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Literacy-Criticism and Theory PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY (A Central University) DIRECTORATE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION LITERACY CRITICISM AND THEORY (Paper Code: MAEG1004) MA (English) – I Year DDE – WHERE INNOVATION IS A WAY OF LIFE PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY ( A Central University) DIRECTORATE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION MASTER OF ARTS In ENGLISH First Year Course Code:60 Paper Code:MAEG1004 Literary Criticism and Theory Literary Criticism and Theory Author: Dr. Sujatha Vijayaraghavan Professor Dept of English Pondicherry University Pondicherry – 605 014. All rights are reserved. For Private Circulation only. PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY (A Central University) DIRECTORATE OF DISTANCE EDUCATION MA - English Literary Criticism and Theory TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page No. Unit -I The Classical and Neoclassical Criticism 1 Unit - II Romantic Criticism 51 Unit -III Victorian and Modernist Criticism 90 Unit -IV Practical and the new Criticism 124 Unit -V Psychological & Marxist Criticism 147 1 Paper – IV LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY Unit - I: The Classical And Neoclassical Criticicsm 1. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism 2. Samuel Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare Unit - II: Romantic Criticism 3. Wordsworth: Preface to Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads 4. S.T.Coleridge: Biographia Literaria, Chapters 14, 16 &17 Unit - III: Victorian And Modernist Criticism 5. Matthew Arnold: The Study of Poetry 6..T.S.Eliot: Tradition & Individual Talent Unit - IV: Practical And The New Criticism 7.I.A. Richards: Four Kinds of Meaning 8. Cleanth Brooks: Irony as Principle of Structure Unit - V : Psychological & Marxist Criticism 9..Sigmund Freud: Creative Writers & Day Dreaming 10. Raymond Williams: Realism and the Contemporary Novel Selections are from S.Ramaswamy & V.S. Sethuraman eds. The English Critical Tradition: An Anthology of English Literary Criticism Volumes One and Two. Chennai: Macmillan, 1976. David Lodge ed.Twentieth Century Literary Criticism: A Reader. Harlow: Longman,1991. 2 LITERARY CRITICISM AND THEORY UNIT ONE This unit consists of the following two essays in The Classical And Neoclassical Criticism: Essay No.1. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism Essay No.2. Samuel Johnson: Preface to Shakespeare UNIT I The two essays in this section are John Dryden’ An Essay of Dramatic Poesy and Samuel Johnson’s A Preface to Shakespeare. Before we approach these essays, it would be helpful to have a brief introduction to literary criticism in general, its origins in the west and how it took shape till the seventeenth century which is when the above two essays were written. GENERAL INTRODUCTION 1. WHAT THE TWO TERMS LITERARY CRITICISM AND LITERARY THEORY MEAN: What is literary criticism and what is literary theory? How are the two related? An attempt to answer these questions will be a good beginning to this subject. Criticism can be described as a “discourse about literature,” in a general way.The study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature is the discourse which is called literary criticism. This act of study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature is often guided by literary theory. Literary theory is the philosophical discussion of the methods and aims of literary criticism and each literary theory gives its own special way of looking at a piece of literature.The two - literary criticism and literary theory - perform interrelated tasks. Any school of literary theory concerns itself with literary textsand thus with the act of criticism. Literary theory as the two words suggest, conjoins literature with the theory or philosophy about literature. Such a theory based interpretation of literature is the activity of literary criticism. So it is not really possible to separate the concerns of literary theory from literary criticism. It goes without saying therefore that there could be two or more ways of reading a piece of literature depending upon which literary theory is taken as the 3 window through which the literary text is read. So the two activities, i.e. literary criticism and literary theory are closely related. 2. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LITERARY CRITICISM AND LITERARY THEORY Of course as lay readers we do not always look to a literary theory to be able to read a book.Usually we read literature prompted by our taste and our understanding of the values of life and guided by our vision of life. So a literary critic, and we are literary critics when we read sensitively and deeply, need not always be a theorist. This then becomes a particular theory. Each school of thought and each theory has its own specific understanding of the function of the literary text and all the questions related to the relationship of the text to the author, the reader and to the literary tradition in which it emerges. What a theorist does is to crystallise these aspects and formulate a philosopical argument about it. Any kind of discussion on