what is literary criticismKabugho Immaculate

Literary criticism refers to the art or practice of judging and commenting on the quality and character of literary work. For example in a short story or a poem according to Oxford Dictionary Literary criticism can also be the evaluation, analysis, description or interpretation of a literary text or work of an author for example modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory which is the philophical discussion of literature. It can also refer to an attempt evaluate and understand the creative writing, literature of an author. Literature includes plays, essays, novels, poetry, and short stories. Another example is that it is in form of a critical essay but in-depth book review can sometimes be considered literary criticism. Literary criticism is the term given to studies that define classify analyze evaluate and interpret the work of literature. Literary criticism is an interpretive tool that helps us to think more deeply and insightfully about the literature we read. The formalists refer literary criticism as the practice of intensive verbal analysis and other ways of commenting upon literary work but not being merely moral, philosophical, sociological and phschological. According to Mathew Arnoid, literary criticism in the modern age refers to the comparative judgment or interpretation, structural analysis or political critique. Literary criticism is the study of how we interpret literary representation (mimosis) of reality that is the representation of different stories about experiences for example Marxism, feminism, psychoanalysis way and post colonialism. It takes place formally in colleges, classrooms, professional journals, academic magazines and websites. For example literary criticism is often published in essay or book form whereby academic literary critics teach in literature departments and publish in academic journals and more popular critics publish their own views in broadly circulating periodicals. Literary criticism goes all the way back to the days of Plato. It has developed and ultimately provides us with parameters on how to study literature because there are a million different to dissect written works such as novels or poems. We usually see literary criticism in a book review or critical essays. The most important part of a poem is literary criticism for instance in the poem “The Epistle to Julius Florus (Epistle 11,2) Horace argues that literary criticism is important part of the poem and he gives his own views on poetic technique. TS Eliot argues that literary criticism and sensitive appreciation is not directed upon the poet but upon the poetry. Literary criticism by Joseph Morley University of south Florida argues that by reading and discussing literature, we expand our imagination, sense of what is possible and our ability to read with others, improve ability to read, critically and interpret texts while gaining appreciation for different literary genres and theories of interpretation. It has much weight responsibility to determine which work truly fulfills the destiny of literature to interpret and sustain. Literary criticism is important in a way that it attaches moral values in the judgment of literature for example feminism and it helps us to expand our imaginations sense of what is possible and the ability to empathize with others. It also enhances the ability to write, sharpen our critical faculties, enabling us to assess works and better understanding why literature can have such powerful effect on our lives. It helps us to go inside of the text and understand the written work from many different viewpoints. Often at times these perspectives will not be readily apparent to us unless we delve into the work and learn how to look past the surface. Literature inspires our imagination by helping us think and feel differently while seeing images in our heads and includes art forms such as fiction, a comic book script, a script of a stage play, a screen play for a movie, poetry and song lyrics. Texts that interpret literary works are usually persuasive texts. Literary critics may conduct a close reading of literary work, critiquing a literary piece of work from the stance of a particular literary theory or debate the soundness of other critic’s interpretations. The work of authors writing evaluative texts for example the skills required to critique films, interpret laws or evaluate artistic trends similar to those skills required by literary critics. Literary texts include works of fiction and poetry. In school English instructors ask students to critique a literary work. Literary criticism refers to a genre of writing whereby an author critiques literary texts either a work of fiction, play, or poetry. Alternatively some works of literary criticism addresses how a particular theory of interpretation informs a reading of a work or refutes some other critics reading of a work. Criticism focuses on each reader personal reaction to a text, assuming meaning is created by a reader’s or interpretive community’s personal interaction with a text. However students may read a text with a particular literary theory in mind using the theory to explicate a particular point of view. For example writers could critique the story of an Hour by Kate Chopin from a feminist theoretical perspective. Marxist criticism focuses on ways texts reflect reinforce or challenge the effects of class power relations and social roles. For example a reading of Shirley Jackson’s, the