Literary Criticism, The Reasoned Consideration of Literary Works and Issues

Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works
of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme,

style, setting or historical or political context.
 Archetypal Criticism. Archetypal criticism is a critical approach to literature that seeks to find
and understand the purpose of archetypes within literature. ...
 Cultural Criticism. ...
 Feminist Criticism. ...
 Marxist Criticism. ...
 New Criticism. ...
 New Historicism. ...
 Post-structuralism. ...
 Psychoanalytic Criticism.
The definition of criticism is to expressing disapproval, or a literary analysis of something by taking a

detailed look at the pros, cons and merits. When you tell someone he is lazy, this is
an example ofcriticism.
Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues.

It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not
specific works are analyzed. Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of
poetic inspiration in general in his Republic are thus often taken as the earliest
important example of literary criticism.
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Literary criticism
KEY PEOPLE
 Samuel Johnson
 Julius Hart
 Heinrich Hart
 Virginia Woolf
 Charles Baudelaire
 D.H. Lawrence
 T.S. Eliot
 George Bernard Shaw
 Samuel Taylor Coleridge
 Alexander Pope
RELATED TOPICS
 Literature
 Textual criticism
 Deconstruction
 Stylistics
 Ancients and Moderns
 Biblical criticism
 Formalism
 New Humanism
 Intentionality
 Platonic criticism
More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical
criticism,” the interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality.
Criticism in this narrow sense can be distinguished not only
from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic value) but also from other matters
that may concern the student of literature: biographical
questions, bibliography, historical knowledge, sources and influences, and
problems of method. Thus, especially in academic studies, “criticism” is often
considered to be separate from “scholarship.” In practice, however, this
distinction often proves artificial, and even the most single-minded
concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge, while many
notable works of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments
about the nature of literature and the principles of assessing it.
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Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding,

though the emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their
authors’ places in literary history. For another particular aspect of literary
criticism, see textual criticism.
Functions
The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of
books as they are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though
reviews may sometimes determine whether a given book will be widely sold,
many works succeed commercially despite negative reviews, and many classic
works, including Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851), have acquired
appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at first
neglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in
sensibility that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for
such a new appraisal is, of course, that the original text survive. The literary
critic is sometimes cast in the role of scholarly detective, unearthing,
authenticating, and editing unknown manuscripts. Thus, even rarefied
scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary use, the bringing of
literary works to a public’s attention.
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The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in
which it appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of
analysis and may sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s
claims for a book’s interest. Weekly and biweekly magazines serve to introduce
new books but are often more discriminating in their judgments, and some of
these magazines, such as The (London) Times Literary Supplement and The
New York Review of Books, are far from indulgent toward popular works.
Sustained criticism can also be found in monthlies and quarterlies with a
broad circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized audiences, and in
scholarly journals and books.
Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve

respect and presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is
a perennial target of resentment. Misguided or malicious critics can
discourage an author who has been feeling his way toward a new mode that
offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious engagement with
literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the French
philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that
French thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in
order to make those thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time
more dead. Criticism can antagonize authors even when it performs its
function well. Authors who regard literature as needing no advocates or
investigators are less than grateful when told that their works possess
unintended meaning or are imitative or incomplete.
What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published,
belong to them only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the
public, which will appropriate them for its own concerns regardless of the
critic. The critic’s responsibility is not to the author’s self-esteem but to the
public and to his own standards of judgment, which are usually more exacting
than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on the premise that literary
works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to the extent
that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it
could have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it
further, helping to create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without
sensing the presence of such a public, an author may either prostitute his
talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance. In this sense, the critic is not a
parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part for the existence
of good writing in his own time and afterward.
Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation

from other matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved
with social and political debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is
always rooted to some degree in local circumstances, and has a way of calling
forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not surprising that the finest critics
have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries between criticism
and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary criticism
has occupied a central place in debate about cultural and political issues.
Sartre’s own What Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt
to prescribe the literary intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his
society and to literature as a manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some
prominent American critics, including Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Kenneth
Burke, Philip Rahv, and Irving Howe, began as political radicals in the 1930s
and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas and
disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influential The Liberal
Imagination (1950) is simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an
attempt to reconcile the claims of politics and art.
Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic

believes, as Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a
deeper faithfulness to reality than is contained in any political formula.
In Marxist states, however, literature has usually been considered a means to
social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in forthrightly partisan
terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the critic into a mere
guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a cause
in itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party.
Where this utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be
continuous with that of the state itself, namely, furtherance of the social
revolution. The critic’s main obligation is not to his texts but rather to the
masses of people whose consciousness must be advanced in the designated
direction. In periods of severe orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism has
not always been distinguishable from that of censorship.
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Literary criticism is the comparison, analysis, interpretation, and/or evaluation of works

of literature. Literary criticism is essentially an opinion, supported by evidence, relating to theme,

The definition of criticism is to expressing disapproval, or a literary analysis of something by taking a

Literary criticism, the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues.

Error! Filename not specified.00:00

Getting Into (Fictional) Character

What is the name of Captain Nemo’s submarine?

Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding,

Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve

Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation

Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic

LOAD NEXT PAGE

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