Introduction to Literary Criticism

 What is Literature?
According to David Daiches, “any composition in prose or verse which has for its purpose not
the communication of fact but the telling of a story (either wholly invented or given new life
through invention) or the giving of pleasure through some use of the inventive imagination in the
employment of words”

 What is Literary Criticism?

 A philosophical inquiry into the nature of literature

 Can ask a series of questions

What are the distinguishing features of literature?

How does it differ from other kinds of discourse?

What is the nature of literature?

What is its function, and therefore its value?

How does the literary mind operate in creation? Etc.

These answers differ from age to age – bound up with the problems of a particular literature at a
particular age

 Why Literary Criticism?

 Applies a critical lens to the text and the world

 Develops skills of identifying what the matter is in a text, what textual elements are
notable – close, critical, comprehensive reading
 Move from literacy to critical literacy:
 To become aware of the cultural locatedness of practices
 To question the taken for grantedness of systematic knowledge – understanding that what
appears to be ‘natural’ is actually a view produced by a particular combination of
historical, social, and political influence
  Tracing the Origins
Earliest systematic critical discussion devoted to the nature and value of literature was that
of Plato and Aristotle in Greece

Before this there were critical references in various poems, dramas, dialogues etc. Lines of
critical significance in Homer; and The Frogs of Aristophanes has several passages of critical
enquiry.

Major milestones in Critical survey

The Classical Age: Graeco-Roman influence – Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Horace

Renaissance to the Victorian Age

Renaissance: Sir Philip Sydney

Neo-Classical: John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Aphra Behn, Dr. Samuel Johnson

Romantic Criticism: William Wordsworth, Coleridge

Victorian: Mathew Arnold

20th century Criticism

Formalism: Boris Eichenbaum, Mikhail Bakhtin, Roman Jakobson

New-Criticism: John Crowe Ransom, Wimsatt and Beardsley

Poetics of modernism: Yeats, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot

Marxist and Left-wing Critics: F. R. Leavis

Early feminist critics: Virginia Woolfe, Simone de Beauvoir

What is Classical and Classicism?

"Classical" - a term applied to writing considered worthy of preservation and study - e.g. works
of poets like Homer and Virgil

Classicism: literary, social, and moral values embodied in the works of ancient Greek and
Roman writers.
The main features of classicism:

 Art as mimesis
 Didacticism: emphasis on moral values
 concern with form - unity, proportion, restraint, simplicity, grandeur
 Belief in the divine origin of poetry
 Clear cut and inviolable rules regarding form in art
 Society more important than the individual
 Emphasis on the universal over the individual.

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 Plato
 Plato (428-347 B.C)

 Greek philosopher

 Student of Socrates

 Writer of philosophical dialogues: Ion, Lysis, Gorgias, Symposium,

Phaedrus, and Republic

 Theory of art and literature found mostly in Ion and Republic

 Founder of the Academy in Athens where Aristotle studied

Who’s Who? SPA

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Socrates was Plato’s teacher, and he features in many of Plato’s writings conducting
conversations he met in Athens. Plato recreates these conversations, or dialogues, combining
actual details from Socrates’ philosophy with Plato’s own views. Socrates did not write down
any of his philosophy – he was executed at the age of 70 by the Athenian government for
“corrupting youth” with his unorthodox views. Aristotle was Plato’s student, and he set out to
revise his teacher’s ideology

Historical context
State of Greece:

 Political decline and dissolution – education was in a sorry state

 Golden age of Greek art and literature was over – literature had become immoral, corrupt,
and degenerate, and was the object of much hostile criticism

 Epics of Homer were venerated – however philosophers criticized those passages in

Homer which showed the Gods in an unfavourabe light
  Philosophers and orators were seen as superior to poets and artists

 Courage, heroism were virtues prized by the Greeks.

Plato’s Basic Critical Concept

For Plato, art is about utility – usefulness, not artistry – he wanted to educate the youth to make
them good citizens of the ideal state – so he judges poetry from this practical point of view and
finds it wanting

Further, Plato said that art is imitation – the problem with imitative art is that it is fake – this is a
problem because the main aim of life is to understand true reality

Therefore, rather than spending time pondering actual reality, people read mere imitations or
fictional stories and this becomes a waste of time – it is not conducive to social morality

Main concepts:

1. Imitation or Mimesis

2. Poetic inspiration

2.1 Moral argument

3. Allegory of the cave\

Plato's Critical Concepts Explained

1. Mimesis or Imitation

In Plato’s system, truth is at the top and only knowable by the soul. God or nature is the first
author, or maker, of things. These things are called ‘forms’. Each form is the perfect model or
idea behind the object it resembles in the visible realm. One of Plato’s favourite examples is
abed. The form of ‘bed’ exists in te realm of true thought – the bed makers make a copy of this
bed – the painter makes a copy of this bed. So there are three beds: one in nature which god
makes, one which the carpenter manufactures, and the one which the painter paints. Thus a
painter is an imitator of what the others manufacture. So, the bed exists first as an idea, second as
an object of craftsmanship, third as object of representation in art. The artist is therefore, third
removed or thrice removed from nature or reality. Similarly, when one looks at a bed from the
side or front or from any point, it does not actually vary, it only appears different. Thus the
painter is concerned with imitating not a reality, but only the appearance as it appears. So, the art
of imitation or mimesis only grasps a small part of each object and is far removed from reality.
Similarly, a poet only imitates images without necessarily understanding it, and is far removed
from truth.

