literary theory and criticism

literary theory and criticism, along with other studies, broke away from philosophy and formed its own disciplines, including biobibliography (the Tablets of Callimachus, the prototype of the literary encyclopedia), textual criticism to determine the authenticity of a text, and textual commentary and the publication of texts (Zenodotus of Ephesus, Aristophanes of Byzantium, and later Aristarchus of Samothrace). A very basic way of thinking about literary theory is that these ideas act as different lenses critics use to view and talk about art, literature, and even culture. Through the Prague linguistic circle the formalist school had a significant influence on literary theory and criticism throughout the world, particularly on the “new criticism” and on structuralism, both of which also subscribed to T. S. Eliot’s ideas. At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. Opposing vulgar sociologism, Marxist literary theory and criticism demonstrated not only the distinctive nature of art and the laws of its development but also the dialectical conception of the social and historical causality of art and its social function. It covers a … Literary Theory and Criticism. The Western tradition of literary theory and criticism essentially derives from the Greeks, and there is a sense in which Plato, Aristotle, and Longinus mark out positions and debates that are still being played … So, what is this new thing? The key element of this principle is conscious service “to socialism and the toiling millions.” Lenin’s theory of reflection, his principle of partiinost’ in literature, and his doctrine of cultural heritage were fundamental for the creation of the theory of socialist realism. In school, English instructors ask students to critique literary texts, or works. A shortcoming of this approach was its tendency toward rigid classification, reducing the diversity of literature to one of two forms and exaggerating the spontaneous development of artistic forms. The philosophical period of literary theory and criticism was a time of large-scale systems conceived as universal knowledge of art (and, more broadly, of all existence), which “crushed” beneath them the history of literature, poetics, and stylistics. Potebnia’s study of the analogy between words and images with respect to their social “applications” substantiates the ambiguity of the artistic work, which seems to contain a multiplicity of meanings, and reveals the image’s infinite capacity for renewal in the course of its historical life and the creative role of the reader in this change. As the cultural history method developed, it not only underrated the artistic nature of literature, which was regarded primarily as a social document, but also revealed strong positivist tendencies that ignored the dialectical method and aesthetic criteria. Initially, criticism was inseparable not only from other areas of literary study but from art as a whole. The right of literary theory and criticism to deal with contemporary artistic phenomena was affirmed in Boccaccio’s lectures on the Divine Comedy and his biography The Life of Dante Alighieri (c. 1360). Lenin’s article “The Party Organization and Party Literature” (1905) recognizes the importance of literature in the social and political life of society. The stylistic study of contemporary works has almost always been one of the chief functions of literary criticism in the strict sense. The development of aesthetic ideals cannot be considered apart from the life of society as a whole, as an independent sphere obeying only its internal laws. Similar views were held by E. Bjork in the United States, who attributed the symbolic effect of artistic works to magic rituals. Benfey’s theory stimulated both the historical approach to links among peoples and an interest in such purely poetic elements as plots and characters. Interpreting art from the point of view of historical materialism, Marxist literary study from the outset criticized not only positivist (naturalistic) and subjective-idealist trends in modern literary theory and criticism but also the formalistic and antirealistic aesthetic notions of the decadents. It is not … Such was F. Nietzsche’s polarity of artistic types, derived from the classical gods Apollo and Dionysus: the plastic and musical, the contemplative, mental, form-creating principle as opposed to “vital,” emotional-aesthetic, turbulent, and at the same time tragic elements (The Birth of Tragedy From the Spirit of Music, 1872). However, reader-response criticism can take a number of different … The various disciplines within literary theory and criticism also shift from one level to another: thus, criticism becomes material for the history of literature, for historical poetics, and for other studies. Greater attention has been directed to the points of contact and the transitions in artistic epochs, periods, and styles—for example, ancient and Byzantine literature, medieval Latin and modern European literature, the Enlightenment and romanticism, and ancient and modern Russian literature. Literary theory and criticism is in many ways linked to the humanities, some of which (philosophy, aesthetics) serve as its methodological basis; other branches of the humanities resemble literary theory and criticism … The category of the “unique” came to denote the literature of a given people or period, possessing its own measure of perfection. Literary criticism denotes action and a literary theory denotes abstract, an idea, a set of rules. Following J. Hamann in studying the Eastern sources of classical Greek literature and approaching the Bible as an artistic work of a particular age, Herder created the preconditions for the comparative historical method. Marx and Engels also concluded that capitalist production is inimical to art and poetry. It assumed three principal forms. Plekhanov’s writings on literature include Unaddressed Letters (1899–1900), articles on V. G. Belinskii and N. G. Chernyshevskii, The Proletarian Movement and Bourgeois Art (1905), and Art and Public Life (1912–13). 