literary criticism 19th century

The Evolution of Criticism in the 19th Century: Analyzing Literary Perspectives and Cultural Shifts

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The Evolution of Criticism: Unraveling the Development in the 19th Century

The 19th century witnessed a significant evolution in literary criticism, as scholars and thinkers began to analyze and interpret literature in new and profound ways. This period saw a departure from the traditional views of literature as merely aesthetic or entertaining, and an emergence of more analytical and philosophical approaches.

Evolution of criticism in the 19th century can be attributed to several key factors. Firstly, the rise of Romanticism challenged the prevailing neoclassical notions of literature and opened up new avenues for interpretation. Romantics emphasized individual expression, emotion, and imagination, leading to a greater appreciation for subjectivity in literary analysis.

Another important development was the impact of social and historical context on literary interpretation. Critics began to consider the historical, political, and cultural circumstances in which works were written, realizing that these factors greatly influenced the meaning and reception of literature. This contextual approach, often referred to as historicism, allowed for a deeper understanding of the texts and their connection to the world around them.

In addition, the 19th century marked the birth of formal literary theory. Scholars like Ferdinand de Saussure and Mikhail Bakhtin developed structuralist and semiotic approaches respectively, exploring the underlying structures and systems within literature. These theories introduced concepts such as signifiers, signifieds, and intertextuality, adding layers of complexity and nuance to literary criticism.

Furthermore, the establishment of academic institutions and literary societies provided platforms for critical discourse and scholarly collaboration. Journals, such as The Edinburgh Review and The Quarterly Review, became influential in shaping the discourse around literature and promoting intellectual debates. Literary critics such as Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater emerged as prominent voices, advocating for the importance of literature in society and exploring the role of the critic.

Overall, the 19th century saw a revolution in literary criticism, marked by a shift towards subjectivity, historical context, formal theory, and institutionalization. These developments laid the groundwork for the diverse range of critical approaches that continue to influence literary analysis today.

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20 historical facts you didnt know, what does literary criticism entail in the 19th century.

Literary criticism in the 19th century involved the analysis and evaluation of literary works of that time period. It encompassed various approaches, such as historical, biographical, and formalist criticism.

Historical criticism focused on examining the social, cultural, and historical context in which a literary work was produced. This approach aimed to understand the influences and events that shaped the author’s ideas and the work itself.

Biographical criticism emphasized the author’s life experiences, personality, and beliefs as crucial factors in interpreting their works. Critics studied the biographical details of writers to gain insights into their motivations and intentions.

Formalist criticism concentrated on the formal elements of a literary work, such as its structure, language, style, and symbols. The focus was on analyzing how these elements contributed to the overall meaning and aesthetic value of the piece.

During the 19th century , literary criticism also witnessed the rise of critics who significantly influenced the interpretation of works. Notable figures included Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose emphasis on the unity of a literary work greatly impacted how poems were analyzed; John Ruskin, known for his detailed analyses of art and literature; and Matthew Arnold, who advocated for the notion of “the best that has been thought and said” in literature.

Overall, literary criticism in the 19th century sought to understand and evaluate literary works within their historical, biographical, and formal contexts, with influential critics shaping the discourse around literature during this period.

How did criticism evolve during the Victorian era?

During the Victorian era, criticism underwent significant evolution, reflecting the broader cultural and intellectual changes of the 19th century. Traditionally, literary criticism focused on the analysis and interpretation of literature, but during this period, it expanded to encompass social, political, and moral dimensions.

One notable development was the rise of the professional critic . Critics such as Matthew Arnold and John Ruskin emerged as influential figures who not only evaluated literary works but also provided guidance on aesthetic and moral values. They emphasized the importance of literature in shaping society and saw the role of criticism as a means to elevate public taste and morals.

The expansion of mass media in the 19th century played a significant role in the evolution of criticism. With the growth of newspapers, magazines, and literary journals, critics gained wider exposure and were able to reach larger audiences. As a result, criticism became more accessible and began to shape public opinion.

Another important aspect of Victorian criticism was its engagement with social and political issues. Critics, such as Thomas Carlyle and Karl Marx, incorporated their ideological perspectives into their literary analysis. They examined literature as a reflection of society’s problems and advocated for social reform through their critique.

Feminist criticism emerged during the later part of the Victorian era, challenging traditional notions of gender and sexuality. Writers like Virginia Woolf and Sarah Grand paved the way for a feminist analysis of literature, focusing on women’s experiences and critiquing patriarchal structures.

Overall, criticism in the Victorian era witnessed a broadening of its scope, incorporating aesthetics, ethics, social commentary, and ideological perspectives. It reflected the changing cultural landscape of the 19th century, where literature and criticism played pivotal roles in shaping public opinion and promoting social change.

How has literary criticism evolved throughout history?

Literary criticism in the 19th century underwent significant changes and developments that shaped its evolution throughout history.

During this period, Romanticism had a profound impact on literary criticism. Critics began to focus more on the emotional and imaginative aspects of literature, emphasizing individualism, subjectivity, and the power of the human imagination. Notable figures like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth emphasized the importance of personal response and interpretation in their critiques.

