#practical criticism

He was succeeded by T.S. Eliot, who not only believed literature to be of utmost importance in the development and betterment of human kind but who additionally created a list of criteria to extract those texts which would be best suited for the task. His list of best lit. EVER WRITTEN dominated much discussion about literature until the 1970, and still remains highly influential. Curious about what some of T.S. Eliot’s criteria were? They went along the lines of : 

-Should be highly impersonal

-Should be a perfect integration of both emotion and intellect (other wise it is either too irrational or too boring)

-Should contain much irony and wit! 

And this is where where him being a white privileged male comes painfully to the fore. All of these criteria then (and even today somewhat) are qualities seen as typically male, where as emotions and an unwillingness to ‘rationalise’ were seen as typically female. *More about gender and how it relates to lit. theory later.*

Next we have I.A. Richards, who is best known for doing an experiment on his undergrad students , aka. forever-the-guinea-pigs. He asked them to analyse a text without having given them any contextual information, like who the author was, when it was written. This might not seem like much today, but boy was it innovative back in the late 1800s. During that period and earlier, literature was  analysed, but mainly to debate of what meaning the author of a text meant to convey. In the new practice, dubbed Practical Criticism, which got it’s name from the title of Richard’s book, it was the text itself from which meaning emerged. This was to influence the future development of lit. crit. immensely. 

And last of all F.R. Levis, whom I slightly favour since he brought books to the fore instead of insisting that poetry was obviously the better of the bunch. He said that because of their scope and attention to detail, they could better represent life in all it’s fullness. He also did a very cool thing by expanding the scope of lit crit., arguing that it presented the best possible base for criticising contemporary culture.  That means that by learning and doing good lit. crit. we are essentially learning to analyse the world outside of the text- the society we are part of and the culture that surrounds our daily lives. How wonderfully useful!

A bit later on, these ideas spread to Arnold’s, Eliot’s, Richard’s and Lewis’s contemporaries in the US, and there began a movement know as New Criticism, which was more alike than it was different to Practical Criticism described above. 

I confess, I enjoyed reading about how these 4 guys basically started an avalanche of new thought and theory in lit. crit., one that still hasn’t stopped tumb(lr)ling until this very day. Although a lot of their ideas would now seem conservative and a bit snobby, it’s important to understand it’s basic premises. Mainly because, as my English Literature professor used to say, “Every new movement is a reaction to the former one; whether it is to affirm certain aspects of it, or reject it entirely.”

Off to a good start and an even better shower.

Confessing from the front,