20, p. 90). E. Staiger made time the cornerstone of his classification of artistic styles and types of poetry, in which lyric, epic, and dramatic poetry express, respectively, the past, present, and future (Principles of Poetics, 1946; The Transformation of Style, 1963). Marxist-Leninist literary studies represented a new stage in the history of modern literary theory and criticism. Judgments about art are found in such ancient works as the Indian Vedas (tenth to second centuries B.C. The Renaissance stimulated the creation of original poetics adapted to local and national conditions. It also interprets the literature of the past from the standpoint of modern social and artistic aims. sobr. soch. The traditions of this school were developed by De Sanctis (History of Italian Literature, 1870), W. Scherer (History of German Literature, 1880–83), and M. Meléndez y Pelayo (History of Aesthetic Ideas in Spain, 1883–91). The inclusion of folklore in the scholarly study of medieval European and Oriental literatures cast doubt on the validity of models, whether classical or Renaissance. In the 1920’s the formalist school emerged in Russia, reacting against intuitionism and biographic impressionism and against the methods that ignored the distinctive features of art (the school of cultural history). Disciplines arose that studied all aspects of the culture of a particular ethnic group, for example, the Slavic studies of J. Dobrovský, J. Kollár, and P. Šafařik. A. Potebnia approached the problem of imagery from another angle, from the standpoint of the structure of the work of art as a whole (From Lectures on the Theory of Literature, 1894; From Notes on the Theory of Literature, 1905). Later, T. Benfey (Panchatantra, 1859) proposed the migration theory, attributing the similarity of plots of folk tales not to the common origin of peoples, but to later contacts among peoples and the migration of plots from India. In developing the principle of histori-cism with respect to the alternation of artistic styles and forms, the school avoided explaining the lawlike regularities of the historical process and tended toward irrationalism and skepticism. Greater attention to form was shown in H. Wölfflin’s theory of the structural differences between the art of the Renaissance and of the baroque (Principles of Art History, 1915), which was subsequently applied to literature by the German theoretician O. Walzel. A school of “philosophical criticism” represented by D. V. Venevitinov, N. I. Nadezhdin, and to some extent V. G. Belinskii, arose in Russia in the 1820’s and 1830’s, influenced by and growing out of German philosophical systems. The writing of treatises on rhetoric, as well as poetics, continued into modern times; in Russia M. V. Lomonosov published his Short Manual on Eloquence in 1748. I want this title to be available as an eBook. Aristotle’s practical contribution to criticism, as opposed to his ethical defense of literature, lies in his inductive treatment of the elements and kinds of poetry. D. Diderot advocated middle-class drama, a genre between tragedy and comedy. As time passed, however, these works became more normative, for example, Horace’s Art of Poetry. In China the doctrine of the social and educational function of art evolved within Confucianism (Hsiin-tsu, c. 298–238 B.C.). Try to find the answer to this question. A. Richards, Practical Criticism. 12, p. 736). The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism has become the indispensable resource for scholars and students of literary theory and discourse. Can you find a suitable definition for critical theory? After the Human Culture, Theory and Criticism in the 21st Century. History of schools and trends. Currents based on existential philosophy occupied a special place in Western literary studies. Marxist-Leninist doctrine must be applied in thoroughly analyzing the literary process, exposing “the reactionary essence of bourgeois ‘mass culture’ and decadent currents” and struggling against “all types of non-Marxist views of literature and art and revisionist aesthetic conceptions” (Kommunist, 1972, no. Literary theory deals with the ways to distinguish literary texts from each other and establish … These theories in turn became the basis for the Scottish scholar A. Lang’s theory of the spontaneous origin of plots, known as the anthropological theory. Drawing on Belinskii’s legacy, revolutionary-democratic criticism attempted to restore the broad philosophical and epistemological context of literary research: “If it is important to collect and study facts, it is equally important to try to grasp their meaning. In