The rise of the novel as a literary form also had a substantial influence on literary criticism. As novels gained popularity, critics such as Henry James and Virginia Woolf began to analyze and interpret these new forms of narrative writing. They assessed the structure, characterization, and themes within novels, considering their social and cultural implications.

Another significant development in 19th-century literary criticism was the rise of literary theory . This marked a shift towards a more systematic and theoretical approach to analyzing literature. Critics like Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater introduced concepts such as “the best that has been thought and said” and “art for art’s sake,” respectively, which aimed to evaluate the value and purpose of literature within society.

Furthermore, social and political contexts played a crucial role in shaping literary criticism during this period. Marxist critics like Friedrich Engels and Georg Lukács analyzed literature from an economic and class-conscious perspective, while feminist critics such as Mary Wollstonecraft and Virginia Woolf examined the portrayal of women in literature and advocated for gender equality.

Overall, literary criticism in the 19th century evolved from a focus on the moral and didactic aspects of literature to a more subjective and analytical approach. It expanded to include various theoretical frameworks and incorporated social and political perspectives. These developments laid the foundation for further growth and diversification of literary criticism in the centuries that followed.

What were the changes in literature during the 19th century?

The 19th century witnessed significant changes in literature, which revolutionized the literary landscape of the time period.

One of the most notable changes was the rise of romanticism as a dominant literary movement. Romanticism emphasized individualism, emotion, and imagination, challenging the previous emphasis on reason and rationality. Writers like William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and Lord Byron embraced these ideals and explored themes of nature, love, and the supernatural in their works.

Additionally, the 19th century saw the emergence of realism as a reaction against the idealized and exaggerated portrayals of romanticism. Realist writers sought to depict life as it truly was, reflecting the social, political, and economic realities of the time. Authors such as Gustave Flaubert, Leo Tolstoy, and Charles Dickens presented vivid and detailed portrayals of everyday life, highlighting social issues and class disparities.

Furthermore, the industrial revolution played a significant role in shaping literature during the 19th century. The urbanization and technological advancements brought about by industrialization led to the emergence of new literary genres, such as the novel. The novel became a popular form of literature, providing a platform for authors to explore complex characters, intricate plots, and social commentary.

The 19th century also marked the beginnings of feminist literature, with writers like Mary Shelley and Charlotte Brontë challenging societal expectations and advocating for women’s rights through their works. These authors tackled issues of gender inequality and representation, paving the way for future feminist movements.

The 19th century witnessed a shift in literary movements from romanticism to realism, influenced by the social and technological changes brought about by industrialization. The era also marked the emergence of feminist literature, giving voice to previously marginalized perspectives. These changes in literature reflected the shifting ideologies and concerns of the time, setting the stage for the development of modern literature in the following centuries.

Frequently Asked Questions

How did the development of criticism in the 19th century shape artistic and literary movements of the time.

The development of criticism in the 19th century played a significant role in shaping artistic and literary movements of the time. During this period, critics emerged as influential voices that helped define the direction and purpose of art and literature.

Artistic Movements: Critics such as John Ruskin in the field of art and Charles Baudelaire in literature provided important commentary and analysis on the works of their contemporaries. Their critiques not only evaluated the technical aspects of the art but also delved into its deeper meaning and social implications. These critiques often sparked debates and discussions among artists, leading to the formation of new artistic movements.

Literary Movements: The rise of literary criticism in the 19th century had a profound impact on the development of various literary movements. For example, the Romantics were greatly influenced by critics like Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, whose theories emphasized imagination, individualism, and emotional expression. The Realist movement, on the other hand, was shaped by the critical writings of Gustave Flaubert and Emile Zola, who advocated for a truthful representation of reality in literature.

Public Reception: Criticism in the 19th century also played a crucial role in shaping public reception of artistic and literary works. Imaginative critics like Edgar Allan Poe, with his emphasis on symbolism and psychological depth, influenced the way readers approached and interpreted texts. Their reviews and analyses helped popularize certain works and shape the tastes and preferences of the reading public.

The development of criticism in the 19th century had a significant impact on artistic and literary movements of the time. It influenced the direction of these movements, fostered intellectual discourse among artists, and shaped public reception of creative works.

What were the key figures and publications that contributed to the growth of critical theory in the 19th century?

Key figures

1. Karl Marx – Marx, a German philosopher, economist, and political theorist, significantly contributed to the growth of critical theory in the 19th century. His work on capitalism, class struggle, and historical materialism laid the foundation for critical social analysis.

2. Friedrich Engels – Engels, a collaborator and close associate of Marx, played a crucial role in developing Marxist theory. Together, Marx and Engels co-authored “The Communist Manifesto,” which outlined their critique of capitalism and advocated for revolutionary change.

3. Max Weber – Weber, a German sociologist, was influential in the development of critical theory. His work focused on the relationship between capitalism, rationalization, and the modern state. Weber’s ideas on social stratification and bureaucracy added depth to critical analysis.

4. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel – Although he did not directly contribute to critical theory, Hegel’s dialectical philosophy had a significant impact on the intellectual milieu of the 19th century. Marx, in particular, drew on Hegelian dialectics to develop his own theory of historical materialism.

5. Friedrich Nietzsche – Nietzsche, a German philosopher, challenged traditional morality and questioned the foundations of Western civilization. His critiques of religion, power, and truth influenced later critical theorists, particularly in examining power structures and the construction of reality.

Publications

1. “Das Kapital” – Marx’s magnum opus, “Capital: Critique of Political Economy,” published in multiple volumes, aimed to analyze the capitalist mode of production. It provided a detailed examination of the exploitation of labor, the accumulation of capital, and the contradictions inherent in capitalism.

2. “The Communist Manifesto” – Co-authored by Marx and Engels, this pamphlet was commissioned by the Communist League and published in 1848. It presented a concise summary of their critique of capitalism and called for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie by the working class.

3. “Economy and Society” – This posthumously published work by Max Weber in 1922 explored the relationship between economics, politics, and social structures. It highlighted the impact of rationalization and bureaucracy on social organization, power dynamics, and the individual in modern society.

4. “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” – Nietzsche’s philosophical novel, published in multiple parts from 1883 to 1885, portrayed the journey of a prophet-like figure, Zarathustra, who challenges traditional values and champions the idea of the “overman” or “superior individual.” This work contributed to the questioning of established moral and societal norms.

5. “The Philosophy of Right” – Hegel’s influential work, published in 1821, presented his political and legal philosophy. It examined the relationship between individual freedom and the state, providing a framework for later critical theorists to analyze power and authority structures.

How did the emergence of industrialization and urbanization influence the development of criticism in the 19th century?

The emergence of industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century had a significant impact on the development of criticism. Industrialization , with its rapid technological advancements and mechanization of production, brought about significant changes in society. The growth of factories and the mass production of goods led to social and economic transformations that affected every aspect of life, including the arts and literature.

In the realm of criticism, industrialization contributed to the rise of new literary forms and genres. With the expansion of print culture and the increased accessibility of literature, there was a growing demand for critical analysis and commentary on literary works. Critics played a crucial role in evaluating and interpreting the new forms of literature that emerged during this period, such as realism and naturalism .

Moreover, industrialization also brought about new social and political issues that were subject to criticism. The working conditions and exploitation of the working class in factories became subjects of concern for many intellectuals and writers. Critics, through their writings, highlighted the injustices and inequalities brought about by industrial capitalism. They often used their platforms to advocate for social reform and expose the dark side of industrialization.

Additionally, urbanization had a profound influence on the development of criticism. As people migrated from rural areas to urban centers seeking employment opportunities, cities underwent dramatic changes in terms of population, infrastructure, and culture. The diverse and bustling city life provided critics with ample material for analysis and critique. They examined the cultural changes, social phenomena, and moral issues that arose in urban environments.

Furthermore, the concentration of intellectuals and artists in cities facilitated the establishment of literary and artistic circles where discussions and debates on various artistic movements and theories took place. These circles often functioned as hubs for critical engagement and exchange of ideas. Critics played an essential role in these intellectual communities, shaping aesthetic trends and offering their insights on contemporary artistic expressions.

The emergence of industrialization and urbanization in the 19th century had a profound influence on the development of criticism. These societal changes provided critics with new literary forms to analyze, social issues to critique, and urban environments to explore. Their writings not only shaped the understanding of literature but also contributed to broader discussions on societal developments and the human condition during this transformative era.

The development of criticism in the 19th century played a pivotal role in shaping the cultural and intellectual landscape of that time. It marked a shift from traditional literary analysis to more comprehensive examinations of art, literature, and society as a whole. Critics such as Matthew Arnold and Walter Pater championed the importance of subjective experience and emotional response in interpreting works of art. Meanwhile, the rise of journalism and the democratization of publishing allowed for a wider dissemination of critical ideas, giving birth to literary magazines and newspapers dedicated to criticism. The 19th century witnessed the birth of diverse critical theories, including formalism, historicism, and feminism, which continue to influence our understanding of literature and the arts today. Overall, the development of criticism in the 19th century paved the way for new approaches to analyzing and appreciating artistic expression, leaving a lasting impact on the subsequent evolution of intellectual and cultural thought.

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The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Russ Castronovo is Dorothy Draheim Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is author of three books: Fathering the Nation: American Genealogies of Slavery and Freedom; Necro Citizenship: Death, Eroticism, and the Public Sphere in the Nineteenth-Century United States; and Beautiful Democracy: Aesthetics and Anarchy in a Global Era. He is also editor of Materializing Democracy: Toward a Revitalized Cultural Politics (with Dana Nelson) and States of Emergency: The Object of American Studies (with Susan Gillman).

