A very brief history of literary criticism till the first half of the twentieth century.

1. Literary Criticism
Course code 3/336
Group 136/262 * 501/263.
Level 6

2. What is literature and what is literary
criticism?
• Literature is writing at its best. Literary
criticism is commentary on literature that tries
to judge, evaluate, comment or interpret and
even analyze it in depth to make it more
appreciated and understood by its readers.
• It criticizes literature and is about literature. It
is writing on literature. Critics write on poetry,
drama, fiction and prose or non fiction.

3. Who is a critic? The role of a critic.
• He reads literature properly.
• He has a great deal of knowledge.
• He can compare and contrast between
texts/books and authors.
• He knows how to interpret texts in depth,
analyze, criticize and evaluate justly.
• He knows how to write analysis well.

4. Humanist literary criticism
• In the West literary criticism starts with Greek
criticism by writers like Plato and Aristotle.
• This is called classical literary criticism.
• Plato wrote moral/didactic criticism. What
one wrote was important. Writing had to be
education. Plato wrote the Republic. He
wanted writers to teach people to be better
citizens.

5. Plato’s theory
• According to Plato art or literature or writing was
mimesis, meaning it was an imitation of the real
that was an imitation of the ideal.
• Art is an imitation of an imitation.
• Platonism = ideal or perfect or true - to real or
reality - to art or literature (mimetic)

6. Aristotelianism
• Aristotle wrote the Poetics.
• His is aesthetic criticism and not moral or
didactic criticism unlike Plato’s.
• For him art or literature is an imitation of
reality.
• He defined the epic poem, the lyric, tragedy,
comedy etc.
• His main contribution was his theory of
catharsis.

7. Aristotelianism
• Catharsis means purgation or purification of
the emotions of pity and fear in or from the
audience on watching a tragedy or the fall of a
noble character due to hamartia or a tragic
flaw or deficiency in his moral make up.

8. Revision
• What book did Plato write? The Republic.
• Which country did he live in? Greece.
• Plato and Aristotle are the main critics in the school of
Grecian literary criticism.
• Plato’s criticism is called moral or didactic criticism.
• Plato wanted literature to teach or instruct or educate.
• He propounded the theory of mimesis. For him art is
an imitation of an imitation, meaning of reality which
imitates the ideal.

9. Revision - 2
• Aristotle wrote The Poetics
• HE is also a Greek critic from Greece.
• He is not moral but aesthetic. He believed
that art is for entertainment and not just for
education.
• For him art is (only) an imitation of reality.
• His main contribution is his definition of
tragedy and of catharsis and hamartia.

10. The scope of literary criticism
• Teaches to read literature
• Teaches to analyze literature
• Teaches to interpret literature
• Teaches to write on literature
• Teaches to understand life better through
understanding literature
• Teaches to compare and contrast works of literature
and authors, times, ideas, places etc.
• Gives knowledge and helps judge or evaluate literature
• Elevates and refines our sensibilities regarding
literature.

11. The role of a literary critic
• A critic can mediate between the reader and the
text, the reader and the author and between text
and text.
• He can shape literary sensibilities
• He makes the reader aware of the complexities of
literature and why some works are considered
classics and others not.
• Most of all he makes others also into capable
critics of their times and contexts and other times
in terms of theory and analysis and practice.

12. A brief history of liberal humanist criticism
in the West from Plato to the 20th century’s
beginning.
• Criticism in the West begins in Greece with
Aristotle and Plato.
• Then it goes to Rome with Horace’s Ars
Poetica and Longinus’s On the Sublime
• Italy and Dante brings in the rise of regional
and vernacular languages.
• We then see criticism arise to aid literature in
England, France, Russia and Germany but we
are concerned only with England and English.

13. A brief history of liberal humanist
criticism in England
• The first important critic is Sir Philip Sidney with his Apology for
Poetry. He wanted poetry to delight and instruct through delight.
He defended poetry against Stephen Gosson. (Elizabethan age)
• The neo classical age belonged to Alexander Pope and John Dryden
with their prescriptive criticism based on Greece and Rome and
their own criticism. Samuel Johnson also mattered with his Prefaces
to Shakespeare and Lives of the Poets
• Then came the Romantic Age with William Wordsworth and Samuel
Taylor Coleridge with their great work returning English literature to
inspiration which was The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads.
• The great critic of the Victorian age was Matthew Arnold with his
Study of Poetry.
• The twentieth century saw the rise of the great critics like T.S. Eliot ,
F. R. Leavis and I . A. Richards, not to mention William Empson.

14. 20th century literary criticism
• T.S. Eliot is known for his terms like “objective
correlative”, “dissociation of sensibility” and his
essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent” as well
as his study on metaphysical poetry etc.
• F.R. Leavis is known for his study of the novel.
• His book is “The Great Tradition.”
• I. A. Richards introduced close reading (lemon
squeezer criticism) and new criticism and William
Empson is noted for his book “Seven Types of
Ambiguity.”