treating problems of the history of literature and criticism in the strict sense, the revolutionary democrats emphasized the link between the literary process and the social struggle, the interaction and opposition of different social groups, and the progress of the liberation movement (Chernyshevskii’s Essays on the Gogol Period in Russian Literature, 1855–56; Dobroliubov’s On the Degree of Participation of Folk Character in the Development of Russian Literature, 1858). Impressed by the successes of the natural sciences, the school of cultural history attempted to reduce causality and determinism in literary study to precise, tangible factors, such as H. Taine’s triune of race, milieu, and moment (History of English Literature, 1863–64). Stimulated by the study and collection of ancient works, literary study in Byzantium was primarily concerned with biobibliography and commentary. In the Oriental countries general theoretical and aesthetic methods (alongside textual analysis and bibliographic work) predominated for many centuries. It uses the principles and ideology of feminism to critique the language of literature. Criticism in the strict sense also arose in Europe in antiquity, as may be seen from the early philosophers’ opinions about Homer and the comparison of the tragedies of Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ comedy The Frogs (405 B.C.). W. Dilthey, the leading representative of Geistesgeschichte posited three basic types of world view and artistic activity (positivists, objective idealists, and dualists). A Question: Is every act of literary criticism guided by a literary theory? The view of the classical genres as “eternal” canons coexisted with the sense of dynamism and incompleteness that was characteristic of the Renaissance. Moreover, secondary disciplines have arisen in literary theory and criticism, such as the theory and history of criticism in the strict sense, the history of poetics (as opposed to historical poetics), and the theory of the stylistics of artistic language. This enables Soviet literary theory and criticism to overcome the one-sidedness of certain foreign schools, for example, to determine the true role of the mythological and ritual elements in classical and medieval literature. By examining the bases of criticism… Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or more broadly, by the politics of feminism. The development of literary theory and criticism became worldwide, breaking down age-old barriers between East and West. Literary theory deals with the ways to distinguish literary texts from each other and establish categories, classifications and schools of thoughts that are apparently visible in literary texts. . The three spheres of literary theory and criticism are closely related. Also available in print at … The many links between literary theory and criticism and linguistics are based not only on common material (language as a means of communication and as the raw material of literature) but also on the contiguity of the epistemological functions of words and images and on an analogy between the structure of words and images. Examining a specific literature work or it may involve reviewing the entire work of an author. In his Art of Poetry (1674), N. Boileau relegated general epistemological and aesthetic problems to the background and concentrated on constructing a harmonious poetics imbued with Cartesianism and conceived as a system of genre, stylistic, and linguistic norms. In this article, I will focus on some of the key differences between literary theory and literary criticism. A literary theory takes one step ahead and it may be the result of extensively literary criticism. C. Lévi-Strauss and J. Mukařovský studied the function of form. I will be back with more articles in this ongoing series on Literary Theory and Literary Criticism and I hope this series will be helpful to those who are concerned. soch., vol. A. Schlegel applied this idea to literary history in his Berlin lectures on literature and art (1801–03) and his Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature (1809–11). This attitude was best expressed by J. G. Herder in his Shakespeare (1773) and Ideas Toward a Philosophy of Human History (1784–91). However, the theory did not investigate the genesis of the poetic elements and often resulted in random and superficial comparisons. These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory. Whether a social system favors or hinders artistic development, the direction taken by artistic development, and the predominance of particular forms and genres—all are determined not merely by the level of the material base of an epoch but above all by the nature of the epoch’s characteristic social relations: class or nonclass, antagonistic or nonantagonistic, and conducive or hostile to fostering man’s individuality. Sociological criticism: Like historical criticism, sociological criticism examines literature in the cultural, economic, and political context in which it is written or received. Is it same as a literary theory? As a result, the historical aspect of literary theory and criticism often coincided with the theoretical aspect, as N. Stan-kevich noted in his comment about Hegel: “The history of art, considered rationally, is also the theory of art” (Stikhotvoreniia, Tragediia, Proza, Moscow, 1890, p. 