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IJES, VOL.LII, 2015 Literary Criticismin India *Rajnath I was pleasantly surprised when early on a winter morning in December, 2012, Dr. Binod Mishra, Editor-in- Chief of the IJES telephoned me to inform that I had been appointed the president of the next All India English Teachers Conference and wished to know if I accepted the appointment. I gladly and gratefully accepted the offer and promised to attend the conference to deliver my Presidential Address. I must confess that I feel greatly honoured by this gesture from the office-bearers of the AESI and thank them all for appointing me the president in absentia. I have chosen to speak on “Literary Criticism in India” as I believe that the study of literature is incomplete without a proper understanding of literary theory and criticism. In the absence of this knowledge our response to literature will be subjective, not critical. A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Plato and Aristole, our early critics of literature who evolved their theories out of the existing literature with the help of the philosophical training that they had. But the situation today is very different. Literature has undergone significant mutations and literary theory and criticism has become much more complex. We need to be familiar with both to be able to respond as mature readers. Some General observations At the very outset I must dispel any ill-founded impression regarding the status of the critic vis-a-vis the creative writer. For some reason we have formed the opinion that the latter is primary while the former is secondary and, by the same logic, that the latter is more important than the former. This notion flies in the face of * Prof. Rajnath retired as Professor of English from Allahabad University. 2 The Indian Journal of English Studies Vol. 52, 2015 The Indian Journal of English Studies Vol. 52, 2015 3 the empirical evidence that we have. Look at the history If in the first half of the 20th century we have literary of English literature with which we are all familiar. How giants not only in England but also on the continent, in the many critics have we had in comparison with the large second half we notice great critics taking centre stage. Where number of creative writers? The fact of the matter is that are the creative equivalents of Barthes, Derrida and Said? creative writers are legion but literary critics are few and In his essay on “The End of English” Terry Eagleton writes: far between. To be precise, between Sir Philip Sidney during “they had the Cantos, we have Jonathan Culler”. Eagleton the Renaissare and Matthew Arnold in the Victories age we intends that in the second half of the 20th century, theory have only six critics worth their salt. How to account for replaced high modernism which gave birth to several this? Do writers find critical writing less tempting than distinguished writers including Ezra pound who was a major creative writing? Or, is it because critical faculty is rarer influence on the modernists. Criticism is now viewed as an than creative faculty? In my considered opinion, what we independent discipline, not as subservient to literature and call critical acumen is rarer than creative imagination. This theborderline between literature and criticism as between explains why against so many writers we have so few critics. literature and the other disciplines in the humanities and As we enter the twentieth century, we notice a distinct social sciences has been obliterated. Barthes examines the change in the domain of criticism. While till the end of the historian Michelet’s works as literary constructs and Derrida nineteenth century we have individual critics we now notice does not distinguish between Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course the emergence of critical trends consisting of groups of critics in General Linguistics and Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. such as Russian Formalism and Anglo-American New Whether or not we agree with this approach to literature is Criticism, However, the creative writers far outnumber the a different matter altogether, but this does explain the critics. In criticism we have only two major figures in English, upsurge of criticism and theory in the latter half of the namely T.S. Eliot and I.A. Richards. But the situation twenties century. changes in the second half of the twentieth century which is A word about the distinction between scholarship and rightly called the “Age of Criticism”. Creative writers recede criticism will not be out of place here. In my opinion a critic’s in the background and in the forefront are major literary job is much more demanding and challenging than a critics. Literary criticism now goes not only interdisciplinary scholar’s. I am not suggesting that the scholar and the critic but also international. Critical movements like structuralism, have their exclusive concerns but only that their central deconstruction and reader-responism are instances in point. concerns are different. A brief citation from Eliot’s “The The upsurge of criticism late in the 20th and early in Frontiers of Criticism” will shed significant light on the the 21st centuries does not mean that it has become easy to distinction between scholarship and criticism: be a critic. Far from it, on the contrary, criticism has become We must not confuse knowledge—factual information— much more complex and critical task much more difficult. about a poet’s period, the condition of the society in which Imagine a critic like Roland Bathes, Jacque Derrida or he lived, the ideas current in his time implicit in his writing, Edward Said with his redoubtable scholarship covering the state of the language in his period—with understanding several disciplines. Litterateurs have changed their attitude his poetry. Such knowledge, as I have said, may be a to critics and criticism; in other words, they have come to necessary preparation for understanding the poetry; realize their importance and the role that they can play in furthermore, it has a value of its own, as history, but for shaping the intellectual life of the people. Literary criticism the appreciation of the poetry, it can only lead us to the has ceased to be purely literary and extended its frontiers to door, we must find our way in. culture and society. 4 The Indian Journal of English Studies Vol. 52, 2015 The Indian Journal of English Studies Vol. 52, 2015 5 As a very perceptive critic, Eliot knows the distinction Urn” which does not tell us about the external world but between factual information and literary criticism and what that world in artistic form. It is this difference which accounts we get in scholarship is primarily the former. This information for the preposition “On” rather than “To” in the title of the is relevant in the appreciation of poetry provided we know poem. The poem is like an essay on a work of art. its limits. What matters in literary criticism is what we The kind of equipment that a critic needs is difficult to experience when inside the text. Eliot himself cites some acquire. He needs to be familiar with both the hinterland works of scholarship like Herbert Read’s and F.W. Bateson’s and the heartland of literature. He must have a working books on Wordsworth and John Livingston Lowes’s book on knowledge of all the major disciplines in the humanities and Coleridge, The Road to Xanadu and concludes that these social sciences as well major ideas in pure sciences as they books give us factual information which sheds light on the impact literature. He must be familiar with world classics poets’ life and mind but do not help us understand and and have a very good grounding in literary criticism. But appreciate their poetry. this equipment is not enough unless he has that rare quality The scholar does not bother to look at the whole of called critical acumen which is as important as creative literature and examine the shared and the individual imagination in a writer. features of particular genres, as Aristotle does in his Poetics Since my subject is literary criticism, I must perforce and Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, or identify those address, in brief for lack of space and time, the post-modernist features which mark literature off from non-literature. What belief in the death of both literature and criticism. It is argued the scholar leaves out are the concerns of the critic who sets that since literature is replaced byécriture(Jacques Derrida) forth a theory of literature and individual genres which help and the author by the reader (Roland Barthes) criticism has us understand literary texts. Aristotle gave us a theory of become redundant. Moreover, the postmodernist believes drama and Coleridge a theory of poetry that examined all that the text does not communicate any determinate meaning the aspects of their respective genres—the different which can be explained by the critic with a sense of authority. components that went into their making, their place vis-a- I have already defended the presence of the author in the vis other genres, their function etc. What Aristotle says about text in a full-length essay. And I am about to complete my drama can be applied to dramas in any language in the book on The Identity of Literature: A Reply to Jacques world and the same is true of Coleridge’s concept of poetry. Derrida which seeks to restore a distinct identity to literature. Literary theory cuts through national and linguistic If the author and literature are not dead, how can criticism boundaries.

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