lottery by Peter Kokenko. Literary criticism focuses on the understanding of ways gender roles are reflected or contradicted by texts, how gender roles evolve in texts for example the yellow walt paper, Atwist on conventional symbols. Archetypal criticism focuses on identifying the underlying myths in stories and archetypes which reflect what the psychologist Carl Jung called ‘collective consciousness’. For example a catalogue of symbols in the Awakening by Kate Chopin by Skylar Hailton Burris Approaches to literary criticism are many and these include the following; Traditional criticism, critics feel that in order to truly evaluate an author’s work, they must know some basic biographical information about reflects on the work. They ask questions like ‘when and where was the author born? , was he married?, where did he go to college?’ Traditional critics also feel that it helps to be familiar with an author’s past work if there are any. They have determined that every writer has a unique style, certain way with prose or structure that makes him or her different from everyone else. For example Mark Twain used a lot of humor and satire in his writing. Besides Twain’s major literary works he pinned numerous essays and short stories. In order to evaluate the work by an author like Twain, traditional critics would also probably recommend reading adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The adventure of Tom Sawyer. Sociological criticism, as we can imagine, a little boy growing up in the American South at the height of the civil war is going to have a lot of different life shaping experiences than a little boy growing up in communist Russia in 1980s. Sociological critics focus on how society and historical events shape a writer’s work. They examine what sort of politics the author may draw from; Marxism, feminism, liberalism, socialism etc An example of criticism is art criticism; art criticism is referred to the act of an act of analysizing and evaluating any type of art. More specifically, art criticism involves your own interpretation is done to help you understand a particular work of art by using what you know of art theory and establishing where work fits in within the different artistic styles and movements throughout art history. Speaking of history, art criticism has been a part of many different cultures, as evaluating art has been seen as a tradition. China’s tradition of art evaluation dates back to the middle of the 6th century when writers established principles of great artists. African cultures often used verbal evaluations to recognize a work of art’s order, form, beauty, and how it ties to spiritual communal activities. Islamic cultures have a long standing tradition of writing about art, often focusing on arts concerning the production of decorative yet useful objects such as woodwork, metalwork, textiles and calligraphy. But today, art criticism applies to a wide range of art forms. Performing art includes; plays, dance, performances, operas, live music, films and televisions. Visual art encompasses; paintings, wood cuts, cartoons, stained glass, mosaics and photography. Sculptural arts are similar to visual arts but this art form is three dimensional and can be touched or sometimes even climbed on. Some examples are a statue, a carving , a rock garden, a water fountain, or a building. Since this is an over view of art criticism when assessing the work of art we are not going to go into details of art history or theory. Art criticism can be broken down into four steps; description, analysis, interpretation and evaluation. If we were art critics, who had to write a review of an oil painting or scrulpture , we would start by describing what we see, we would leave out judgments and our own interpretations of what we think it means and analysis of it. Instead, we would describe elements such as; the size and scale of it; general shapes used, the use of the vertical and horizontal lines and angles, colour and colour schemes used, the texture of it and where, when it was done to give it historical context. Next we would analyse the work of art by determining what the described elements are suggesting and why the artist used those specific colours, angels, shapes etc to convey feelings, ideas, or historical events. Its important to really analyse the composition of the work, focusing on details such as its use of light, shadow space and landscape. If a work is purposefully disproportionate it can make you feel a certain way just as its use of light and colour. Also think about the way it shows movement and how you emotionally respond to it. Then interpretation is used to establish context, explaining why we think the artists created it and what it means. When interpreting a work of art, we want to interpret the overall meaning of the work pointing to evidence inside the historical context when it was created and what art theories or movements relate to it. Evaluation or judgment. We must decide where an art work stands alongside similar works and explain what aspects of it are most important when deciding its quality. Evaluation can be tricky because our own biased views often come into play here and they should not. For example if we try to evaluate this painting of an old peasant by Van Gogh, we might already believe that old age is associated with weaknesses. References Oxford dictionary ©copyright 2003-2015 study.com An introduction to literature, criticism and theory www.ipc.orgi divl pf/entry/48496 www.amazon.co.uk