Classical and medieval criticism Literary criticism is thought to have existed as far back as the classical period. In the 4th century BC
Aristotle wrote the
Poetics, a typology and explanation along with understanding of literary forms with many specific criticisms of contemporary works of art.
Poetics developed for the first time the concepts of
mimesis and
catharsis, which are still crucial in literary studies. Later classical and
medieval criticism often focused on religious texts, and the several long religious traditions of
hermeneutics and textual
exegesis have had a profound influence on the study of secular texts. This was particularly the case for the literary traditions of the three
Abrahamic religions:
Jewish literature,
Christian literature and
Islamic literature. Literary criticism was also employed in other forms of medieval
Arabic literature and
Arabic poetry from the 9th century, notably by
Al-Jahiz in his ''al-Bayan wa-'l-tabyin
and al-Hayawan'', and by
Abdullah ibn al-Mu'tazz in his
Kitab al-Badi.
Renaissance criticism The literary criticism of the
Renaissance developed classical ideas of unity of form and content into literary
neoclassicism, proclaiming literature as central to culture, entrusting the poet and the author with preservation of a long literary tradition. The birth of Renaissance criticism was in 1498, with the recovery of classic texts, most notably,
Giorgio Valla's
Latin translation of
Aristotle's
Poetics. The work of Aristotle, especially
Poetics, was the most important influence upon literary criticism until the late eighteenth century.
Lodovico Castelvetro was one of the most influential Renaissance critics who wrote commentaries on Aristotle's
Poetics in 1570.
Baroque criticism The seventeenth-century witnessed the first full-fledged crisis in modernity of the core critical-aesthetic principles inherited from
classical antiquity, such as proportion, harmony, unity,
decorum, that had long governed, guaranteed, and stabilized Western thinking about artworks. Although
Classicism was very far from spent as a cultural force, it was to be gradually challenged by a rival movement, namely Baroque, that favoured the transgressive and the extreme, without laying claim to the unity, harmony, or decorum that supposedly distinguished both nature and its greatest imitator, namely ancient art. The key concepts of the
Baroque aesthetic, such as "
conceit' (
concetto), "
wit" (
acutezza,
ingegno), and "
wonder" (
meraviglia), were not fully developed in literary theory until the publication of
Emanuele Tesauro's
Il Cannocchiale aristotelico (The Aristotelian Telescope) in 1654. This seminal treatise – inspired by
Giambattista Marino's epic
Adone and the work of the Spanish Jesuit philosopher
Baltasar Gracián – developed a theory of
metaphor as a universal language of images and as a supreme intellectual act, at once an artifice and an epistemologically privileged mode of access to truth.
Enlightenment criticism , one of the most influential writers and critics of the 18th century. See:
Samuel Johnson's literary criticism. In the
Enlightenment period (1700s–1800s), literary criticism became more popular. During this time
literacy rates started to rise in the public; no longer was reading exclusive for the wealthy or scholarly. With the rise of the literate public, the swiftness of printing and commercialization of literature, criticism arose too. Reading was no longer viewed solely as educational or as a sacred source of religion; it was a form of entertainment. Literary criticism was influenced by the values and stylistic writing, including clear, bold, precise writing and the more controversial criteria of the author's religious beliefs. These critical reviews were published in many magazines, newspapers, and journals. The commercialization of literature and its mass production had its downside. The emergent literary market, which was expected to educate the public and keep them away from
superstition and prejudice, increasingly diverged from the idealistic control of the Enlightenment theoreticians so that the business of Enlightenment became a business with the Enlightenment. This development – particularly of emergence of entertainment literature – was addressed through an intensification of criticism. (to say nothing of the author's psychology or biography, which became almost taboo subjects) or
reader response: together known as
Wimsatt and
Beardsley's intentional fallacy and
affective fallacy. This emphasis on form and precise attention to "the words themselves" has persisted, after the decline of these critical doctrines themselves.
Theory In 1957
Northrop Frye published the influential
Anatomy of Criticism. In his works Frye noted that some critics tend to embrace an ideology, and to judge literary pieces on the basis of their adherence to such ideology. This has been a highly influential viewpoint among modern conservative thinkers. E. Michael Jones, for example, argues in his
Degenerate Moderns that
Stanley Fish was influenced by his own adulterous affairs to reject classic literature that condemned adultery.
Jürgen Habermas, in
Erkenntnis und Interesse [1968] (
Knowledge and Human Interests), described literary critical theory in literary studies as a form of
hermeneutics: knowledge via interpretation to understand the meaning of human texts and symbolic expressionsincluding the interpretation of texts which themselves interpret other texts. 's theories of
linguistics and
semiotics were influential in developing
structuralist approach to literary criticism. In the British and American literary establishment, the
New Criticism was more or less dominant until the late 1960s. Around that time Anglo-American university literature departments began to witness a rise of a more explicitly philosophical
literary theory, influenced by
structuralism, then
post-structuralism, and other kinds of
Continental philosophy. It continued until the 1990s when interest in "concept" peaked. Many later critics, though undoubtedly still influenced by theoretical work, have been comfortable simply interpreting literature rather than writing explicitly about methodology and philosophical presumptions.
Current state Today, approaches based in
literary theory and
continental philosophy largely coexist in university literature departments, while conventional methods, some informed by the
New Critics, also remain active. Disagreements over the goals and methods of literary criticism, which characterized both sides taken by critics during the "rise" of theory, have declined. Some critics work largely with theoretical texts, while others read traditional literature; interest in the literary
canon is still great, but many critics are also interested in nontraditional texts and
women's literature, as elaborated on by certain academic journals such as ''Contemporary Women's Writing'', while some critics influenced by
cultural studies read popular texts like comic books or
pulp/
genre fiction.
Ecocritics have drawn connections between literature and the natural sciences.
Darwinian literary studies studies literature in the context of
evolutionary influences on human nature. And
postcritique has sought to develop new ways of reading and responding to literary texts that go beyond the interpretive methods of
critique. Many literary critics also work in
film criticism or
media studies.
History of the book Related to other forms of literary criticism, the
history of the book is a field of an inter-disciplinary inquiry drawing on the methods of
bibliography,
cultural history,
history of literature, and
media theory. Principally concerned with the production, circulation, and reception of texts and their material forms, book history seeks to connect forms of textuality with their material aspects. Among the issues within the history of literature with which book history can be seen to intersect are: the development of authorship as a profession, the formation of reading audiences, the constraints of censorship and copyright, and the economics of literary form.
Major twentieth-century schools of critical analysis Historicist approaches •
New Historicism Formalist approaches •
Russian Formalism •
Narratology •
Structuralism •
Post-structuralism •
Deconstructionism •
Literary Modernism •
Post-modernism •
Reader-response criticism •
Semiotic literary criticism •
New Criticism •
Genre studies •
Hermeneutics Political approaches •
Marxist literary criticism •
Cultural studies •
Postcolonialism •
Feminist literary criticism •
Ecocriticism Psychological approaches •
Archetypal literary criticism •
Phenomenology •
Psychoanalytic literary criticism •
New Humanism Race and sexuality approaches •
African-American literature •
Queer theory •
Critical race theory •
Affect theory •
Disability studies ==Key texts==