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How do we approach the rich field of nineteenth-century American literature? How might we recalibrate the coordinates of critical vision and open up new areas of investigation? To answer such questions, this book brings together twenty-three original articles written by leading scholars in American literary studies. By examining specific novels, poems, essays, diaries, and other literary examples, the articles confront head-on the implications, scope, and scale of their analysis. The articles foreground methodological concerns to assess the challenges of transnational perspectives, disability studies, environmental criticism, affect studies, gender analysis, and other cutting-edge approaches. The Oxford Handbook of Nineteenth-Century American Literature is both critically incisive and sharply practical, inviting attention to how readers read, how critics critique, and how interpreters interpret. It offers forceful strategies for rethinking protest novels, women's writing, urban literature, slave narratives, and popular fiction, to name just a few of the wide array of topics and genres covered. This book, rather than surveying established ideas in studies of nineteenth-century American literature, registers what is happening now and anticipates what will shape the field's future.

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Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Philosophy › Literary Criticism and Theory in the Twentieth Century

Literary Criticism and Theory in the Twentieth Century

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on January 7, 2018 • ( 6 )

Twentieth-century literary criticism and theory has comprised a broad range of tendencies and movements: a humanistic tradition, descended from nineteenth-century writers such as Matthew Arnold and continued into the twentieth century through figures such as Irving Babbitt and F. R. Leavis , surviving in our own day in scholars such as Frank Kermode and John Carey ; a neo-Romantic tendency, expressed in the work of D. H. Lawrence , G. Wilson Knight , and others; the New Criticism , arising initially in the 1920s and subsequently formalized and popularized in the 1940s; the tradition of Marxist criticism , traceable to the writings of Marx and Engels themselves; psychoanalytic criticism , whose foundations were laid by Freud and Jung; Russian Formalism , arising in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution; structuralism , which emerged fully in the 1950s, building on the foundations established in the early twentieth century by Saussure and Lévi-Strauss ; and the various forms of criticism which are sometimes subsumed under the label of “ poststructuralism ”: Lacanian psychoanalytic theory , which rewrote Freudian concepts; deconstruction , which emerged in the 1960s, as did feminism ; reader-response theory , whose roots went back to Husserl and Heidegger ; and the New Historicism , which arose in the 1980s.

At the end of the nineteenth century, criticism in Europe and America had been predominantly biographical, historical, psychological, impressionistic, and empirical. With the establishment of English as a separate discipline in England, many influential critics, such as George Saintsbury , A. C. Bradley , and Arthur Quiller-Couch , assumed academic posts. In America, influential theories of realism and naturalism had been propounded by William Dean Howells , Hamlin Garland , and Frank Norris . An important concern of American critics such as John Macy, Randolph Bourne, and Van Wyck Brooks was to establish a sense of national identity through tracing a specifically American literary tradition. In France, the most pervasive critical mode was the explication de texte, based on close readings which drew upon biographical sources and historical context. In the humanist tradition of Matthew Arnold , much of this fin-de-siècle criticism saw in literature a refuge from, or remedy for, the ills of modern civilization. In both America and Europe, the defenders and proponents of literature sought to preserve the humanities in the educational curriculum against the onslaughts of reformists such as Harvard University President Charles Eliot and John Dewey , who urged that the college education system should be brought into line with prevailing bourgeois scientific and economic interests.

The vast political and economic developments discussed above provided the broad context in which the literature and criticism of the twentieth century arose. The humanist tradition of the late nineteenth century, reacting against the commercialism and philistinism of bourgeois society, was continued and intensified in the polemic of the New Humanists . Led by Harvard professor Irving Babbitt and including figures such as Paul Elmer More , Norman Foerster , and Stuart Sherman, the New Humanists were conservative in their cultural and political outlook, reacting against what they saw as a relativistic disorder of styles and approaches characterizing early twentieth-century America. They rejected the predominant tendencies stemming from the liberal bourgeois tradition: a narrow focus on the present at the expense of the past and of tradition; unrestrained freedom in political, moral, and aesthetic domains; a riot of pluralism, a mechanical exaltation of facts, and an uninformed worship of science.

Also reacting against the industrialism and rationalism of the bourgeois world were the neo- Romantic critics in England, including D. H. Lawrence , G. Wilson Knight , John Middleton Murry , Herbert Read , and C. S. Lewis . Lawrence (1885–1930) was an avowed irrationalist, who saw the modern industrial world as sexually repressive and as having stunted human potential. In his own highly idiosyncratic way, Lawrence anticipates the stress on the unconscious, the body, and irrational motives in various areas of contemporary criticism. In general, these critics attempted to reinstate a Romantic belief in pantheism and the organic unity of the world ( Murry ), and an organicist aesthetic which saw poetry as an organic totality transcending reason and the possibility of paraphrase in prose ( Murry , Read ). Their literary analyses subordinated intention and biography to artistic concerns ( Wilson Knight ). Before the debates about authorial intention and the affective dimensions of literature arose in the New Criticism , the scholar E. M. W. Tillyard (1889–1962) engaged in a debate with C. S. Lewis in The Personal Heresy (1939). New Critical trends were also anticipated in America where W. C. Brownell attempted to establish literary criticism as a serious and independent activity, and where James Gibbons Huneker and H. L. Mencken insisted on addressing the aesthetic elements in art as divorced from moral considerations.

