Learn Everything About Literary Criticism

Criticism in the most general sense, refers to an act of interpreting, analyzing and evaluating pieces of arts. The concept finds its relevance in almost every field of art, today- from criticizing a piece of painting to criticizing a movie.

In a similar manner, the concept has found its relevance in the world of literature as well. Each piece of work, which is written, is criticized, so as to bring to the audience it's worth.

In contrast to its literal meaning, criticism in the world of literature does not mean demeaning of that piece of work or bringing out its faults, rather, in literary criticism a piece of writing is defined, classified into a set category, analyzed, interpreted, and evaluated according to the set standards for any literary worth.

Not only is the work analyzed and evaluated but the writer of the work also. Being a complex topic, this field has attracted the attention of a large number of audiences and is a must if you want to understand any piece of work from all dimensions. Therefore, there are chances that learners, who are new into this field of criticism, may need project help, when they are working on the topic. 

There are various further divisions into this field of literary criticism, which are as follows:

1. Theoretical Criticism:

This type of criticism comprises the explicit theory of literature, which means its general terms and principles as well as certain distinctions and categories that have to be applied while analyzing any piece of literature. Some case studies help to provide light on literary criticism .  It also contains the criteria, that is, the set standards and norms, on which these pieces of literature have to be evaluated. There are various literary critics that have flourished in various eras and added to the field:

• Longinus (Greece)

• Horace (Rome)

• Boileau (Germany)

• Saint-Beuve (France)

• Samuel Johnson (England)

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (England)

• Mathew Arnold (England)

• Edgar Allan Poe (America)

• Ralph Waldo Emerson (America)

Along with these prominent critics, there have been certain prominent literary criticism works written throughout centuries. Some of them are:

• Principles of Literary Criticism by I.A. Richards (1924)

• Biographia Literaria by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

2. Practical or Applied Criticism: 

This criticism concerns itself with particular works of certain writers. Herein the theoretical principles, using which the criticism has been done, are left implicit, and made evident only on certain occasions.

 This area has a huge contribution given by the critics in England, notably John Dryden in his Restoration, in The Lives of English Poets by Samuel Johnson, in Biographia Literaria, in those chapters wherein Coleridge has talked about Wordsworth’s poetry as well as his lectures on William Shakespeare, William Hazlitt’s lectures on Shakespeare as well as the English poets of 1820s and 1830s, in Essays in Criticism by Mathew Arnold, in I.A. 

Richard’s Practical Criticism, in the Selected Essays by T.S. Eliot and many such essays by Virginia Woolf, F.R. Leavis and Lionel Trilling. The American New Criticism had developed a different technique of practical criticism that focused on the ‘close reading’ of a single text. 

The best example of this new technique was The Well Wrought Um by Cleanth Brooks. In case of practical criticism, there are further differences between impressionistic criticism and judicial criticism. 

3. Impressionistic Criticism:

 This type of criticism tries to bring out the underlying essence and feelings of the lines used in a text. In other words, it tries to bring out the felt qualities of a particular passage or a piece of work. Later, it tries to express the responses that the work evokes from the readers. 

That is what we call the expression of impression. William Hazlitt, in his essay On Genius and Common Sense said that your feelings help you decide and not your reason. His statement clearly justifies the idea behind the impressionistic criticism. Along with Hazlitt, Walter Peter too gave his views on the idea.

 He said that in criticism it is important to see and analyze a thing as it really is. In his preface to the Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873), Walter Peter poses this question as to “What is this song or picture…to me?” The research paper writing done by Anatole France, the French poet, describes criticism as adventure among masses. 

4. Judicial Criticism:

 This type of criticism makes the readers analyze a work and explains its effects by referring to techniques, styles, subjects and other such things. This technique can be found in some critical essays of E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf as well as in Longinus’ characterization of Odyssey in his treatise On the Sublime. 

5. Mimetic Criticism:

 Relates the work closely to human life representing everything as truth and adequate. This can be seen in critical works of Plato and Aristotle.

6. Pragmatic Criticism: 

It views that a work is written in order to produce an effect on the audience. Its value is judged based on the success of this task as achieved by the work. 

7. Expressive Criticism: 

Relates a piece of work to its author and analyzes it. It developed immensely in the Romantic era and says that a piece of work is the result of the author’s views and imagination (specially relating to poetry). It basically defined a poetry as a spontaneous overflow of ideas, expressions or feelings resulting from the poet’s imagination and culminating into his writing. It focused on the idea of individual vision and mind. These ideas were evident in the writings of psychoanalytic and psychological critics and in critics of consciousness like Geneva School and Georges Poulet. 

8. Objective Criticism:

 Defines literary work as self-sufficient and separate from the author. The work has to be judged and analyzed by its intrinsic criteria keeping aside the extrinsic one. 

Thus, that was all that one needs to know as basics of literary criticism as well as for effective tasks help. There are various other research paper writings and critical works that have elaborated more on the criticism aspect of literature and can help in further understanding.