Literary Criticism Term Papers
Literary criticism refers to the understanding, examination and finally, evaluation of the (creative) writing and literature of an author. This includes plays, novels as well as essays and short notes. It is an analysis, evaluation and interpretation of a literary work. Modern literary criticism is thought to be related to literary theory which is philosophical criticism, discussion of its method and goal. Literary critics have not always been theorists.
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Few critics consider literary criticism to be an application of literary theory. "The John Hopkins Guide to Literary theory and criticism" draws no particular differences between literary theory and literary criticism and describes them as similar concepts.
Historical Background:
- Classical Medieval Criticism: In the fourth century B.C, Aristotle composed written criticisms of contemporary works of art besides poetics (a description of literary forms). Plato criticized poetry as imitative and formative too. Afterwards, classical and medieval criticism generally focused on religious and secular texts.
- Renaissance Criticism: The literary tradition has a rich history in the renaissance period. In 1570, Lodovico Castelvetro emerged as one of the most dominating renaissance critics of his time. One of his most famous works was his critics on Aristotle Poetics.
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- Nineteenth Century Criticism: In the early nineteenth century, British scholars developed new approaches to literary study emphasizing that literature need not always be rainbows and flowers, modest or perfect but the literature should be at the level of sublime. In the late nineteenth century, writers like Matthew Arnold focused more on critical writing then their own literary work.
- The New criticism: In early twentieth century, Russian Formalism and afterwards New Criticism dominated literary criticism in Europe and America. Both schools of thought stressed the critical reading of texts that does not involve the author’s psychology or the readers' interest.
- History of book: It is a discipline of literary criticism analyzing the ways of bibliography, history of literature, media theory and cultural history. It also studies the textualities with their material aspects. History book with literature develops many issues such as the development of authorship as a profession, formation of reading audience, constraints of censorship and copyright and the economics of literary form.
- Theory or Anatomy of Criticism: "Anatomy of Criticism" was published in 1957 by Northrop Frye and noted that critics are prone to embrace on ideology and to analyze literary work on the basis of their influence to such ideology. Until the late 1960s New Criticism was dominant in the British and American Literary establishments. It continued until the mid 1980s when literary criticism interest in "theory" at height. Afterwards, theoretical work was considered by many critics to be more comfortable as simply interpreting literature rather than writing philosophical presumptions.
The Current state of literary criticism:
Recently in many university literature departments, literary research paper topics and continental philosophy combination is studied with New Critics. Many critics observed that great many approaches and methods of literary criticism during the rise of theory. In literary criticism some critics work with theoretical texts, while remaining read traditional literature. Woman's literature, cultural studies, comic books, fictions and economics, media studies, social history, intellectual history are interest of focus for many critics.
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