Criticism in English LiteratureBRIEF HISTORICAL SURVEY

Lecture 31History of English Literature

COMSATS Virtual Campus Islamabad

Outline of the lecture

• 1. Earliest or Hellenic Phase• 2. Hellenistic Phase• 3. Greeco-Roman Phase• 4. The Medieval Phase• 5. Renaissance Criticism• 6. Neo-Classical Phase• 7. The Romantic Phase• 8. Victorian Criticism• 9. Critical Scene To-day

Importance of Literary Criticism

• Literary criticism is an interpretive process used to weigh the social value of a written idea. Critics have reviewed and debated the value of literary works since before the Italian Renaissance.

Function

• Critical reviews can assist you personally by supporting points you may make in your own literary interpretation. Referencing another legitimate literary review often enhances the quality of your reading of a text.

Effects

• Literary critics may sometimes challenge the ideas and values of literature. For example, some feminist critics review and challenge what they believe to be sexist attitudes in widely accepted literature written by men or from an exclusively male perspective.

Benefits

• Empathy is a necessary tool when criticizing a text. When reading another critic's textual interpretation that conflicts with your own values, you experience the reading through someone else's perspective and hence have the opportunity to increase your own tolerance for differing ideas.

Considerations

• An understanding of historical literary criticism may also provide insight on past cultures. Readers often assume that what's true today was true in the past, but certain forms of literary criticism place writings in their proper context.

1. Earliest or Hellenic Phase

• We have defined literary criticism as the exercise of judgment on works of literature, and this implies that criticism would follow creative activity. This is true in general, but in ancient Greece criticism began almost simultaneously with literary creation. In the fifth and fourth centuries B.C., Athens was the centre of literary and critical activity and Plato and Aristotle were the most important critics.

• This is the earliest or Hellenic (Greek) phase of criticism, and it forms the background to all subsequent literary inquiry. Aristotle is the first scientific critic, he is the first theorist of literature; he is a great irritant to thought, and his Poetics has influenced and coloured critical inquiry through the ages. A study of the Poetics is, therefore, considered indispensable for all students of literature.

2. Hellenistic Phase

• By the close of the third century B.C., Athenian culture suffered a decline and a period of decadence now set in. In the centuries that followed, we find that Athens is no longer the centre of literary activity in the ancient world. New centres of art and culture have sprung up, the most prominent of which is Alexandria in Egypt. The second phase of criticism is antiquity known as the Hellenistic phase.

• It is a period of decadence in which very little original work is done. However, the scholars of this period did valuable service in preserving old texts, classifying them, and conducting patient research in the life and writings of the great writers of Greece.

• We are indebted to these painstaking scholars for much that we know of the art and culture of antiquity. However, much of their literary production is merely imitative, and their contribution to literary criticism is small.

3. Greeco-Roman Phase

• The decadent Hellenistic phase was soon followed by the brilliant Greeco-Roman phase, Now Rome, the capital of the ancient Roman empire, was the centre of cultural and literary activity of a very high order. It was a brilliant age when Rome was not only the political and economic centre of the known world, but also its literary and cultural centre.

• The Roman scholars of this period were inspired by the ancient Greek masters whom they wanted to equal and excel. Instead of blind imitation, they aimed at originality. However, in practice, they could neither be original nor comprehensive. Their criticism largely consists of elaboration, interpretation and application of the rules and precepts laid down by the ancient Greeks, more specially, Aristotle.

• Their influence on subsequent criticism was far reaching for their interpretation and commentation was accepted as identical with that of their Greek originals. They often misunderstood and interpreted wrongly, and in this way much that Aristotle had never written was hoisted on to him. The purity of Aristotle’s criticism was thus clouded for centuries to come. Horace, Quintillian and Longinus are the most penetrating critics of the Greeco-Roman phase.

4. The Medieval Phase

• The break up of the Roman empire around the fifth century A.D., under the onslaughts of barbarian hordes, put an end to the brilliant Greeco-Roman phase and ushered in the dark and obscure Medieval Phase. There was much confusion and dislocation and literary activity suffered.

• The rich literary treasures of antiquity, though not entirely forgotten, lay unused and neglected. Literary activity was confined mainly to Schoolmen, medieval scholars whose interests were theological and who indulged in meaningless, hair-splitting discussions.

• Literature was frowned upon as sensuous and pagan and Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic were given the pride of place. With the spread of Christianity, the medieval torpor was a little shaken but the theological bias of the schoolmen continued to come in the way of healthy literary appreciation.

• Ancient masterpieces were studied, but they were interpreted allegorically and their aesthetic beauty and high literary merits were lost. ‘The dark ages’ are particularly ‘dark’ as far as literary criticism is concerned. Dante is the only ray of light that illumines for a while the all-enveloping darkness.

