(F) CRITICISM
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CRITICISM?
It is a kind of bridge between the author and the reader. It exposes the inner beauty and significance of a work of literature. It is concerned with defining, classification, expounding and evaluating works of literature. Carlyle says, '' Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired; between the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpses of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. '' So the critic explains the full meaning and value of a work to those who might not grasp them without his help. Matthew Arnold also defines criticism as a "disinterested endeavor toʻlearn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." The reader would miss half the inner meaning and beauty of a work of literature without the help of a good critic. If we think that who is superior between the author and the critic then in this connection, it can be asserted without any shade of doubt that the author. is superior to the critic, because no critic can exist or function without the creative artist. The author is the base on which the critic stands. Criticism is subservient to art. Criticism derives its existence from literature, as literature does from life. However, some critical Works, such as Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets or Coleridge's Blographia Literaria are as good works of literature as of criticism. They would last as long as literature would last.
Kinds of Criticism
There are three kinds of criticism:
(1) Legislative Criticism: It is a criticism that evaluates a work of literature by the rules or principles laid down by the ancient Greek or Latin critics or authors. The principles to judge or evaluate the merits or demerits of an epic or a tragedy are laid down by Aristotle in his Poetics. Here Aristotle gives a standard definition of Tragedy which is accepted to the present day. He also lays down the characteristics of the great tragic hero, the kind of external and internal sufferings that he undergoes, and finally the Cathartic effect that a great tragedy leaves on the mind of the reader or the spectator. Shakespeare largely wrote his great tragedies according to these principles laid down by Aristotle. Similarly, Aristotle also laid down the principles of the Epic which Milton followed in his Paradise Lost. Shakespeare also had the models of tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus before him, as Milton had the model of Homer's Iliad for his epic. Similarly, the rules and models for the Pastorals, the Pastoral Elegy, the Sonnet or the Odes were also laid down by the ancient Greek or Latin critics and poets. The great legislative critics in English who enunciated all these ancient principles and strongly recommended that they should be strictly adhered to are Pope in The Essay on Criticism, Dryden in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Ben Jonson in his Discoveries, and Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets. The poets and authors and critics of the Augustan period of the eighteenth century in English largely followed the Legislative principles. This type of Criticism is also called. Judicial Criticism.
(2) Aesthetic Criticism: This kind of criticism discovers imaginative, emotional or aesthetic beauty in a literary work as against the creed of application of ancient rules and principles. The aesthetic critics hold that aesthetic beauty in a work of literature cannot be produced simply by adhering to the ancient rules or by slavishly imitating them. Aesthetic criticism developed with the growth of a romantic type of literature in the nineteenth century. The whole of the Elizabethan çriticism in England, with the exception of Sidney and Ben Jonson, and leaving out a large part of eighteenth-century criticism, the whole of English criticism is aesthetic criticism. Aesthetic criticism treats literature as an art, an independent work of emotional and aesthetic beauty and therefore it should be judged by its own merits, and not by ancient rules. It came into vogue with Coleridge in the early nineteenth century, with Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde in the Victorian Age, and I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis in our own. Practically the entire English criticism since the nineteenth century is aesthetic criticism.
(3) Descriptive Criticism: It is a study or evaluation of individual works or individual authors. It evaluates their aims, methods, and effects. It brings out the aesthetic beauty, emotional effect, and significance of each work or each writer. The critic may justify his findings on the basis of legislative or aesthetic critical norms, or he may apply his own judgment on the basis of the intrinsic beauty or value of the work under discussion. This form of criticism is by far the most popular form today. Much of criticism today is of this kind. This form of criticism is also called Practical Criticism.
SOME IMPORTANT GREEK, ROMAN AND FRENCH CRITICS AND THEIR CRITICAL WORKS
GREEK
FRENCH
WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY CRITICISM?
It is a kind of bridge between the author and the reader. It exposes the inner beauty and significance of a work of literature. It is concerned with defining, classification, expounding and evaluating works of literature. Carlyle says, '' Criticism stands like an interpreter between the inspired and the uninspired; between the prophet and those who hear the melody of his words, and catch some glimpses of their material meaning, but understand not their deeper import. '' So the critic explains the full meaning and value of a work to those who might not grasp them without his help. Matthew Arnold also defines criticism as a "disinterested endeavor toʻlearn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world." The reader would miss half the inner meaning and beauty of a work of literature without the help of a good critic. If we think that who is superior between the author and the critic then in this connection, it can be asserted without any shade of doubt that the author. is superior to the critic, because no critic can exist or function without the creative artist. The author is the base on which the critic stands. Criticism is subservient to art. Criticism derives its existence from literature, as literature does from life. However, some critical Works, such as Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets or Coleridge's Blographia Literaria are as good works of literature as of criticism. They would last as long as literature would last.