Hence, the critical movements of the early twentieth century were already moving in certain directions: the isolation of the aesthetic from moral, religious concerns, and indeed an exaltation of the aesthetic (as transcending reason and the paradigms of bourgeois thought such as utility and pragmatic value) as a last line of defense against a commercialized and dehumanizing world; and a correlative attempt to establish criticism as a serious and “scientific” activity. This broadly humanist trend is far from dead; it not only has persisted through figures such as F. R. Leavis but also has often structured the very forms of critical endeavors which reject it.

Most of the critical movements associated with “literary theory” – ranging from formalism and the New Criticism to poststructuralism – arose in the shadow of the calamitous historical events discussed earlier. It should be remembered that such historical developments bear a complex and often contradictory relation to literary practice and theory. For example, the Russian Revolution of 1917 eventually adopted an official aesthetic of “socialist realism,” whereby literature was seen as politically interventional and as expressing class struggle. But the atmosphere of the revolution also spawned other aesthetics such as symbolism and formalism; the latter exerted a considerable influence on structuralism which usually bracketed the human “subject,” whether the latter was conceived politically or otherwise. In other words, some movements retreated from political involvement into a preoccupation with form, and this retreat itself had political resonance.

World War I generated verse written by poets such as Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon who depicted their direct experience of its horrors and devastation. But the so-called “ modernists ” of this time, such as Pound, Eliot, Woolf, and Lawrence , referred to the war only tangentially in their writings: it is arguable that their work registered the impact of the war on the profounder level of literary form rather than overt content (though such aesthetic distancing and mediation has been viewed also as evasive). T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land (1922) might be said to enact both the disintegration of Western culture and a search into previous mythology and tradition for forms of reintegration and spiritual regeneration. Virginia Woolf ’s To the Lighthouse (1927) registers the impact of the war in the sense of loss and destitution that pervades the last third of this novel. It is significant that much modernism draws upon an aesthetic of symbolism, which itself was a reaction against nineteenth-century scientism and materialism, and which sought a pure poetic language divested of any pretensions to express the real world. Twentieth-century modernism embodied an acute self-consciousness with regard to language and its limitations in expressing human experience. It was marked by a crisis of belief, by a questioning and exploring of the categories of subjectivity, objectivity, and time, as well as by a withdrawal into preoccupation with literary form, into the past, into tradition and myth.

The Bloomsbury Group , composed of a circle of writers and art critics centered around Virginia Woolf , fell under many of the influences that had shaped modernism, such as the notion of time advanced in the philosophy of Bergson . In its own way, this group also, under the influence of the philosopher G. E. Moore , exalted what it saw as an “aesthetic” approach to life. It was during this period that the foundations of the New Criticism were laid by figures such as William Empson and I. A. Richards ; the latter’s Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929) were widely and enduringly influential. Here, too, the literary artifact was treated as an autonomous and self-contained verbal structure, insulated from the world of prose, as in Richards’ distinction between emotive and referential language. In France also, the somewhat positivistic earlier mode of criticism, the explication de texte, was opposed by influential figures such as Bergson, whose novel conceptions of time and memory, and whose view of art as uniquely transcending the mechanistic concepts of bourgeois society, profoundly influenced Proust and other modernists. Paul Valéry (1871–1945) formulated a criticism drawing on the earlier French symbolists , one which prioritized the aesthetic verbal structure over historical and contextual elements.

With the Great Depression of the 1930s and the rise of fascism, literature and criticism in both Europe and America took a turn away from formalism and humanism toward a more socially conscious mode, as in socialist and Marxist criticism , and in the work of many poets. The humanists were challenged by more liberal-minded critics such as Edmund Wilson , Allen Tate , and R. P. Blackmur , by philosophers such as George Santayana who pointed to their inconsistencies, as well as by the left-wing and Marxist critics discussed below. Other schools of criticism also rejected the New Humanism : the Chicago School , the New York intellectuals , and the New Critics reacted against the New Humanists ’ subordination of aesthetic value to moral criteria and their condemnation of modern and innovative literature.

During this decade of economic collapse, Marxism became a significant political force. Socially and politically conscious criticism had a long heritage in America, going back to figures such as Whitman , Howell s, and Emerson and running through the work of writers such as John Macy , Van Wyck Brooks, and Vernon L. Parrington. Notable Marxist critics of the 1920s and 1930s included Floyd Dell, Max Eastman, V. F. Calverton, Philip Rahv, and Granville Hicks. Eastman and Dell edited the important radical journal the Masses and then the Liberator (1918–1924). Calverton interpreted the tradition of American literature in terms of Marxist categories such as class and economic infrastructure. This period saw the growth of a number of other radical journals as well as the voicing of revolutionary views by non-Marxist critics such as Kenneth Burke and Edmund Wilson . The latter’s most influential work, Axel’s Castle (1931), traced the development of modern symbolist literature, identifying in this broad movement a “revolution of the word,” which might open up new possibilities of thought and literature. The tradition of socialist criticism in Britain went back to William Morris, who first applied Marxist perspectives on the theory of labor and alienation to artistic production. In 1884 the Fabian Society was formed with the aim of substituting for Marxist revolutionary action a Fabian policy of gradually introducing socialism through influencing government policy and disseminating pamphlets to raise awareness of economic and class inequalities. The dramatist and critic George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) was a leader of this society and produced one of its first pamphlets, A Manifesto (1884). Shaw edited Fabian Essays in Socialism (1899) and advocated women’s rights, economic equality, and the abolition of private property. George Orwell (1903–1950) in his later career saw himself as a political writer and a democratic socialist, who, however, became disillusioned with communism, as shown in his political satire Animal Farm (1945).

