Literary Criticism
Author of this webpage: Renée Goodvin
Literary criticism is a term applied since the seventeenth century to the scientific investigation of literary documents in regard to such matters as origin, text, composition, and/or history.
Literary criticism attempts to serve the following purposes:
- Explain a work and its underlying principles to an uncomprehending audience
- Interpret works to readers who might otherwise fail to understand or appreciate them
- Discover and apply principles which describe the foundations of "good literature"
- Justify imaginative literature in a world that finds its value questionable
- Prescribe rules for readers and legislate taste for the audience
- Judge works by clearly defined standards of evaluation
- What is literature?
- What does literature do?
- What is literature worth?
From the time of Aristotle, Theoretical Criticism has been present. Theoretical criticism proposes a "theory of literature." This theory yields general principles, terms, categories, and criteria in the form of standards and norms to be applied when identifying and analyzing works of literature, as well as when evaluating these works and their authors.
The scholar of Relativistic Criticism employs any and all methods which will aid him/her in explaining a work of art. It is the Relativistic critic who attempts to interpret, justify, and explain a work and its underlying meaning in order to help the audience's understanding and appreciation of the work.
According to Absolutist (or Judicial) Criticism there is only one proper critical procedure and one set of principles that should be applied to the critical task of evaluating literature. What these procedures and principles are is dependent on the critic, but the absolutist critic prescribes these rules for the audience as the way to judge literary works.
Applied (or Practical) Criticism concerns itself with the discussion of particular works of literature and their authors. Applied criticism is often distinguished into Impressionistic Criticism and Judicial (or Absolutist) Criticism.
Textual Criticism attempts by all scholarly means to reconstruct the original manuscript of a work. In order to accurately establish what an author actually wrote, the textual critic compares and contrasts all available versions (manuscripts and printed texts) of a work to trace variants, changes, and errors.
Many other theories of literary criticism can be classified according to when explaining or judging a work of literature, they refer to the work primarily in relation to:
- The Outside World
- The Reader (or Audience)
- The Author
- The Work as an Entity in and of Itself
- Other Literature
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Mimetic criticism emphasizes the correspondence of the work to external reality. In other words, reality is the context in which the work is studied. Mimetic criticism is committed to truth, reality, and the idea that literature, in some ways, imitates life. It is this idea that leads the mimetic critic to view the work as a true imitation, reflection, or representation of the world and human life.
- New Historicism focuses on the sociological and cultural influences of a work. Culture is the context in which the work is studied, and sometimes new historicism is referred to as cultural criticism. New historicism stresses that there are no "universal truths," no "natural behavior," that no text can offer a transparent window to historical fact, and that the text is a product of social causes and a producer of social effects. Therefore, the new historicist's task is complex. He or she must scrutinize the historical causes and consequences of a text while also attending to the historical and cultural conditions of the text's production.
Reader-Response Criticism, Pragmatic Criticism, and Impressionistic Criticism analyze the work in relation to the reader (or audience).
- Reader-Response Criticism views the current interaction between the reader and the text as paramount. Therefore, it can be said that the audience is the context in which the work is studied. The reader-response critic is concerned with the present audience's reactions, interpretations, and experiences with the text. It is the reader-response theory of criticism that believes that there is no one single best meaning of a work since the meaning of the text is the creation of the individual.
- Also employing the audience as the context in which the work is studied is Pragmatic Criticism. Unlike reader-response criticism, pragmatic criticism has clearly defined expectations of the audience. This type of criticism views the work as something that has been constructed to achieve certain effects on the audience (such as aesthetic pleasure, moral instruction, certain emotions, etc.) and it judges the work according to whether or not these effects have been achieved.
- Another theory of criticism that studies the work in relation to the audience includes Impressionistic Criticism. Like reader-response criticism, impressionistic criticism is concerned with the interaction of the text and the individual. However, impressionistic criticism differs from reader-response criticism in one very important way. Impressionistic criticism's audience is the critic him or herself. Therefore, the main focus of the impressionistic critic is on the personal responses that the work evokes and how the work affects him or her.
Historical Criticism and Expressive Criticism evaluate the work in relation to the author.
- The basic premise of Historical Criticism is that literary meaning is grounded in the author. The author is the context in which the work is studied and is the cause of the work's meaning. Historical criticism is the search for the author's original intention. To ask what a literary work means, according to the historical critic, is to ask what the author meant when he or she created it. In order to study the author as context, it is necessary for the historical critic to examine the work against its historical surroundings and determine how these surroundings worked with the individuality of the author and the individuality of the age to create and define the text.
- Expressive Criticism also finds literary meaning in the author. It defines the text as an expression of the author or a product of his or her imagination. Expressive critics study the text as a direct result of the author's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and experiences and judge the work by its conscious or unconscious adherence the author's vision, state of mind, or temperament.
Formal Criticism treats the work as an entity in and of itself.
- Formal Criticism, also called objective criticism and new criticism, is the theory of criticism that sees the work as the central object that unites authors and readers. Key concepts of formal criticism include the idea that the work is something that exists independently of its creator and/or its readers, that there is no separation of form from content, that form is meaning, form is value, and that explication is criticism. Formal critics believe that the work offers a basis for objective study because it is free from author and/or reader psychology. The aim of formal criticism is to see the work as a "whole." This is achieved by investigating how the work fits together -- how the parts cohere to produce the "whole," how our understanding of the parts leads to our understanding of the "whole," and how "these particular words is this particular order" constitute the "whole."
Intertextual Criticism, which is sometimes called Genre or Archetypal Criticism, explores the work in relation to other works of literature.
- According to Intertextual Criticism, a text is best understood by seeing it in the larger context of the linguistic and literary conventions it employs. In other words, literature is the context in which the text is explored and our understanding of literature depends on knowledge of its conventions. The intertextual critic studies the work by comparing and contrasting it to other texts: sometimes in terms of genre characteristics, sometimes in terms of the nature and significance of its archetypal patterns, and sometimes in terms of both.
For more information about Literary Criticism, check out these links!
- Critical Reading: A Guide, by Professor John Lye
- A guide to help you understand what you might look for in analyzing literature, particularly poetry and fiction.
- How to Find Poetry Explication and Criticism
- A guide to help you find poetry explication and criticism using (gasp!) print sources at (gasp! gasp!) a physical library! Created by the University of Tennessee Martin Reference Department.
- Online Criticism Guide, by the Internet Public Library
- A collection of links to some of the best starting places to find online critical writing.
- Internet Public Library Literary Criticism Pathfinder
- A guide that helps you understand what literary criticism is and where to find it.
- Introduction to Modern Literary Theory, by Dr. Kristi Siegel
- An introduction to modern literary theories and trends.
- Voice of the Shuttle - Literary Theory
- One of the premiere sites on the web to find links to literary theory.
Merriam Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature
Contexts for Criticism, 2nd ed., by Donald Keesey
A Handbook to Literature, rev. ed., by William Flint Thrall, Addison Hibbard, & C. Hugh Holman
and
A Glossary of Literary Terms, 6th ed., by M. H. Abrams
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Last updated January 27, 2005