An Introduction to Liberal Humanism

Liberal humanism can be defined as a philosophical and literary movement in which man and his
capabilities are the central concern. It can also be defined as a system of historically changing views that
recognizes the value of the human being as an individual and his right to liberty and happiness.
       
Liberal humanism has its roots at the beginning of English studies in the early 1800's and became fully
articulated between 1930 and 1950. It was attacked by theories such as Marxism and Feminism
beginning in the 1960's. In 1840, F.D. Maurice argued that the study of English literature connects
readers to what is "fixed and enduring" in their own national identity. Liberal humanism inspired a
scientific, rational world view that placed the knowing individual at the center of history, and viewed that
history as the progress of Western thought. It served as the catalyst for the modern world's reliance on
individualism and belief in a common human nature, scientific rationality, and the search for truth as
universal knowledge and certainty in the world. The study of Liberal Humanism finds meaning within the
text itself, without elaborate processes of placing it in contexts. It  detaches itself from its context and age;
in isolation without any prior knowledge, prejudice or ideological ideas about the text.
              
There are some aspects to liberal humanism that have been made into what is called the 'ten tenets'.
They are invisible guidelines literary critics use when reading a text. It is said that " they can only be
brought to the surface by a conscious effort of will." (Peter Barry).

The ten tenets of liberal humanism are:

 Good literature is timeless, transcendent and speaks to what is constant in human nature
 Literary text contains its own meaning (not in subordinate reference to a sociopolitical, literary-
historical, or autobiographical context)
 Text therefore studied in isolation without ideological assumptions or political conditions—goal of
close verbal analysis to 'see the object as in itself it really is' (Matthew Arnold pace Kant)
 Human nature unchanging—continuity valued over innovation
 Individuality as essence securely possessed by each 'transcendent subject' distinct from forces of
society, experience, and language
 Purpose of literature to enhance life in a non-programmatic (non-propagandistic) way
 Form and content fused organically in literature
 'Sincerity' resides within the language of literature, noted by avoidance of cliché or inflated style
so that the distance/difference between words and things is abolished
 'Showing' valued over 'telling'—concrete enactment better than expository explanation
 Criticism should interpret the text unencumbered by theorizing, by preconceived ideas—must
trust instead to direct, empirical, sensory encounter text (Lockean legacy)
The  key critics in history of criticism: Aristotle, Sidney, Johnson, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats and
Shelley. Shelley anticipates Russian formalists' emphasis on 'defamiliarization'; for Shelley, poetry "strips
the veil of familiarity from the world" his criticism also anticipates Freudian notion of mind made up of
conscious and unconscious elements. Works of George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, Henry James also played
major roles. Arnold feared with decline of common belief in religion that society needed literature to
enable the middle classes debased by materialism and philistinism to recognize "the best that has been
known and thought in the world" via canon of great works—goal to attain pure, disinterested knowledge,
and employ past touchstones to evaluate present works. Eliot's idea of poetic 'impersonality' expressed in
"Tradition and the Individual Talent"—anti-Romantic sense of tradition speaking through and transmitted
by the poet.

Recurrent ideas in critical theory:

1. Many notions that we habitually regard as fixed and reliable essences (gender identity, individual self-
hood, literature itself) are fluid, unstable, socially constructed, contingent, provisional categories upon
which no overarching absolute truths can be established.

2. All thinking affected and largely determined by ideological commitments—no mode of inquiry is
disinterested, not even one's own (Barry notes that this premise introduces risk of relativism that may
undercut one's argument).

3. Language conditions and limits what we see and all reality is a linguistic/textual construct

4. All texts are webs of contradiction with no final court of appeals to render judgment

5. Distrust of grand, totalizing theories/notions, including notion of "great books" that are somehow
identifiably great regardless of a particular sociopolitical context; likewise, concept of a "human nature"
that transcends race, gender , class is untenable, and can be shown to have the effect of marginalizing
other categories of identification/affiliation when some general "human nature" is invoked, appealed to.

