1st post from MY SHARE Literary Criticism: An Introduction Prepared by me Rectified by Sir S M A Rauf Literary Criticism Criticism is a faculty through which one thinks, analyzes, evaluates things and develops judgment. It is a universal faculty: every human being, rather every living being, is gifted with this faculty, the quality differs though. Criticism is of two types: criticism used in everyday life; criticism on a piece of art, that is, literary criticism. Thus literary criticism means to analyze and evaluate a work of literature. In other words, the term literary criticism aims at the study of works of literature with emphasis on their evaluation. T. S. Eliot writes: “Criticism is as inevitable as breathing”. Criticism has four wheels: evaluation, comparison, analysis and discrimination. For example, to analyze a dramatic piece of art, one has to analyze how the story is, how the plot is designed, whether the characters are real or not, etc. Now what makes a good critic? For a good critic it is necessary to be meditative and ruminative. In addition, 1) a good critic should be a well-read person. He must have a wide range of study. He should also be familiar with what has been written in other languages. Wide study is needed because it enables one to compare and contrast, and to see what others have said. 2) He should be impartial in his judgment of art. His criticism should be objective and impartial. However, every critic in the world is biased to some extent. Thus a critic cannot claim to be completely neutral or dispassionate. 3) A good critic should be flexible, not dogmatic. He should be flexible because different people have different viewpoints and perspectives. For instance, Nature is a mentor, God, a teacher, a healing nurse and a mother for Wordsworth. For Keats, Nature is beauty. For Shelley, it is a dynamic force. 4) A good critic should know one more language than his own. Function of literary criticism is to analyze. In its strict sense, criticism means judgment. The literary critic, therefore, is primarily an expert who uses his special faculty and training to examine the merits and defects of a piece of literary art or the work of a given author and pronounces a verdict upon it. T. G. . Williams says, “The function of a literary critic is the evaluation of what has been written, in terms of aesthetic principles appropriate to literature”. If poetry is a ‘criticism – interpretation – of life’, criticism is an interpretation of that interpretation. Walter Pater says, “Criticism is the art of interpreting art”. There have been various schools of criticism according to their main focus and the method of analysis. Aesthetic School is one of those. Walter Pater is the pioneer of this school. Aesthetes are those who uphold the stylistic feature of art. They are least interested in the moral. Thus, aesthetic criticism is the criticism that is motivated and governed by the appreciation of the style of art, which is directed towards appreciating only the beauty of style. They are concerned only with the external beauty of a piece of art. But Coleridge says, “Poetic pleasure depends upon both style and subject matter”. Second is Academic School of Criticism. A. C. Bradley belongs to this school. They have not formulated any rule or principle for criticism. They simply analyze a work of art, not following any specific set of rules for the analysis of art. Sociological School of Criticism includes David Daiches, Arnold Kettle and Christopher Caudwell. They analyze a work of art in order to highlight economic trend and class struggle. They try to explore those aspects of literature which focus on the Marxist theory. According to Marxism, the present crisis in the world is because of economic disparity. Psychological School of Criticism tries to interpret a work of art analyzing the psychological motive behind the actions of a character. Freud, Jung and I. R. Richards belong to this school. Freudian theories like Oedipus complex and Electra complex are the result and products of psychological criticism. These critics try to hunt the motive behind the acts of certain characters. Lastly, School of Textual Criticism is a group of critics described as ‘New Critics’. Allen Tale, Kenneth Burke, Cleanth Brooks, William Empson and T. S. Eliot belong to this school. They believe that a literary piece of art should not be evaluated with reference to the age when it was written or with reference to the poet or the writer. They hold that a poem or for that matter, any piece of art should stand on its own merits. What is there in the poem should be evaluated. T. S. Eliot suggests not to focus on words but to find the underlying meaning of the text. In brief, criticism is the critical faculty which enables one to think and judge, but literary criticism as a discipline means the study of the art of evaluating, comparing, analyzing and discriminating a literary piece of art. Its function is, thus, to examine and interpret a literary work of art. Having such a high aim, a literary critic must be reflective, impartial, flexible, a well-read person and he must know one more language other than his/her mother tongue. Thanks, Ashraf Ali Reference shall be appreciated when printed or shared. P.S. Literary Criticism is a course taught to the students of MA English 2nd semester at IIUI P.P.S. If any error, it should be attributed solely to me.
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:22:48 +0000
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