Business of literary criticism in the 20th century

One of the famous literary critics in the last century was F R Leavis. He defended Milton against T S Eliot as the greater of the two. He was also editing a magazine with fine critical articles, called Scrutiny. His writing was very rigorous. One of his works was The Common Pursuit.

In the above work, he discusses the literary critics and philosophy. At the outset, he declares that 'literary criticism and philosophy seems to me to be quite distinct and different kinds of discipline."

He underlines that "the critic is indeed concerned with evaluation but to figure him as measuring with a norm which he brings up to the right object and applies from the outside is to misrepresent the process."

So, what should be the critic's aim? According to Leavis, the critic's aim is to realize as sensitively and completely as possible a work of art with a certain valuing that is implicitly stated in his analysis.

"The business of the literary critic is to peculiar completeness of response and observe a strict relevance in developing his response into a commentary," Leavis explains. He elaborates his contention with this remark.

"The critic "must be on his guard against abstracting improperly from what is in front of him and against any premature or irrelevant generalizing of it or from it"

One of his statements I like is "the truth that it is only in individuals the society lives."

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On this business of criticism, I want to bring your attention to a book called Age of Criticism. It was written by William Van O'Connor. He first quotes Henry James the American novelist whose pithy mentioning is amusing as well. He said: "The story and the novel, the ideas and the form are the needle and thread. I never heard of a guild of tailors who recommend the use of the thread without the needle, without the thread"

O'Connor's point here is advisable when he says that "Only a critic with the necessary native sensibility and a wide knowledge of techniques, genres, styles and so forth could have the requisite taste. Rhythm and metre must be regarded as aesthetically identical with style, as style is identical with artistic form and form in turn is the work of art in its spiritual and indivisible al self."

He continues: " Implicit in certain expressions of realism in literature has been the assumption that external nature is the real world and that writer therefore is obligate to, feel and express it as it actually is philosophical idealism"

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"Realism was not a creation or the discovery by anyone particular man. Its germ was in the air. Democracy in politics, naturalism in theology, materialism in philosophy and realism in literature are very closely linked together," says H T Peck.

He continues: "Te general drift of the realistic movement begins with Stendhal carries through Balzac, the Goncourt's and reaches absolute perfection in Madame Bovary, Zola. And Realism is new development."

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"Contemporary criticism is involved in the philosophical, sociological, and psychological and an aesthetic current of its time" says T S Eliot. He further says Objective Correlative, the impersonal nature of art, the need for a sense of history, a pointing to the most usable parts of the literature of the past, meaning of tradition, cooperation of the reader, analysis and comparison, transparent style re some of the features.

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