discussion of Literature
and Meaning
Sikong Tu: The Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry
Edward Young: Conjectures on Original
Composition
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laocon
Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art
Richard "Conversation" Sharp Letters & Essays
in Prose & Verse
James Usher :Clio: or a Discourse on Taste
(1767)[8]
Denis Diderot: The Paradox of Acting
Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment
Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the
Rights of Woman
William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven or
Hell, Letter to Thomas Butts, Annotations to
Reynolds' Discourses, A Descriptive Catalogue,
A Vision of the Last Judgment, On Homer's
Poetry
Friedrich Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic
Education of Man
Friedrich Schlegel: Critical Fragments,
Athenaeum Fragments, On Incomprehensibility
 William Wordsworth: Preface to the Second
Edition of Lyrical Ballads
Anne Louise Germaine de Stal: Literature in
its Relation to Social Institutions
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: On the
Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature
Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespeare's
Judgment Equal to His Genius, On the
Principles of Genial Criticism, The Statesman's
Manual, Biographia Literaria
Wilhelm von Humboldt: Collected Works
John Keats: letters to Benjamin Bailey, George
& Thomas Keats, John Taylor, and Richard
Woodhouse
Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and
Idea
Thomas Love Peacock: The Four Ages of
Poetry
Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defense of Poetry
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Conversations
with Eckermann, Maxim No.279
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The
Philosophy of Fine Art
Thomas Carlyle: Symbols
John Stuart Mill: What is Poetry?
Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Poet
The 20th century
Benedetto Croce: Aesthetic
A. C. Bradley: Poetry for Poetry's Sake
Sigmund Freud: Creative Writers and
Daydreaming
Ferdinand de Saussure: Course in General
Linguistics
Claude Lvi-Strauss: The Structural Study of
Myth
T. E. Hulme: Romanticism and Classicism;
Bergson's Theory of Art
Walter Benjamin: On Language as Such and On
the Language of Man
Viktor Shklovsky: Art as Technique
T. S. Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent;
Hamlet and His Problems
Irving Babbitt: Romantic Melancholy
Carl Jung: On the Relation of Analytical
Psychology to Poetry
Leon Trotsky: The Formalist School of Poetry
and Marxism
Boris Eikhenbaum: The Theory of the "Formal
Method"
Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own
I. A. Richards: Practical Criticism
Mikhail Bakhtin: Epic and Novel: Toward a
Methodology for the Study of the Novel
Georges Bataille: The Notion of Expenditure
Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve: What Is a
Classic?
Edgar Allan Poe: The Poetic Principle
Matthew Arnold: Preface to the 1853 Edition of
Poems, The Function of Criticism at the Present
Time, The Study of Poetry
Hippolyte Taine: History of English Literature
and Language
Charles Baudelaire: The Salon of 1859
Karl Marx: The German Ideology, Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy
Sren Kierkegaard: Two Ages: A Literary
Review, The Concept of Irony
Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy from
the Spirit of Music, Truth and Falsity in an
Ultramoral Sense
Walter Pater: Studies in the History of the
Renaissance
mile Zola: The Experimental Novel
Anatole France: The Adventures of the Soul
Oscar Wilde: The Decay of Lying
Stphane Mallarm: The Evolution of
Literature, The Book: A Spiritual Mystery,
Mystery in Literature
Leo Tolstoy: What is Art?
John Crowe Ransom: Poetry: A Note in
Ontology; Criticism as Pure Speculation
R. P. Blackmur: A Critic's Job of Work
Jacques Lacan: The Mirror Stage as Formative
of the Function of the I as Revealed in
Psychoanalytic Experience; The Agency of the
Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since
Freud
Gyrgy Lukcs: The Ideal of the Harmonious
Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics; Art and Objective
Truth
Paul Valry: Poetry and Abstract Thought
Kenneth Burke: Literature as Equipment for
Living
Ernst Cassirer: Art
W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley: The
Intentional Fallacy, The Affective Fallacy
Cleanth Brooks: The Heresy of Paraphrase;
Irony as a Principle of Structure
Jan Mukaovsk: Standard Language and
Poetic Language
Jean-Paul Sartre: Why Write?
Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex
Ronald Crane: Toward a More Adequate
Criticism of Poetic Structure
Philip Wheelwright: The Burning Fountain
Theodor Adorno: Cultural Criticism and
Society; Aesthetic Theory
 Roman Jakobson: The Metaphoric and
Metonymic Poles
Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism; The
Critical Path
Gaston Bachelard: The Poetics of Space
Ernst Gombrich: Art and Illusion
Martin Heidegger: The Nature of Language;
Language in the Poem; Hlderlin and the
Essence of Poetry
E. D. Hirsch, Jr.: Objective Interpretation
Noam Chomsky: Aspects of the Theory of
Syntax
Jacques Derrida: Structure, Sign, and Play in
the Discourse of the Human Sciences
Roland Barthes: The Structuralist Activity; The
Death of the Author
Michel Foucault: Truth and Power; What Is an
Author?; The Discourse on Language
Hans Robert Jauss: Literary History as a
Challenge to Literary Theory
Georges Poulet: Phenomenology of Reading
Raymond Williams: The Country and the City
Lionel Trilling: The Liberal Imagination;
Julia Kristeva: From One Identity to Another;
Women's Time
Paul de Man: Semiology and Rhetoric; The
Rhetoric of Temporality
Harold Bloom: The Anxiety of Influence; The
Dialectics of Poetic Tradition;
Poetry, Revisionism, Repression
Chinua Achebe: Colonialist Criticism
Stanley Fish: Normal Circumstances, Literal
Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the
Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes Without
Saying, and Other Special Cases; Is There a
Text in This Class?
Edward Said: The World, the Text, and the
Critic; Secular Criticism
See also
Book review
Comparative literature
Critical theory
Feminist literary criticism
Genre studies
History of the book
Literary critics
Literary translation
Philosophy and literature
Poetic tradition
Social criticism
Translation criticism
Elaine Showalter: Toward a Feminist Poetics
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: Infection in
the Sentence; The Madwoman in the Attic
Murray Krieger: "A Waking Dream": The
Symbolic Alternative to Allegory
Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari: Anti-
Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
Ren Girard: The Sacrificial Crisis
Hlne Cixous: The Laugh of the Medusa
Jonathan Culler: Beyond Interpretation
Geoffrey Hartman: Literary Commentary as
Literature
Wolfgang Iser: The Repertoire
Hayden White: The Historical Text as Literary
Artifact
David P. Gontar: "Hamlet Made Simple" and
"Unreading Shakespeare"
Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method
Paul Ricoeur: The Metaphorical Process as
Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling
M. H. Abrams: How to Do Things with Texts
J. Hillis Miller: The Critic as Host
Clifford Geertz: Blurred Genres: The
Refiguration of Social Thought
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Foundation
and Manifesto of Futurism
Tristan Tzara: Unpretentious Proclamation
Andr Breton: The Surrealist Manifesto; The
Declaration of January 27, 1925
Mina Loy: Feminist Manifesto
Yokomitsu Riichi: Sensation and New Sensation
Oswald de Andrade: Cannibalist Manifesto
Andr Breton, Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera:
Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art
Hu Shih: Some Modest Proposals for the
Reform of Literature
Octavio Paz: The Bow and the Lire
References
1. Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-
8018-8010-6
2. van Gelder, G. J. H. (1982), Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence an
Unity of the Poem, Brill Publishers, pp. 12, ISBN 90-04-06854-6
3. Murray, Stuart A.P. (2009). The Library: An Illustrated History. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. p. 132-133.
ISBN 978-1-61608-453-0.
4. Regan, Shaun; Dawson, Books (2013). Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century
Britain and France. Lewisburg [Pa.]: Bucknell University Press. p. 125-130. ISBN 9781611484786.
5. Jones, E. Michael; Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehaviour; pp. 79-84;
published 1991 by Ignatius Press. ISBN 0-89870-447-2
6. Vladimir Nabokov Lectures on Literature, chap. L'Envoi p. 381
7. D. T. Max (June 19, 2006). "The Injustice Collector" (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/06/19/t
he-injustice-collector?printable=true). The New Yorker.
8. Ussher, J. (1767). Clio Or, a Discourse on Taste: Addressed to a Young Lady (https://books.google.com/?i
d=gYFKAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3). Davies. p. 3. Retrieved 2014-10-10.

External links
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Literary Criticism
Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism Award Winners
Internet Public Library: Literary Criticism Collection of Critical and Biographical Websites
A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (University of Zaragoza)

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