M. A. R. Habib - Literary Criticism from Plato to the Present

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This edition first published 2011

2011 M. A. R. Habib

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Habib, Rafey.

Literary criticism from Plato to the present: an introduction/M.A.R. Habib.

p. cm.

Revised ed. of: A history of literary criticism: from Plato to the present. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Pub., 2005.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4051-6034-6 (hardcover: alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4051-6035-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. CriticismHistory. I. Habib, Rafey. History of literary criticism. II. Title.

PN86.H23 2011

801.9509dc22

2010021915

For Mughni Tabassum

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the following people for their encouragement, inspiration, and support or endorsement: Michael Payne, John Carey, Mughni Tabassum, Joe Barbarese, Robert Grant, Ron Bush, Peter Widdowson, Frank Kermode, Emma Bennett, and Yasmeen.

Introduction

Our English word criticism comes from the ancient Greek noun krites, meaning judge. But what does it mean to be a judge of literature? We might break this down into several basic questions: what is the purpose of literary criticism? How broad is this field of inquiry, and who gets to define it? What are its connections with other disciplines such as philosophy and religion? How does it relate to the realms of morality, of knowledge, and of learning? Does it have any political implications? How does it impinge on our practices of reading and writing? Above all, what significance does it have, or could it possibly have, in our own lives? Why should we even bother to study literary criticism? Is it not enough for us to read the great works of literature, of poetry, fiction, and drama? Why should we trouble ourselves to read what people say about literature? And surely, after all the obscure theory of the last 50 years or so, what we need to get back to is the texts themselves. We need to appreciate literature for its beauty and its technical artistry. In short, we need to read literature as literature without the interference of some judge telling us what to look for or how to read.

How can we answer such skepticism? We might begin by recalling that theory and critical reflection on literature began at least 2500 years ago, and have been conducted by some of the greatest Western thinkers and writers, ranging from Plato and Aristotle, through Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas, Johnson, Pope, and the great Romantics to the great modern figures such as Locke, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Freud, W. B. Yeats, and Sartre. Until 200 years ago, most great thinkers, critics, and literary artists would not have understood what was meant by reading literature as literature. They knew that literature had integral connections with philosophy, religion, politics, and morality; they knew, in other words, that literature was richly related to all aspects of peoples lives.

If we had no tradition of critical interpretation, if we were left with the texts themselves, we would be completely bewildered. We would not know how to classify a given writer as Romantic, classical, or modern. We would not know that a given poem was epic or lyric, mock-heroic, or even that it was a poem. We would be largely unaware of which tradition a given writer was working in and how she was trying to subvert it in certain ways. We would not be able to arrive at any comparative assessment of writers in terms of literary merit. We would not even be able to interpret the meanings of individual lines or words in any appropriate context. It has been the long tradition of literary interpretation refined and evolved over many centuries which has addressed these questions. It is surely naive to think that we are all endowed with some superior sensibility which can automatically discern which writers are great and which are mediocre. We do not even know for certain how the ancient Greek of Homer was pronounced; most of us cannot read the Greek of Plato or the Latin of Aquinas or the Italian of Dante or the Arabic of al-Ghazzali. How would we ever, independently, arrive at any estimation of these writers or their backgrounds or their contributions without a body of critical apparatus, without a tradition of critical expertise and interpretation, to help us? Shakespeare is a great writer because that has been the enduring consensus of influential critics. The reputations of writers can vary quite dramatically. At the beginning of the twentieth century, T. S. Eliot was a powerful critical voice, denigrating the Romantics, extolling the metaphysical poets and revaluating the very idea of tradition. Nowadays, Eliot commands far less critical authority, though his high status as a poet endures.