Finally, one can conclude that:

 Politics is pervasive,
 Language is constitutive,
 Truth is provisional,
 Meaning is contingent,
 Human nature is a myth.

Theory before Theory/ Liberal Humanism

May 13, 2020UncategorizedComments: 0

Humanism is a philosophical and literary movement which has human being as its
central concern. It also holds a general belief that human nature is something fixed and
constant. Now, Liberal Humanism is a term which falls within the domain of literary
criticism. During the 1970s, the hour of literary theory, as it was known, Liberal
Humanism was a term applied to theory that came before ‘theory’. The word ‘Liberal’
defines something it is not, that is not ‘radically political’ and thus evasive on political
commitment, on how it is aligned. Humanism in this context also means something
similar, that is something not-Marxist, not-Feminist or not-Theoretical. Liberal
Humanists also believe in the fixedness and constancy of human nature as expressed in
great literature. There is an implication by an influential school that if you are not a
Marxist-critic or a Structuralist or a Feminist critic for that matter, then you are a Liberal
Humanist by default even if you recognise this or not.
Survey of Criticism before theory:
Aristotle’s Poetics was the first literary theory. In this work, Aristotle “offers famous
definitions of tragedy, insists that literature is about character, and that character is
revealed through action, and he tries to identify the required stages in the progress of a
plot.” Around 1580, Sir Philip Sidney wrote his groundbreaking “Apology for Poetry.” In
this work, he made the radical claim that literature was different from other forms of
writing in that it “has as its primary aim the giving of pleasure to the reader, and any
moral or didactic element is necessarily either subordinate to that, or at least, unlikely
to succeed without it.”
Samuel Johnson was another important figure in the history of critical theory. Johnson’s
in depth commentary on Shakespeare was the first time one had given “intensive
scrutiny” to a non-sacred text. The Romantic poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and
Shelley all engaged in a great detail of literary criticism. Notable Victorian literary critics
include George Eliot, Matthew Arnold, and Henry James.
The three major literary critics in the first part of the twentieth century were I.A.
Richards and F.R. Leavis (both of whom were from Cambridge) and T.S. Eliot. In his
Practical Criticism (published in 1929), Richards claimed that readers should focus on a
text’s actual words and not its historical context. One of Leavis’ major contributions was
to claim that literature should be moral, that it should strive to instil its readers with
values.
T.S. Eliot made three major contributions. First, he claimed that a “dissociation of
sensibility” (that is, a radical separation of thought from feeling) “occurred in the
seventeenth century.” Second, he advocated the idea of impersonality, which claims
that one should view poetry, “not as a pouring out of personal emotion and personal
experience, but as a transcending of the individual by a sense of tradition which spoke
through, and is transmitted by, the individual poet.” Third, he advocated the objective
correlative, which claims that “the best way of expressing an emotion in art is to find
some vehicle for it in gesture, action, or concrete symbolism, rather than approaching it
directly or descriptively.” In other words, the artist should try to show and not tell
emotions.
There are two “tracks” in the “development of English criticism.” The “practical
criticism” track (which “leads through Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold to T.S. Eliot
and F.R. Leavis”) focuses on “the close analysis of the work of particular writers, and
gives us our familiar tradition of ‘close reading.’” “The other track is very much ‘ideas-
led’ rather than ‘text-led’: it tends to tackle big general issues concerned with literature
—How are literary works structured? How do they affect readers or audiences? What is
the nature of literary language? How does literature relate to the contemporary and to
matters of politics and gender? What can be said of literature form a philosophical point
of view?” This second track is interested with many of the same issues that literary
critics have been since the 1960s. Liberal humanism is the type of criticism that “held
sway” before “theory” emerged in the 1960s. Barry describes ten tenets of liberal
humanism.
Ten tenets of liberal humanism:
First, good literature transcends the culture in which it was written; it speaks to people
throughout all ages.