Kinds of Criticism
There are three kinds of criticism:
(1) Legislative Criticism: It is a criticism that evaluates a work of literature by the rules or principles laid down by the ancient Greek or Latin critics or authors. The principles to judge or evaluate the merits or demerits of an epic or a tragedy are laid down by Aristotle in his Poetics. Here Aristotle gives a standard definition of Tragedy which is accepted to the present day. He also lays down the characteristics of the great tragic hero, the kind of external and internal sufferings that he undergoes, and finally the Cathartic effect that a great tragedy leaves on the mind of the reader or the spectator. Shakespeare largely wrote his great tragedies according to these principles laid down by Aristotle. Similarly, Aristotle also laid down the principles of the Epic which Milton followed in his Paradise Lost. Shakespeare also had the models of tragedies of Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus before him, as Milton had the model of Homer's Iliad for his epic. Similarly, the rules and models for the Pastorals, the Pastoral Elegy, the Sonnet or the Odes were also laid down by the ancient Greek or Latin critics and poets. The great legislative critics in English who enunciated all these ancient principles and strongly recommended that they should be strictly adhered to are Pope in The Essay on Criticism, Dryden in the Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Ben Jonson in his Discoveries, and Dr. Johnson in his Lives of the Poets. The poets and authors and critics of the Augustan period of the eighteenth century in English largely followed the Legislative principles. This type of Criticism is also called. Judicial Criticism.
(2) Aesthetic Criticism: This kind of criticism discovers imaginative, emotional or aesthetic beauty in a literary work as against the creed of application of ancient rules and principles. The aesthetic critics hold that aesthetic beauty in a work of literature cannot be produced simply by adhering to the ancient rules or by slavishly imitating them. Aesthetic criticism developed with the growth of a romantic type of literature in the nineteenth century. The whole of the Elizabethan çriticism in England, with the exception of Sidney and Ben Jonson, and leaving out a large part of eighteenth-century criticism, the whole of English criticism is aesthetic criticism. Aesthetic criticism treats literature as an art, an independent work of emotional and aesthetic beauty and therefore it should be judged by its own merits, and not by ancient rules. It came into vogue with Coleridge in the early nineteenth century, with Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde in the Victorian Age, and I.A. Richards and F.R. Leavis in our own. Practically the entire English criticism since the nineteenth century is aesthetic criticism.
(3) Descriptive Criticism: It is a study or evaluation of individual works or individual authors. It evaluates their aims, methods, and effects. It brings out the aesthetic beauty, emotional effect, and significance of each work or each writer. The critic may justify his findings on the basis of legislative or aesthetic critical norms, or he may apply his own judgment on the basis of the intrinsic beauty or value of the work under discussion. This form of criticism is by far the most popular form today. Much of criticism today is of this kind. This form of criticism is also called Practical Criticism.
SOME IMPORTANT GREEK, ROMAN AND FRENCH CRITICS AND THEIR CRITICAL WORKS
GREEK
| sn no' | WRITERS | WORKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Plato (427-347 B.C) | Republic; Symposium; Dialogues; Phaedrus |
| 2 | Aristole (384-322 B.C) | Poetics; Rhetoric |
| 3 | Longinus (213-273) | On Sublime |
ROMAN
| sn no' | WRITERS | WORKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Horace (65-8 B.C) | Ars Poetica (Art of Poetry) |
| 2 | Quintillian (35-95 A.D) | Institutio Oratoria(12books)(the education of orator) |
| 3 | Dante (1265-1321 A.D) | De Vulgari Eloquio (Of Writing in Vernacular) |
FRENCH
| sn no' | WRITERS | WORKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boileau | Art Poetique |
| 2 | Rapin | Reflections |
ENGLISH CRITICISM OF THE CRITICS
| sn no' | WRITERS | WORKS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | William Webbe | The discourse of English Poetry |
| 2 | Stephen Gosson | The School of Abuse |
| 3 | Philip Sidney | An Apologie for Poetry |
| 4 | Thomas Lodge | A Defence of Poetry, Music and Stage Plays |
| 5 | Ben Jonson | Discoveries |
| 6 | John Dryden | Prefaces and Dedicatory Epistles to his Plays and Fables |
| 7 | Alexander Pope | Essay on Criticism (in verse) |
| 8 | Dr. Samuel Johnson | Lives of the Poets; Preface of Shakespeare |
| 9 | William Wordsworth | Preface to the Lyrical Ballads |
| 10 | S.T. Coleridge | Biographia Literaria; Lectures on Shakespeare |
| 11 | P.B. Shelley | Defense of Poetry |
| 12 | Charles Lamb | The English Comic Writers |
| 13 | Thomas Love Peacock | The Four Ages of Poetry |
| 14 | William Hazlitt | Characters of Shakespeare's Plays; The English Poets; The English Comic Writers; The Dramatic Literature of the Age of the Elizabeth |
| 15 | Matthew Arnold | Essays in Criticism; On the Study of Celtic Literature; On Translating Homer |
| 16 | H.G. Wells | The Contemporary Novel |
| 17 | Walter Pater | Appreciations; Renaissance |
| 18 | T.S. Eliot | The Sacred Wood; What is a Classic? The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism; Points of View; Elizabethan Essays |
| 19 | Samuel Butler | Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered |
| 20 | Stephen Spender | Poetry Since |
| 21 | William Empson | Seven Types Ambiguity; Some Versions of Pastoral |
| 22 | I.A. Richards | Principles Literary Criticism; Practical Criticism; The Meaning of Meaning; The Foundation of Aesthetics; Coleridge on Imagination |
| 23 | FR. Leavis | New Bearing in English Poetry; For Community; The Great Tradition; The Common Pursuit; Revaluation D.H Lawrence: Novelist; Education and the university |