literature simply used to be called by the blanket term “literary criticism” earlier and there was not always a definite theoretical stand behind every act of criticism, nor was a literary critic always a theorist. As was suggested earlier, even though a critic may not have been a theorist still he would quite clearly reflect the temperament of his times, as for example, Coleridge or Wordsworth who reflected the Romantic world vision. But in course of time, especially since the seventies, almost every literary critic aligned his beliefs to one theory or another and there has been a steady emergence of number of theories. Actually since the advent of courses that concern themselves with “theory” started in the seventies the term literary criticism has been almost completely replaced by the term literary theory because acts of literary criticism are now largely theory based. There are many "schools" or types of literary theory, which take different approaches to understanding texts. Most of these theories have emerged from the continent, although they have grown steadily in Britain and the United States. Literary theory is today a broad field. It includes a wide range of disparate approaches which are used by members of humanities in the exploration of literary texts. It also refers to the teaching of such approaches and practices in the universities, particularly in the departments of English.Texts from a large branch of disciplines such 4 as linguistics, anthropology, politics, philosophy, psychoanalysis and other such areas are brought to bear upon the exploration of the literary text. 3. HOW LITERARY THEORY AND LITERARY CRITICISM STARTED AND DEVELOPED It is not wrong to say that literary theory has been there as has been literature, though the early Greeks called it poetics and it included rhetoric also. In fact this is where it took western literary criticism took its origins. In fact this is where it took western literary criticism took its origins.The discussion of the principles, the theory, and the aesthetics of literature, was formerly discussed as poetics and rhetoric. Often the critical canons of one age have been discarded in all together and often too, a subsequent age has revived them. So the principles of criticism are as a body of thought the various interpretations of literature or literary activity, advanced from time to time. They are sometimes similar, sometimes dissimilar, and some-times even contradictory. The discussion of the principles, the theory, and the aesthetics of literature, was formerly discussed as poetics and rhetoric. In Europe the art of criticism began in ancient Greece. Exactly when it began cannot be said for certain, but the fifth century B.C. is generally located as the starting point. The practice of literary theory became a profession in the 20th century, but it has historical roots that run as far back as ancient Greece. There are several categories of criticism: theoretical, practical, textual, judicial, biographical, and aesthetic. The ancient Greeks introduced two major types of criticism: theoretical, which attempts to state general principles about the value of art as did Plato and Aristotle and practical, which examines the particular works, genres, or writers in light of theoretical criteria as did Horace and Longinus. Before the seventeenth century, there was no clear cut distinction between the two terms critic and critique.Dryden, in the Preface to the State of Innocence (1677), said that by criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant a standard of judging well. Pope’s Essay on Criticism (1711) established the term for good.The general tone of 5 criticism of the neo-classical period was prescriptive and therefore it is called judicial criticism. Philip Sydney maintained in his Defense of Poetry [1595] that poetry must engage and uplift the emotions of its audience. Dryden, the master critic of Restoration England, upheld neoclassical standards. In his Essay on Criticism [1711] Alexander Pope added an important section on the criticism of critics. Also described as legislative criticism this form of critical endeavour lays down rules for the art of writing, largely based on standard works of literature, Greek and Latin. It assumes that the would-be writer has only to be told how to do his work to be able to do it well. It therefore addresses itself to the writer rather than to the reader, whose interests are supposed to be safe in the critic’s hands. Textual criticism is the comparison of different texts and versions of particular works with the aim of arriving at an incorrupt "master version." This has been perhaps most familiar over the centuries in biblical criticism. In English Samuel Johnson and H. H. Furness who employed this to edit Shakespeare and F. J. Furnival who edited early English texts. Samuel Johnson’s Lives of the Poets [1779-81] was the first thorough- going exercise in biographical criticism. It was an attempt to relate a writer's background and life to his works. The revolution from neoclassicism to romanticism was first outlined by William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who emphasized the importance of emotion and imagination in literature.
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