5. Renaissance Criticism

• With the Renaissance, which was ushered in by the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453, and the consequent western movement of literary masterpieces of antiquity, one witnesses an unprecedented spurt of literary and critical activity. There is a widening of mental horizons, the shackles of medievalism are broken, and there is a renewal of zest for life and the enjoyment of beauty.

• The Great works of ancient Greece and Rome are translated into vernaculars all over Europe, and scholars throng to the great centres of classical learning. There is a desire to emulate and excel the literary exploits of haughty Greece and insolent Rome, and this results in the growth of national literatures, and the flowering of genius, and critical activity goes on hand in hand with creation.

• In Renaissance England, critical inquiry evolves rapidly through four successive and overlapping stages.

• First, there is a study of style and language in the manner of ancient rhetoric.

• Second, there is an attempt to introduce classical metres into English poetry.

• In the third and most important phase, there is an attempt to justify imaginative literature against the attacks of Puritans and moralists. The result is the publication of numerous apologies and defences, the best of which is Sidney’s Apology for Poetry.

• In the fourth phase, English criticism grows self-conscious and attempts are made to devise rules and principles to guide would-be poets, and to curb the excesses of the romantic Elizabethan literature. Ben Jonson is the most important critic of this phase; he is the first champion of neo-classicism in the country.

6. Neo-Classical Phase

• While Ben Jonson’s classicism was, ‘liberal classicism, aiming at curbing the excesses and absurdities of his age, this classicism becomes more rigid and stringent with the passing of time.

• Aristotle now becomes the literary dictator and his ‘rules’, as interpreted by the French critics of the day, became a ‘must’. They are applied with increasing rigidity. For over a hundred years – from Dryden to Dr. Johnson – Neo-classicism reins supreme in England. Dryden, Pope, Addison, Dr. Johnson, are some of the greatest critics during this period.

7. The Romantic Phase

• Just as Neo-classicism was the result of a reaction against the excesses of the Elizabethans, so the very rigidity and stringency of Psuedo-classicism soon breeds a reaction against it. French Revolution and German Idealistic philosophy also contribute to the rise of romanticism. ‘Individuality’, ‘subjectivity’, individual freedom of expression, ‘inspiration’ etc. are increasingly emphasised.

• The hollowness of ‘rules’ and their evils are exposed, and attention is turned to the creative process, and the part played by imagination and emotion in the process of creation. Wordsworth’s Preface to the Lyrical Ballads is a landmark in the history of English criticism, and so is Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria. Wordsworth and Coleridge are too of the greatest of the romantic critics.

• Valuable work was done during the romantic phase, and a better understanding of the creative process was achieved. New light was shed on the old English masters, and new beauties were discovered.

8. Victorian Criticism

• However, Romantic criticism had its own faults. It was too individualistic and mood dictated. Its emphasis on aesthetic appreciation, to the entire disregard of rules and principles, resulted in many excesses and absurdities. The result is that in the Victorian age, there is a re-action against it, and efforts are made to introduce, once again, order and discipline in literary criticism.

• There is tremendous critical activity in France and Germany, and it cannot but influence criticism in England. An exalted view of the function of criticism is taken, and it is brought closer to life. Thus Matthew Arnold, the leading critic of the Victorian phase, defines criticism as, “a disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.”

• Towards the end of the Victorian age, we witness in England the rise of the aesthetic movement, largely as a consequence of the influence of French symbolists, Baudelaire and others. “Art for art’s sake”, is the cult of the aesthetes, and in England, Walter Pater gives to this movement a noble and restrained expression. The criticism of the aesthetes is impressionistic, expressive entirely of their own enjoyment of a work of art.

9. Critical Scene To-day

• The critical scene in the 20th century is complex and varied. During the early years of the century, both the Arnold-tradition and the Pater-tradition continue to be followed. There are also academic critics, who are professors and profound scholars, rather than original thinkers and innovators.

• There are also the neo-classics – the most illustrious of them being T.S. Eliot – who seek to counter the faults of impressionistic criticism by appealing to tradition and authority. The approach of I.A. Richards, on the other hand, is psychological.

• In more recent times, we see, the rise of the ‘New Critics’, who emphasise the study of the text to the entire exclusion of other concerns, biographical, historical, sociological, etc. This emphasis on the study of the text – word and line by line – has resulted in new and valuable interpretations of existing masterpieces. In England, F.R. Leavis is one of the most competent critics of this Textual school.

• There are also various other approaches to criticism, such as Moral, Sociological Archetypal, Symbolistic, Expressionistic. Such immense variety is bewildering and chaotic, and it is too early to predict which particular approach has a permanent validity and significance, and which is merely ephemeral.

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