With the menace of fascism and the threat of war, several writers began to engage in Marxist criticism . In Germany, a critique of modern capitalist culture was formulated by the Frankfurt School, whose major figures included Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), and Walter Benjamin (1892–1940). Some of these thinkers drew on Hegel, Marx, and Freud in attempting to revive the “negative dialectics” or negative, revolutionary potential of Hegelian Marxist thought. They sharply opposed the bourgeois positivism which had risen to predominance in reaction against Hegel’s philosophy, and insisted, following Hegel, that consciousness in all of its cultural modes is active in creating the world. These thinkers had a large impact on the New Left and the radical movements of the 1960s.

In Britain, Marxist writers included the art historian Anthony Blunt and the economist John Strachey. A group of Marxist thinkers was centered around The Left Review (1934–1938). The poets W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and C. Day Lewis at various times espoused and propagated left-wing views. The most significant Marxist theorist of this generation was Christopher Caudwell (1907–1937), who died in Spain fighting in the International Brigade. Caudwell’s best-known work is his Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry (1937). Here, Caudwell offered a Marxist analysis of the development of English poetry, somewhat crudely correlating the stages of this development with economic phases such as primitive accumulation, the Industrial Revolution, and the decline of capitalism.

Liberal critics such as F. O. Matthiessen employed a historical approach to literature, but insisted on addressing its aesthetic dimensions. This formalist disposition became intensified in both the New Criticism and the Chicago School. The American New Critics such as John Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate aligned themselves with the values of the South, and, despite their insistence on isolating the literary artifact, were in this very gesture retreating into the aesthetic from what they saw as the vulgar commercialism of the North, viewing in literary form models of unity and a harmony between conflicting forces that was allegedly absent in the world. In this respect, the major English critic F. R. Leavis (1895–1978) stood on common ground with the New Critics : like them, he believed that literary criticism should be a serious and separate discipline. And, as expressed during his editorship of the journal Scrutiny from 1932 to 1953, he repeatedly insisted that literature should be approached as literature and not as a social, historical, or political document. Moreover, like the New Critics, Leavis attempted to foster an elite which might safeguard culture against the technological and populist vulgarities of an industrial society. What separated him from the New Critics , however, was his equally forceful counter-insistence – in the moralistic and humanistic tradition of Matthew Arnold – that literary study cannot be confined to isolated works of art nor to a realm of purely literary values. Leavis invoked Eliot’s notion of tradition as representing “a new emphasis on the social nature of artistic achievement.” This social nature, for Leavis , is grounded in what he calls an “inherent human nature.” Hence, the study of literature is a study of “the complexities, potentialities and essential conditions of human nature.” The apparent contradiction in Leavis ’ approach between viewing literature as literature and literature as inseparable from all aspects of life seems to be “resolved” by an appeal to the assimilating capacity of intuition and a maturing experience of literature, for which no conceptual or theoretical subtlety can substitute.

The Chicago School of critics, drawing on Aristotle, also propounded a formalist conception of criticism, and shared the New Critics ’ emphasis on the aesthetic and on the organic unity of a literary text. These critics included R. S. Crane, Richard McKeon, and Elder Olson. The New York intellectuals included Irving Howe, Lionel Trilling, and Susan Sontag. Drawing on the work of Edmund Wilson , these writers considered themselves aloof from bourgeois society, commercialism, Stalinism, and mass culture; they viewed themselves as liberals or democratic socialists and wrote criticism with a social and political emphasis. They promoted literary modernism, and valued complexity, irony, and cosmopolitanism in literature.

The conclusion of World War II formalized the opposition between the Western powers and the Soviet bloc of nations. While some literature participated in the ideological implications of this conflict, much writing retreated into a longer-term contextualization of the confrontation as futile and resting on debased values. This retreat from an “objective” reality reached a climax in philosophies such as phenomenology , which parenthesized the objective world, viewing it as a function of perception, and existentialism, which called into question all forms of authority and belief, as well as literary developments such as the Theater of the Absurd, whose proponents such as Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco dramatized the existential absurdity, anguish, and ultimate isolation of human existence. The Italian thinker Benedetto Croce formulated an aesthetic which revived Hegelian idealist principles as against the tradition of bourgeois positivism and scientism. The German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) increasingly saw poetry as transcending the discursive and rational limitations of philosophy. In France, the philosopher Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) formulated a phenomenological and surrealist account of poetry, while the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) advocated a literature of political engagement. The phenomenological emphasis was further elaborated by Georges Poulet (1902–1991), Jean-Pierre Richard (b. 1922), and Georges Bataille (1897–1962), and given a linguistic orientation in the work of Maurice Blanchot (1907–2003).