| 24 | David Daiches | New Criticism; Critical Approaches to Literature |
| 25 | Northrop Frye | Anatomy of criticism |
OBJECTIVE TYPE OF QUESTIONS
1. Who called Dryden the father of English criticism?
(a) P.B. Shelley
(b) Coleridge
(b) Coleridge
(c) John Keats
(d)Dr. Johnson
2. Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads is believed to be the Preamble to Romantic Criticism. In which year was it published?
(a) 1798
(b) 1800
(c) 1807
(d) 1820
3. "Poetry is emotions recollected in tranquillity."Who has defined Poetry in these words?
(a) Coleridge
(b) Wordsworth
(c) Matthew Arnold
(d) Shelley
4. Who gave the concept of "Art for Art's sake"?
(a) T. S. Eliot
(b) Matthew Arnold
(b) Matthew Arnold
(c) John Keats
(d)Walter Pater
(d)Walter Pater
5. Who is believed to be the pioneer of the so-called New Criticism?
(a) T.S.Eliot
(b) I.A.Richards
(c) John Crowe Ransom
(d) FR.Leavis
6. Who called Shakespeare's Hamlet an artistic failure?
(a)T.S.Eliot
(b) Samuel Butler
(b) Samuel Butler
(c) F.R.Leavis
(d) William Empson
(d) William Empson
7. Who was the first literary critic who said that Art is twice removed from reality'?
(a) Quintilian
(b) Plato
(b) Plato
(c) Longinus
(d) Aristotle
(d) Aristotle
8. What is the meaning of the term 'Anagnorists' as used by Aristotle in his Theory of Tragedy?
(a) The hero's recognition of his tragic end
(b) The hero's recognition of his adversary
(c)The hero's recognition of his tragic flaw
(d) The hero's ignorance about his tragic flaw
9. Sidney's Apologie for Poetry is a defense of poetry against the charges brought against it by-
(a) John Skelton
(b)Stephen Gosson
(b)Stephen Gosson
(c) Henry Howard
(d) Roger Ascham
(d) Roger Ascham
10. Aristotle uses the term 'Hamartia' in his theory of tragedy? What does 'Hamartia' stand for?
(a) The tragic end of the play
(b) The death of a tragic hero,
(c) The conspiracy hatched by the villain of the tragedy
(d) A weak trait in the character of the hero.
11. According to Ben Jonson, the concept of a 'humorous' character is-
(a) A character whose actions are whimsical
(b) A character whose temperament is determined by one of the four fluids in the human body
(c) A character who entertains by his dialogues
(d) A character who dominates all othėr characters by his witty repartees.
12. An Elizabethan Puritan critic denounced poets as 'fathers of lies' and 'caterpillars of a commonwealth'. Who was he who used these offensive terms?
(a) Henry Howard
(b) Roger Ascham
(c) William Tyndale
(d) Stephen Gosson
13. What is the meaning of the term 'Peripeteia' as used by Aristotle in his Theory of Tragedy?
(a) Change in the fortune of the hero from good to bad
(b) Fluctuations occurring in the fortune of the hero
(c) Constancy in the fortune of the hero
(d) Change in the fortune of the hero from bad to good
14. Ars Poetica is the most important critical work of-
(a) Horace
(c) Ovid
(c) Ovid
(b) Longinus
(d) Virgil
15. Poetry was generally written in 'Poetic diction by:
(a) The Romantic poets
(b) The Elizabethan poets
(c) The Victorian poets
(d) Neo-classical poets
16. "The tragi-comedy, which is the product of the English theatre, is one of the most monstrous inventions that ever entered into a poet's thoughts." Whose view is this?