179). Written by Alok Mishra for English Literature Education, Proudly serving literature students. The eContent uploaded on this website is on Literary Theory and Criticism… Prof.DavidMiralles,PH.D.! Let’s begin with the basic distinction. During the 1960’s study of the historical destiny of artistic works—the history of their recognition and the problems of their origin and typology—were set as scholarly goals. Within the scope of literary history, historical poetics investigates the development of artistic structures and their elements, such as genres, plots, and stylistic images. Contemporary schools of literary theory and criticism in the West include the existential, the sociological, the ritual-mythological, and the structuralist. A. But inasmuch as modern literary theory and criticism was developing out of the “discovery of antiquity,” the Renaissance faced the problem of originality in its full force. At the turn of the 20th century an antipositivist trend based on idealist premises arose in Western literary theory and criticism. The Taoist school developed an aesthetic theory of the beautiful in conformity with Tao, the universal creative principle (Lao-tzu, sixth and fifth centuries B.C.). Like the entire intellectual process of life, aesthetic notions, literature, and art are considered by historical materialism to be the “ideal superstructure” above the real economic base of society (F. Engels, ibid., vol. The history of literature studies the literary past as a process or one of the stages of this process. Contemporary literary theory and criticism encompasses a complex and changing group of disciplines. The first histories of national literatures appeared in the Oriental countries, notably Haga Yaichi’s Ten Lectures on Japanese Literature (1899) and, somewhat later, histories of Indian literature and Lu Hsin’s Short History of Chinese Prose (1923). Rationalism also stimulated attempts to achieve a deductive knowledge of art and to reduce all its elements to “one principle,” for example, imitation (C. Batteux’s The Fine Arts Reduced to One General Principle, 1746). Parallel to the comparative historical school and correcting and elaborating its conclusions, there arose theories attributing the similarity of poetic forms to the uniformity of the human psyche (the ethnopsy-chology school of H. Steinthal and M. Lazarus) and to the animism common to all primitive peoples (E. B. Tylor). However, as historians of culture and sociologists of art, Plekhanov, Mehring, and Lafargue borrowed extensively from the cultural history school, adopting the idea that literature is linked to social psychology, which they interpreted “from the point of view of the mutual relations and mutual influence of social classes” (G. V. Plekhanov, “A. Greater attention is being given to the mathematical aspects of literary study, and structural-semiotic methods of research are developing. Byzantium and the Latin works of the Western European peoples were the links between ancient and modern literary theory and criticism. . In addition to the principal disciplines already mentioned, there are many auxiliary disciplines, such as the study of archives relating to literary theory and criticism, the compilation of bibliographies of literature and criticism, heuristics, paleography, textual criticism and commentary, and the theory and practice of publishing. A view of the literary work and the artistic process developed which … Among the first was the mythological school (its philosophical basis was the works on aesthetics of F. Schelling and the Schlegel brothers). These different lenses allow critics to consider works of art based on certain assumptions within that school of theory. 2, 1949, p. 264). This is because criticism can see the whole aspect of literary work, based on the critic used in seeing the literary work. In literary theory it provides knowledge of the structure of any literary work (general poetics). Adhering to the classification of art forms proposed by J. F. Schiller (On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry, 1795), the romantics drew a distinction between classical (ancient) and modern (Christian) art forms. The romantic view that different criteria existed developed into the concept of different cultural periods expressing the spirit of a particular people or era. The auxiliary disciplines are an indispensable foundation for the primary disciplines. In the second half of the 19th century the school of cultural history became prominent. Profound concepts of art and literature also developed in the Oriental countries in ancient times. In the mid-1840’s, the study of folklore and ancient literature gave rise to the comparative historical method. Finally, with E. Joung (Description of Original Works, 1759) and G. E. Lessing (Hamburg Dramaturgy, 1767–69), this tendency grew into an attack on all normative poetics, thus opening the way for the aesthetic and literary theories of the romantics. The biographical method also paved the way for the psychological theories of creativity of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of the complex and vital issues of 20th-century culture was that of cultural heritage. It provides knowledge of the Western European peoples were the links between ancient and modern literary theory criticism... 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