It was in the 1950s that structuralism – another tendency which parenthesized or diminished the agency of the human subject by situating it within a broad linguistic and semiological structure – began to thrive through figures such as the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and the narratologist A. J. Greimas, who drew upon Saussure and the earlier Russian Formalism. Roland Barthes analyzed the new myths of Western culture and proposed a revolutionary oppositional discourse which was aware of its own mythical status. Barthes proclaimed the “death of the author,” and his later works moved in poststructuralis t directions. Notable among the formalist thinkers of this period were Roman Jakobson (1896–1982), Émile Benveniste, Tzvetan Todorov, and Gerard Genette.

It was, ironically, the period of relative economic prosperity after World War II that eventually gave impetus to the civil rights movements and the women’s movement. The revolutionary fervor of the 1960s gave Marxist criticism a revived impetus. A group of Marxist critics was centered around the New Left Review, founded in 1960 and edited first by Stuart Hall and then by Perry Anderson. Its contributors included E. P. Thompson, Raymond Williams, and Terry Eagleton. This was also the period in which the radical journal Tel Quel, established in 1960 in France, fostered an intellectual milieu in which the writings of Derrida, the founder of deconstruction, Lacan, who reinterpreted Freudian concepts in linguistic terms, and several major feminist thinkers such as Julia Kristeva were fomented, eventually displacing the prominence of French existentialism. Drawing on the insights of Bachelard, Barthes, and others, Tel Quel moved from an initial aesthetic emphasis toward activism. Its general aim was to draw on literary texts and new critical approaches to redeem the revolutionary power of language. Significantly, many of the thinkers associated with the journal challenged the categories and binary oppositions which had acted as the foundation of much Western thought since Plato and Aristotle, oppositions which represented political and social hierarchies. Lacan’s understanding of the unconscious as linguistic was seen by some as having revolutionary implications, though some feminists, notably Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous, indicted both Freud and Lacan’s own discourse, which they saw as privileging the male and even misogynistic. Feminists such as Monique Wittig and Julia Kristeva reflected on the possibility of an écriture féminine.

In the next era, the political mood in both Europe and America swung to the right. The increasingly unchallenged predominance of capitalism in the 1980s and 1990s oversaw the emergence or intensified popularity of New Historicism, which called for the literary text to be situated not, as in Marxist criticism , within the context of an economic infrastructure, but within a superstructural fabric of political and cultural discourses, with the economic dimension itself given no priority and indeed treated as another superstructural discourse. One of the prime influences on New Historicism was Michel Foucault, who saw knowledge as a form of power and analyzed power as highly diffused and as not distinctly assignable to a given set of political or ideological agencies. Reader-response theory, whose roots went back to the reception theories of the German writers Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser, engaged in a recognition of the dialogical nature of textual production, redefining the meaning of the text as the product of an interaction between text and an appropriately qualified community of readers.

These movements drew on the previous challenges to binary oppositions and on the “textual” nature of all phenomena, viewing even history and economics as interpretative narratives. Marxist critics in this era, notably Terry Eagleton and Fredric Jameson , have been obliged to define the connections and divergences between their own stances and the various other branches of criticism; they have drawn on the analyses of Althusser as well as Adorno, Horkheimer, and Benjamin in attempting to account for various phenomena of a mass consumer society and the spectrum of ideas falling under the labels of poststructuralism and postmodernism. Writers such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari and Jean Baudrillard have variously offered powerful analyses of capitalist society in terms of psychological categories and drives, as well as of the symbolic processes that structure consciousness, and the lack of foundations for arriving at intellectual or moral judgment. More recent thinkers such as Clement Rosset, Jacques Bouveresse, and Richard Rorty have turned away from the tenets of poststructuralism , such as its reductive view of reality as ultimately linguistic. Vincent Descombes has returned to the principles of early twentieth-century analytical philosophers such as Wittgenstein, and whereas many poststructuralists drew heavily on Hegelian notions, thinkers such as Jean-François Lyotard have turned instead to Kant. Lyotard has theorized influentially about the “postmodern condition,” seeing it as marked by an absence of totalizing schemes of explanation, and the dissolution of human subjectivity.