(a) Wordsworth
(b) Alexander Pope
(b) Alexander Pope
(c) Joseph Addison
(d) Ben Jonson
(d) Ben Jonson
17. A critic says that Pope's essay on criticism is 'all stolen'. Name that critic:
(a) Cowley
(b) T. S. Eliot
(c) Dr. Johnson
(d) Lady M. W. Montaigne
18. Which of the following critics preferred Shakespeare's Comedies to his Tragedies?
(a) Dr. Johnson
(b) Addison
(b) Addison
(c) Dryden
(d) Pope
(d) Pope
19. "I write in meter because I am about to use a language different from that of prose." Who says this?
(a) Shelley
(b) Keats
(b) Keats
(c) Coleridge
(d) Wordsworth
(d) Wordsworth
20. Shelly's Defence of Poetry was a rejoinder to-
(a) Sidney's An Apologie for Poetry
(b) Dryden's Essay of Dramatic Poetry
(c) Dr. Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare
(d) Thomas Love Peacock's The Four Ages of Poetry
21. In whose opinion "Poetry is the most highly organized form of intellectual activity"?
(a) Dryden
(b) D.H.Lawrence
(b) D.H.Lawrence
(c) T. S. Eliot
(d) W. B.Yeats
(d) W. B.Yeats
22. Who is the author of The Sacred Wood?
(a) T. S. Eliot
(b) H. G. Wells
(b) H. G. Wells
(c) Matthew Arnold
(d) I. A. Richards
23. Who is the author of Seven Types of Ambiguity?
(a) William Empson
(b) William Hazlitt
(c) Philip Sidney
(d) Samuel Butler
24. "Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling; it takes its origin from emotions recollected in tranquillity ." It is written by-
(a) T. S. Eliot
(b) S. T. Coleridge
(c) William Wordsworth
(d) Matthew Arnold
25. Which of the following is the critical work of Ben Jonson?
(a) Reflections
(b) Discoveries
(c) Arte of English Poesie
(d) Defense of Poetry
26. What has Dryden to say about the observance of the three Classical Dramatic Unities?
(a) He says that every dramatist should decide it for himself
(b) He advocates their strict observance
(c) He does not advocate their strict observance
(d) He is silent about this issue
27. Dryden wrote An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Is this -
(a) An Interlocution
(b) An Essay
(c) A Drama
(d) None of these
28. What does Sidney say about the observance of the three Dramatic Unities in drama ?.
(a) He favours the observance of the unity of action only
(b) Their observance depends upon the nature of the play concerned
(c) They must be observed
(d) It is not necessary to observe them
29. Who is believed to be the pioneer of the so-called 'New Criticism'?
(a) Samuel Rogers
(b) De Quincey
(b) De Quincey
(c) John Crow Ransom
(d) Thomas Campbell
30. Who wrote Shakespeare's sonnets Reconsidered?
(a) William Empson
(b) Stephen Spender
(b) Stephen Spender
(c) Samuel Butler
(d) H.G. Wells
(d) H.G. Wells
31. What is 'denouement'?
(a) The climax in a tragedy
(b) The ending of a tragedy
(c) The ending of a comedy
(d) The climax in a comedy
32. Who proposed that poets should be banished from the ideal Republic?
(a) Sir Thomas More in his Utopia
(b) Plato in his Republic
(c) Aristotle in his Poetics
(d) Sir Philip Sidney in his Arcadia
33. "It is not rhyming and versing that maketh a poet, no more than a long gown maketh an advocate". Whose opinion is this?
(a) Shakespeare's
(b) Shelly's
(b) Shelly's
(c) Eliot's
(d) Sidney's
(d) Sidney's
34. "Be Homer's works your study ánd delight. Read them by day, and meditate by night." Who gives this advice to the poets?
(a) Horace
(b) Plato
(c) Pope
(d) Dr. Jonson
35. Who defines poetry "as a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty"?
(a) Matthew Arnold
(b) T.S.Eliot
(c) Keats
(d) Shelley
(d) Shelley
36. Who said, "For art's sake alone I would not face the toil of writing a single sentence"?
(a) T.S. Eliot
(b) George Bernard Shaw
(c) Tennyson
(d) Wordsworth
(d) Wordsworth
37. In the 'Life' of which poet did Dr. Johnson apply the term 'Metaphysical School of Poetry'?
(a) Donne
(b) Cowley
(c) Milton
(d) Gray
38. "Dryden found English poetry brick and left it marble." Who said this?
(a) Coleridge
(b) Dr. Johnson
(c) Matthew Arnold
(d) Pope
39. How many principal sources of Sublimity are there according to Longinus?
(a) Four sources
(b) Matthew Arnold
(c) No definite number of sources
(d) Three sources
40.) Who is the critic that introduced the terms, a 'flat character' and a 'round character'?
(a) D.H Lawrence
(b) Matthew Arnold
(c) T.S.Eliot
(d) William Golding
ConversionConversion EmoticonEmoticon