Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism
Literary Criticism
Literary criticism
Literary criticism is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often informed by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of its methods and goals. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory, or conversely from book reviewing, is a matter of some controversy. For example, the Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism[1] draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals, and more popular critics publish their criticism in broadly circulating periodicals such as the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times Book Review, the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The Nation, and The New Yorker.
Boccaccio: Life of Dante, Genealogy of the Gentile Gods Christine de Pizan: The Book of the City of Ladies
Literary criticism Bharata Muni: Natya Shastra Al-Jahiz: al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin, al-Hayawan Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz: Kitab al-Badi Rajashekhara: Inquiry into Literature Valmiki: The Invention of Poetry (from the Ramayana) Anandavardhana: Light on Suggestion Cao Pi: A Discourse on Literature Lu Ji: Rhymeprose on Literature Liu Xie: The Literary Mind Wang Changling: A Discussion of Literature and Meaning Sikong Tu: The Twenty-Four Classes of Poetry
Renaissance criticism
The literary criticism of the Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary neoclassicism, proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably, Giorgio Valla's Latin translation of Aristotle's Poetics. The work of Aristotle, especially Poetics, was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century. Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's Poetics in 1570. Key texts Lodovico Castelvetro: The Poetics of Aristotle Translated and Explained Philip Sidney: An Apology for Poetry Jacopo Mazzoni: On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante Torquato Tasso: Discourses on the Heroic Poem Francis Bacon: The Advancement of Learning Henry Reynolds: Mythomystes John Mandaville: Composed in the mid-14th century--most probably by a french physician
Enlightenment criticism
Key texts Thomas Hobbes: Answer to Davenant's preface to Gondibert Pierre Corneille: Of the Three Unities of Action, Time, and Place John Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy Nicolas Boileau-Despraux: The Art of Poetry John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding John Dennis: The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism Joseph Addison: On the Pleasures of the Imagination (Spectator essays) Giambattista Vico: The New Science Edmund Burke: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origins of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful David Hume: Of the Standard of Taste Samuel Johnson: On Fiction, Rasselas, Preface to Shakespeare Edward Young: Conjectures on Original Composition
Literary criticism Richard "Conversation" Sharp Letters & Essays in Prose & Verse [3] James Usher :Clio: or a Discourse on Taste (1767) [4] Denis Diderot: The Paradox of Acting Immanuel Kant: Critique of Judgment Mary Wollstonecraft: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman William Blake: The Marriage of Heaven or Hell, Letter to Thomas Butts, Annotations to Reynolds' Discourses, A Descriptive Catalogue, A Vision of the Last Judgment, On Homer's Poetry Friedrich Schiller: Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man Friedrich Schlegel: Critical Fragments, Athenaeum Fragments, On Incomprehensibility
19th-century criticism
The British Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century introduced new aesthetic ideas to literary study, including the idea that the object of literature need not always be beautiful, noble, or perfect, but that literature itself could elevate a common subject to the level of the sublime. German Romanticism, which followed closely after the late development of German classicism, emphasized an aesthetic of fragmentation that can appear startlingly modern to the reader of English literature, and valued Witz that is, "wit" or "humor" of a certain sort more highly than the serious Anglophone Romanticism. The late nineteenth century brought renown to authors known more for critical writing than for their own literary work, such as Matthew Arnold. Key texts William Wordsworth: Preface to the Second Edition of Lyrical Ballads Anne Louise Germaine de Stal: Literature in its Relation to Social Institutions Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling: On the Relation of the Plastic Arts to Nature Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Shakespeare's Judgment Equal to His Genius, On the Principles of Genial Criticism, The Statesman's Manual, Biographia Literaria Wilhelm von Humboldt: Collected Works John Keats: letters to Benjamin Bailey, George & Thomas Keats, John Taylor, and Richard Woodhouse Arthur Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Idea Thomas Love Peacock: The Four Ages of Poetry Percy Bysshe Shelley: A Defense of Poetry Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Conversations with Eckermann, Maxim No.279 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: The Philosophy of Fine Art Thomas Carlyle: Symbols John Stuart Mill: What is Poetry? Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Poet Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve: What Is a Classic? Edgar Allan Poe: The Poetic Principle Matthew Arnold: Preface to the 1853 Edition of Poems, The Function of Criticism at the Present Time, The Study of Poetry Hippolyte Taine: History of English Literature Charles Baudelaire: The Salon of 1859 Karl Marx: The German Ideology, A Contribution of the Critique of Political Economy Friedrich Nietzsche: The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, Truth and Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense Walter Pater: Studies in the History of the Renaissance mile Zola: The Experimental Novel
Anatole France: The Adventures of the Soul Oscar Wilde: The Decay of Lying
Literary criticism Stphane Mallarm: The Evolution of Literature, The Book: A Spiritual Mystery, Mystery in Literature Leo Tolstoy: What is Art?
