Literary criticism

Introduction

Literary criticism is the evaluation, analysis, description, or interpretation of literature. Literary criticism is usually found by way of a critical essay. However, book reviews that are in depth will be sometimes considered as literary criticism. Literary criticism may scrutinize a particular piece of work or it may analyze an entire collection or genre. Literary criticism is how users evaluate and interpret art. Literary criticism is all about telling users how or why money should be spent. For example, if a new movie is out; critics will let viewers know if it is felt that the movie is worth spending money on or if viewers could wait until it reaches the DVD. Many good sources of literary criticism are available to users on the Internet; however, many require that users purchase a subscription in order to view them.

The critic's precise purpose may be to make value judgments on a work, to explain his or her interpretation of the work, or to provide other readers with relevant historical or biographical information. The critic's general purpose, in most cases, is to enhance the reader's understanding of the literary work. Critics typically engage in dialogue or debate with other critics, using the views of other critics to develop their own points. Unfortunately, when critics assume that their readers are already familiar with previous criticism, the argument may be difficult to follow.

History of literary criticism

Early or Classical critics
Before Plato, with the exception of a few occurrences there was no real literary criticism in the sense of theory of literature. He essentially attacked all poetry. However, Aristotle continued on his teacher’s ways, and further expanded upon Plato’s Ideas thus expanding and creating more literary criticism, and in the 4th century BC wrote the Poetics which gives specific example of critiques of contemporary works of art. These two men primarily gave birth to literary criticism.

• Early Critics and Texts
  • Plato: Ion, Republic, Cratylus
  • Aristotle: Poetics; Rhetoric
  • Horace: Art of Poetry
  • Longinus: On the Sublime
  • Plotinus: On the Intellectual Beauties
  • St. Augustine: On Christian Doctrine
  • Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy
  • Aquinas: The Nature and Domain of Sacred Doctrine
  • Dante: The Banquet, Letter to Can Grande Della Scala
  • Boccaccio: Life of Dante, Genealogy of the Gentile Gods
  • 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 beginning of the Renaissance critics started in 1498 with the translation of the classic texts. The most important of these translations was of Aristotle’s Poetics, translated by Giorgio Valla. Throughout the Renaissance many authors critiqued classic works, as well as criticizing modern works.

• Main Critics and 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

Enlightment Critics
From Milton in England to Henry David Thoreau and even later with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Walt Whitman, these authors frequently questioned and criticized literature, Arts , Social Norms essentially expanding their predecessors platforms.

• Add in Enlightenment examples

Other Key Texts and Critics

• 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-Despréaux: ''The Art of Poetry
• John Locke: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
• Samuel Johnson: On Fiction, Rasselas, Preface to Shakespeare
• Edward Young: Conjectures on Original Composition
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing: Laocoön
• Joshua Reynolds: Discourses on Art
• Richard "Conversation" Sharp: Letters & Essays in Prose & Verse
• 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

Types of literary criticism

Moral Criticism, Dramatic Construction (~360 BC-present)
An example of Moral Criticism can be found in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Plato’s book "The Republic" was an example of some of the earliest literary criticism. Aristotle's Poetics was another early writing that gave Moral Criticism a start and has continued since .

Formalism, New Criticism, Neo-Aristotelian Criticism (1930s-present)
Formalism, New Criticism and Neo-Aristotelian Criticism include the concerns of the parts of a text and how each of the parts fit together to make a whole. Formalist criticism excludes any information outside the actual text; biographies, historical or literary allusions, mythological patterns, or psychological traits of characters. Formalist critics examines each part of the text, each chapter, characters, settings, tone, point of views, diction, and the fictional world created in the text; after which the critic analyzes and describes how each part work together to create the story .
Some of works that are considered to be good examples of Formalism, New Criticism, and Neo –Aristotelian Criticism are written by authors many authors. Formalist critics, Roman Jakobson and Viktor Shklovsky are two of the most well-known for this type. Jakobson’s Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics, and Sholovsky’s Theory of Prose are examples of Formalist Criticism. , Cleanth Brooks, David Daiches, John Crowe Ransome, and T. S. Eliot are all authors where examples of New Criticism can be found. Ransome’s book The New Criticism, or Eliot’s essay Tradition and the Individual Talent provide some of the best examples of New Criticism. R.S. Crane’s Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, and Wayne C. Booth’s The Rhetoric of Fiction are works that can be read to get a better understanding on the subject of Neo-Aristotelian Criticism.
Psychoanalytic Criticism, Jungian Criticism (1930s-present)
Psycholoanalytic Criticism and Jungian Criticism interpret writings, authors, and readers through a psychological lens. The main focus for Psychological Criticism is on the expression of the unconscious mind in the work, looking at psychology in the narrative itself as well as in the author. Psychological critics consider the symbols in the work and what they might mean; they evaluate the psychological state of characters and examine their motivations and actions with an understanding of psychology in mind. This type of criticism also explores matricide as a literary theme and can explore the author’s own history to determine why they chose to tell that particular story.
Some examples of Psychoanalytic and Jungian Criticism can be found in the works of Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung. Psychoanalytic Criticism builds on Freudian theories of psychology . His work, Creative Writers and Daydreamers, or The Interpretation of Dreams are good starting points to understanding this form of criticism. Jung, who was a student of Freud, wrote On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry, a good source for understanding Jungian Criticism.
Marxist Criticism (1930s-present)
Marxist criticism, or sociological criticism, involves discussions of society, social relationships, and historical events that may affect society; shows the relationship between the artist and the society in which they live and how society affects an artist. Introduced by Kenneth Burke, Sociological Criticism is literary criticism directed to understanding literature in its larger social context. It examines the work of art in its social context and studies its social effects. Sociological critics focus on ideologies and experiences of people who lived in the specific time period and their culture; they look for themes of oppression and liberation.
Marxist Criticisms are based on the theories of Karl Marx. The writings of Leon Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution, and Georg Lukács’ The Ideology of Modernism, are available to assist with the understanding of Marxist Criticism in literature.
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)
Reader-response criticism is a literary criticism that focuses on what texts do. These critics raise rhetorical questions that regard how the readers join in with the author in a way of being able to help the text have meaning. Instead of being an impressionistic free-for-all, subjective or legitimizing of all half-baked personal comments on a literary work. Instead, reader-response criticism is focused on finding the in the act of reading and looking at the ways readers or communities responses through examination of their individual experiences through texts.
The works of authors Peter Rabinowitz’s Before Reading, or Norman Holland’s The Dynamics of Literary Response, are well known sources for expanding your understanding of Reader-Response Criticism. Hans Robert Jauss’ Horizons for Reading is also another source for information on this type of literary criticism.
Structuralism/Semiotics (1920s-present)
Two important theorists form the framework of structuralism are Charles Sanders Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure. Syntactic Structures, written by Noam Chomsky, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays by Northrop Frye, and The Elementary Structure of Kinship by Claude Lévi-Strauss are good sources for better understanding on Structuralism.
New Historicism/Cultural Studies (1980s-present)
New Historicism has been studied and explored extensively in many works. Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures or Pierre Bourdieu’s Outline of a Theory of Practice are good places to start when researching important examples of New Historicism literature. Stephen Greenblatt, who coined the phrase “New Historicism”, wrote The Power of Forms in the English Renaissance, another good source for information on this form of literary criticism.
Post-Structuralism/Deconstruction (1966-present)
Post-Colonial Criticism (1990s-present)
Feminist Criticism (1960s-present)
Gender/Queer Studies (1970s-present)