Another danger is that there are three arts relating to each thing: one to make it, one to use it, one
to imitate it. The user of anything is the most experienced and must report to the maker what
good or bad result arises from the thing he uses – e.g. The flute player tells the flute maker about
the music created by the flute. The maker has the right belief because he speaks to the user. On
the other hand the imitator will neither know not have a right opinion about the goodness and
badness about what he imitates. The poet will imitate though he has no knowledge and will
misrepresent reality.

Plato’s doctrine of forms reduces the status of what is around us to an inadequate and ephemeral
representation of what is perfect and eternal. The poet’s representation or imitation of our world
is thus a representation of what is itself an inadequate and ephemeral representation of the truly
real. The philosopher will try to discern through the world of phenomena the reality of what
those phenomena is the reflection. The poet, on the other hand, by his imitation of the world of
phenomena, moves in the opposite direction further away from reality.

2. Poetic inspiration

Plato shows Socrates taking with a young rhapsode, or performer of poetry. This rhapsode, Ion,
explains how proud he is that he can perform or comment on practically anything Homer ever
wrote. However, Socrates says he cannot be an expert on anything Homer wrote because he is
not an expert on any of the subjects Homer wrote about: warfare, politics, horses, etc. He cannot
examine them with the eye of an expert in warfare, politics, horses. Similarly, Homer the poet
and creator of the work cannot be an expert on these subjects because he was only a poet. So
the plot, details, character, and entertainment value of the works arises from the fact that Homer
was out of his mind when he wrote, and Ion is out of his mind when he performs. Homer’s mind
was taken over, or inspired, by the muses. It is divine inspiration that brings literature into
existence. Thus, poetry is not rational, the poets themselves do not understand what they write in
a moment of frenzy. Therefore, poetry cannot be relied upon as it is to the result of a conscious,
considered judgment. And even if poets express divine truths, these remain beyond the
comprehension of ordinary mortals.

In a tragedy, emotions of pity and grief are given unrestrained expression to move the spectators
– these emotions cannot be such safeguards as reason.

3. Moral
As a corollary to this point, Plato states that poetry is a bad moral influence as they appeal to the
baser instincts of man – the love of the sensational and the melodramatic. By treating vice and
virtue alike and making one or the other triumph indifferently without regard to moral
consequences, poetry and drama had a demoralizing effect. Virtue came to grief in literature
many a time – in the poetry of Homer, the narrative verse of Hesiod, the tragedies of Sophocles
etc. Poets, like Homer and Hesiod, tell “lies about Gods”, making them appear corrupt, immoral,
dishonest, wrangling and subject to the vices of common humanity.
Young people who cannot distinguish between the allegorical and non-allegorical will be
influenced by these vices at an impressionable age.

Instead of saying that what god did was just and good, and victims were punished because they
deserved punishment, they preset that God who is good as the cost of evil.

God is perfect – and what is perfect does not change except for worse. In poetry, God changes
appearances, deceiving mankind by seeming ot appear in various guise and bewitching us.

By presenting Hades as a fearful place, poets make men fearful of death. The more poetical a
poem is, the less these lines about myths of Hades should be presented to boys and men who
should be “more afraid of slavery than of death”. When they see such tragedies performed, they
would mourn and lament freely, like women.

4. Cave image:

In the dialogue on the allegory of the cave, Socrates explains the state of human knowledge by
comparing it to a group of persons sitting in a cave watching shadows on the wall. This group of
shadow watchers is chained to their chairs and cannot even move their heads. They can only
stare at the shadows and either simply laugh or cry, or they study the details and compare
opinions, arguing about what the shadows mean and how to link together all the earlier episodes.

Plato says that this cave is a metaphor for the visible world. Everything is a shadow image of
something that one mistakes for true reality. However, one person is released and travels ot the
entrance of the cave, where the light hurts their eyes that is accustomed to the darkness of the
cave. The world of daylight represents the realm of ideas. His eyes grow accustomed to the light
and he can look up at the sun (allegory for the power behind pure thoughts or ideas), and
understand where the ultimate source of light or life is. This gradual process is a metaphor for
education and awareness. The enlightened person has a moral responsibility to the unfortunate
beings in the cave to rescue them and bring them to light.

Plato's Attack on Poetry

 According to Plato the best guardians for a society would be ‘philosopher-kings’ who
were trained to reach true knowledge through study and dialectical argument, and not
poets. Poets and other artists who only imitate things they see around them are not useful
to society. Further, since people are usually drawn to colourful and exciting imitations
more readily than to reason, truth, or socially useful actions, the imitations of poets,
painters, and other artists can be a bad influence. They appeal to the senses and sensual
 pleasures thereby, strengthening the inferior part of the soul, and poets “feeds and waters
the passions” and thus weakens the rational, spiritual part. Art is thus, deceptive,
psychologically destabilizing, leading to immortality and politically dangerous because it
is a threat to the common good.

 Thus, Platonic criticism refers to any theory of criticism with a primary (or significant)
interest in moral and social issues.

 Plato attacks poetry on four grounds: Intellectual, emotional, moral and utilitarian

(refer the PPT on moodle for extra notes on Plato’s criticism on poetry)