Theory
In 1957 Northrop Frye published the influential Anatomy of Criticism. In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on the basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his Degenerate Moderns that Stanley Fish was influenced by his adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery.[5] In the British and American literary establishment, the New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness a rise of a more explicitly philosophical literary theory, influenced by structuralism, then post-structuralism, and other kinds of Continental philosophy. It continued until the mid-1980s, when interest in "theory" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions. Key 20th-century texts Benedetto Croce: Aesthetic A. C. Bradley: Poetry for Poetry's Sake Sigmund Freud: Creative Writers and Daydreaming Ferdinand de Saussure: Course in General Linguistics Claude Lvi-Strauss: The Structural Study of Myth T. E. Hulme: Romanticism and Classicism; Bergson's Theory of Art Walter Benjamin: On Language as Such and On the Language of Man Viktor Shklovsky: Art as Technique T. S. Eliot: Tradition and the Individual Talent; Hamlet and His Problems Irving Babbitt: Romantic Melancholy Carl Jung: On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry Leon Trotsky: The Formalist School of Poetry and Marxism Boris Eikhenbaum: The Theory of the "Formal Method" Virginia Woolf: A Room of One's Own I. A. Richards: Practical Criticism Mikhail Bakhtin: Epic and Novel: Toward a Methodology for the Study of the Novel Georges Bataille: The Notion of Expenditure John Crowe Ransom: Poetry: A Note in Ontology; Criticism as Pure Speculation
R. P. Blackmur: A Critic's Job of Work Jacques Lacan: The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience; The Agency of the Letter in the Unconscious or Reason Since Freud
Literary criticism Gyrgy Lukcs: The Ideal of the Harmonious Man in Bourgeois Aesthetics; Art and Objective Truth Paul Valry: Poetry and Abstract Thought Kenneth Burke: Literature and Equipment for Living Ernst Cassirer: Art W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley: The Intentional Fallacy, The Affective Fallacy Cleanth Brooks: The Heresy of Paraphrase; Irony as a Principle of Structure Jan Mukaovsk: Standard Language and Poetic Language Jean-Paul Sartre: Why Write? Simone de Beauvoir: The Second Sex Ronald Crane: Toward a More Adequate Criticism of Poetic Structure Philip Wheelwright: The Burning Fountain Theodor Adorno: Cultural Criticism and Society; Aesthetic Theory Roman Jakobson: The Metaphoric and Metonymic Poles Northrop Frye: Anatomy of Criticism; The Critical Path Gaston Bachelard: The Poetics of Space Ernst Gombrich: Art and Illusion Martin Heidegger: The Nature of Language; Language in the Poem; Hlderlin and the Essence of Poetry E. D. Hirsch, Jr.: Objective Interpretation Noam Chomsky: Aspects of the Theory of Syntax Jacques Derrida: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences Roland Barthes: The Structuralist Activity; The Death of the Author Michel Foucault: Truth and Power; What Is an Author?; The Discourse on Language Hans Robert Jauss: Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory Georges Poulet: Phenomenology of Reading Raymond Williams: The Country and the City Julia Kristeva: From One Identity to Another; Women's Time Paul de Man: Semiology and Rhetoric; The Rhetoric of Temporality Harold Bloom: The Dialectics of Poetic Tradition; Poetry, Revisionism, Repression Chinua Achebe: Colonialist Criticism Stanley Fish: Normal Circumstances, Literal Language, Direct Speech Acts, the Ordinary, the Everyday, the Obvious, What Goes Without Saying, and Other Special Cases; Is There a Text in This Class? Edward Said: The World, the Text, and the Critic; Secular Criticism Elaine Showalter: Toward a Feminist Poetics Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar: Infection in the Sentence; The Madwoman in the Attic Murray Krieger: "A Waking Dream": The Symbolic Alternative to Allegory Gilles Deleuze and Flix Guattari: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia Ren Girard: The Sacrificial Crisis Hlne Cixous: The Laugh of the Medusa Jonathan Culler: Beyond Interpretation Geoffrey Hartman: Literary Commentary as Literature Wolfgang Iser: The Repertoire Hayden White: The Historical Text as Literary Artifact Hans-Georg Gadamer: Truth and Method Paul Ricoeur: The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling M. H. Abrams: How to Do Things with Texts
J. Hillis Miller: The Critic as Host Clifford Geertz: Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought
Literary criticism Filippo Tommaso Marinetti: The Foundation and Manifesto of Futurism Tristan Tzara: Unpretentious Proclamation Andr Breton: The Surrealist Manifesto; The Declaration of January 27, 1925 Mina Loy: Feminist Manifesto Yokomitsu Riichi: Sensation and New Sensation Oswald de Andrade: Cannibalist Manifesto Andr Breton, Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera: Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art Hu Shih: Some Modest Proposals for the Reform of Literature
Literary criticism
References
[1] Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005, ISBN0-8018-8010-6 [2] van Gelder, G. J. H. (1982), Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence an Unity of the Poem, Brill Publishers, pp.12, ISBN90-04-06854-6 [3] http:/ / www. archive. org/ stream/ lettersandessay01shargoog [4] http:/ / books. google. co. uk/ books?id=gYFKAAAAcAAJ& pg=PA3& lpg=PA3& dq=usher+ taste& source=bl& ots=O-pWTVKjXz& sig=MhA6n9HyC-l3Zfq5lItw7LQeryM& hl=en& sa=X& ei=w4KlT_7HFon68QP6_7TZBA& ved=0CFwQ6AEwBw#v=onepage& q& f=false [5] Jones, E. Michael; Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehaviour; pp. 79-84; published 1991 by Ignatius Press. ISBN 0-89870-447-2 [6] Vladimir nabokov Lectures on Literature, chap. L'Envoi p.381 [7] The New Yorker (2006) The injustice collector (http:/ / www. newyorker. com/ archive/ 2006/ 06/ 19/ 060619fa_fact?printable=true#ixzz0oqM8PeE5) by D. T. Max, June 19, 2006
External links
Dictionary of the History of Ideas: (http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-71) Literary Criticism Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism (http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908430.html) Award Winners Internet Public Library: Literary Criticism (http://www.ipl.org/div/litcrit/) Collection of Critical and Biographical Websites A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology (http://www.unizar.es/departamentos/ filologia_inglesa/garciala/bibliography.html) (University of Zaragoza)
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