Purpose:
Scott divides modern criticism into five categories:
Moral, Psychological, Sociological, Formalistic and Archetypal. For
each approach he has written a basic introduction, chosen three
representative works by noted critics, and provided a bibliography.
Although there are critical theories that do not fit within his
five approaches, the text offers a concise method of organization
for the student. The synthesis by Blackmur points out the
weakness of each method if used exclusively. The introduction to
each approach could be more definitive and analytic rather than
merely descriptive. Synthesis could show the use of all five
approaches to works of literature.
Content:
- The moral approach: In the tradition of Plato and the
Renaissance humanists, the Neo-Humanists study literature as a
"Criticism of Life." Their concept of human nature as an agent of
reason and ethical standards opposes both the Naturalists with
their "debased view of man" and the Romantics with their
"excessive cultivation of the ego." The contemporary Humanists
are religious, usually Christian, in viewpoint.
- Irving Babbitt posits as a norm for evaluation that the
creator fulfill his aim and that the aim be intrinsically
worthwhile.
- T. S. Eliot states that literary criticism should be
completed from a definite ethical and theological standpoint. "All
literature affects our modern and religious existence."
- Edmund Fuller described the "technique of a simple
identification the degradation of which is miscalled compassion."
He defines true compassion as recognizing the sharing of all
human guilt, Original Sin or the Id.
- The Psychological Approach: Freudian ideas substantiated
the ideas of the Naturalists, offering a "scientific terminology
by which to interpret man's bondage to his libidinous compulsions
or to the repression society forced upon him." Psychology seemed
to give sanction to the Romantic impulse toward self-expression and
exploitation of the perverse. Alder's inferiority complex and
Jung's collective unconscious were influential theories, but the
primary influence was Freudian. Application of psychological
knowledge can generate three kinds of illumination: a more precise
language with which to discuss the creative process, a study of
lives of authors, and the use of psychology to analyze fictional
characters.
- The Sociological Approach: Sociological criticism starts
with a conviction that art's relations to society are vitally
important, and that the investigation of these relationships may
organize and deepen one's aesthetic response to a work of art.
Taine called literature the consequence of the moment, the race and
the milieu. Sociological critics "place the work of art in the
social atmosphere and define that relationship."
- The Formalistic Approach: From the seeds of Coleridge's
organic unity, "the whole being the harmonious involvement of all
the parts surely calls for a critical approach that would attend
to the efficiency of the various elements as they work together to
form a unified total meaning." Through the influence of James and
Eliot, the formalistic approach has become the most influential
critical method of our time. Eliot's announcement of the high
place of art as art and I. A. Richards' semantic approach, as well
as the reaction against Victorian and neo-Humanistic emphasis on
moral uses of literature, helped refine the method.
- The Archetypal Approach: Literature in the Light of
Myth: This method is a demonstration of some basic cultural pattern
of great meaning and appeal to humanity in a work of art; it
suggests interest in myth and the influence of Frazer (The
Golden Bough) and Jung (the theory of the collective
unconscious). The Jungians "reward myth not as the dream of an
inhibited individual person but as protoplasmic pattern of the
race." Gilbert Murray states: "in the greatest ages of literature
there seems to be, among other things, a power of preserving due
proportion between opposite elements -- the expression of
boundless primitive emotion and the subtle and delicate
representation of life."