Notwithstanding their extraordinary richness and diversity, many of these modern critical tendencies tend to converge in one aspect, namely, their recognition of the importance of language in structuring our world. Derrida has expressed this exquisitely in his statement that our epoch “must finally determine as language the totality of its problematic horizon.”2 We can read this statement as an indication that language has been instituted at the heart of every philosophical problem or inquiry. For example, where neo-Hegelian philosophers in the later nineteenth century were exploring the connections between thought and reality, what is now investigated is the connection between thought, language, and reality: language is viewed as integral to both the process of thought and the construction of reality. Language has been similarly instituted within the connections between “man” and “woman,” between social classes, between conflicting moral and political systems, between various ideological perspectives, between present and past, and between differing readings of “history.” Since the beginning of the twentieth century (and even before this, in the work of Locke, Hume, Hegel, and others), there has been an increasing recognition that, for example, “man” and “woman” are not fixed categories but represent our ways of conceiving the world: gender is at least in part a social and historical construct that is embodied in the concepts expressed by language. “Woman,” then, does not somehow designate a reality; it is, rather, a sign existing in complex and multifold interaction with other signs, as part of a system of perception. The increasing primacy attached to the role of language is effectively an acknowledgment not only of the constructed nature of all of the above terms, but also of the need to examine our own perceptual apparatus and the constitution of our own perspectives. In this, we are as much the heirs of Kant as we are of Saussure.

Hence, the twentieth century witnessed an unprecedented preoccupation with, and self-consciousness concerning, language, in a vast range of disciplines, as expressed in a wide range of ideological perspectives. This preoccupation and obsession is the most comprehensive manner in which literature, criticism, and theory have been molded by the economic and political transformations discussed earlier. The work of modernists such as Proust, Pound, Eliot, Faulkner, and Woolf was marked by an intense awareness, derived from the French symbolists, of the limitations of language and its inadequacy for expressing the highest truths and the most profound strata of experience. The work of Marx, Freud, Bergson, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein was informed by an understanding of language as a system of concepts and signs whose referential value, whose capacity to refer to or represent the real world or the human self, is merely conventional and practical. Many of Saussure’s insights into language had long been anticipated and were hardly new; what was new was perhaps the fact that Saussure based an entire theory of language on its relational and conventional nature, as a system of signs. Such a view of language was not only applied by anthropologists such as Lévi-Strauss to the analysis of cultures, but also acted as a model for his study of the language of myth.

If, as Derrida says, our era has instituted language at the foundation of its inquiries, it is evident that much of the literature, criticism, and theory of our era enacts a retreat from referentiality, recognizing “reality” as an intellectual and even ideological construct. But once again, we might remind ourselves that the perspectives of the academy, rich and astute as they are, do not always coincide with the mainstream traditions of thought or with popular practice. The tradition of liberal-humanist philosophy has often displayed an equal, if not quite as obsessive, concern with language. Following Descartes’ insistence on employing only “clear and distinct” ideas, John Locke held that language should be made more precise, more denotative, and less figurative in order to achieve clarity of understanding. Comte, Durkheim, Spencer, and the entire positivistic tradition well into the twentieth century insisted on expunging what they saw as vague metaphysical terminology from the vocabulary of philosophy and science. Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore also saw clarity of language as indispensable to the formulation and solution of philosophical problems. Hence, the main streams of liberal-humanist thought in both philosophy and literature have been more inclined toward various kinds of realism, insisting on clarity and accuracy of reference.

Many of the traditions of twentieth-century criticism and theory, in retreating from referentiality, might be said to perpetuate in their own ways the Romantic and late nineteenth-century reaction against bourgeois ideals and practice by exalting the category of the aesthetic, elevating the aesthetic itself into a vehicle of perception both higher than the mechanical plane of reason, and able to incorporate the sensuous and bodily aspects of human existence which were traditionally scorned by reason as institutionalized within philosophy and theology. Even the insistence of much modern theory on the artificiality of the distinction between the literal and the metaphorical, the philosophical and the aesthetic, and indeed on the metaphorical nature of all language (even that of science), might be seen as a return to a Romantic exaltation of the aesthetic to a mode of perception (rather than merely an object of study), a mode that is more comprehensive than reason, accommodating both intellectual and sensuous dimensions, both conscious and unconscious impulses, a particular disposition of subjectivity through which the world can be viewed and analyzed. The aesthetic, in this new elevation, is distinguished by an overarching self-consciousness whose irreducible medium is language. It is aware of itself as a historical and social product and of the world as its creation; language is integral to the creation of both. Alternatively, we might say that the aesthetic embodies a consciousness that the worlds of both subjectivity and objectivity are internally structured by language.

Nearly all of these critical movements see human subjectivity as a function of language, as a position within a network of signs which spreads ultimately across numerous registers – of culture, politics, aesthetics, ethnicity, class, and gender – in both time and space. Recent discourses, however, have reacted somewhat against this institution of language at the heart of our inquiries, returning to notions of social subjectivity, empirical analysis, and a resignation to the possibility of theorizing on the basis of exclusively localized concerns and interests, whether these be grounded in ethnicity, race, or region.

Notes 1 Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Pantheon, 1994), p. 6. Hereafter cited as AE. 2 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), p. 6.

Source: A History of  Literary Criticism : From Plato to the Present Editor(s): M. A. R. Habib

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Thanks for the post. A minor suggestion – though you have done justice to the start and the end of the elaborate article but detailing out has been missed out at certain paragraphs. For beginners a detailed version would have been better.

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