Second, a text “contains its own meaning within itself. It doesn’t require any elaborate
process of placing it within a context, whether this be” socio-political, literary-historical,
or autobiographical.
Third, one should strive to approach a text with an open mind, “without priori
ideological assumptions, or political pre-conditions.”
Fourth, “Human nature is essentially unchanging.” Therefore, “continuity in literature is
more important and significant than innovation.”
Fifth, every person has a unique “essence,” which transcends his “environmental
influences.” Though one can “change and develop” this essence (“as do characters in
novels”), “it can’t be transformed—hence our uneasiness with those scenes (quite
common, for instance, in Dickens) which involve a ‘change of heart’ in a character, so
that the whole personality is shifted into a new dimension by force of circumstance—the
miser is transformed and changes his ways, or the good man or woman is corrupted by
wealth.”
Sixth, “The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the
propagation of human values,” but not in a preachy, propaganda-like way.
Seventh, “Form and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the
one grows inevitably from the other. Literary form should not be like a decoration which
is applied externally to a completed structure.”
Eighth, writers should be sincere and honest. For example, he should avoid clichés, or
“over-inflated forms of expression.” In so doing, the writer “can transcend the sense of
distance between language and material, and can make the language seem to ‘enact’
what it depicts, thus apparently abolishing the necessary distance between words and
things.”
Ninth, “What is valued in literature is the ‘silent’ showing and demonstrating of
something, rather than the explaining, or saying, of it.” According to this view, “words
should mime, or demonstrate, or act out, or sound out what they signify, rather than
just representing it in an abstract way. This idea is state with special fervency in the
work of F.R. Leavis.”
Tenth, the “job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the
reader. A theoretical account of the nature of reading, or of literature in general, isn’t
useful in criticism.”
In the 1960s, scholars began to rejection liberal humanism in favor of “critical theory.”
In the Sixties, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, linguistic criticism, and feminist
criticism all emerged. The Seventies saw the rise of structuralism and post-
structuralism. In the Eighties, “history, politics, and context were reinstated at the
centre of the literary-critical agenda.” New historicism and cultural materialism, both of
these take what might be called a ‘holistic’ approach to literature, aiming to integrate
literary and historical study while at the same time maintaining some of the insights of
the Structuralists and Post-Structuralists of the previous decade.”
The major movements that arose in the Nineties were postcolonialism and
postmodernism Barry describes five “recurrent ideas in critical theory.”
First, theory is anti-essentialist. “Many of the notions which we would usually regard as
the basic ‘givens’ of our existence (including our gender identity, our individual
selfhood, and the notion of literature itself) are actually fluid and unstable things, rather
than fixed and reliable essences.” These notions are socially constructed, “that is,
dependent on social and political forces and on shifting ways of seeing and thinking.”
“There is no such thing as a fixed and reliable truth (except for the statement that this
is so, presumable).”
Second, theory claims that all interpreters are biased: “all investigators have a thumb
on one side or other of the scales. Every practical procedure…presupposes a theoretical
perspective of some kind.”
Third, theory claims that language doesn’t merely “record reality;” rather, “it shapes
and creates it, so that the whole of our universe is textual. Further…meaning is jointly
constructed by reader and writer. It isn’t just ‘there’ and waiting before we get to the
text but requires the reader’s contribution to bring it into being.”
Fourth, “The meanings within a literary work are never fixed and reliable, but always
shifting, multi-faceted and ambiguous. In literature, as in all writing, there is never the
possibility of establishing fixed and definitive meanings: rather, it is characteristic of
language to generate infinite webs of meaning, so that all texts are necessarily self-
contradictory, as the process of deconstruction will reveal.”
Fifth, the idea of “human nature” is rejected, “since it is usually in practice Eurocentric
(that is, based on white European norms) and andocentric (that is, based on masculine
norms and attitudes. Thus, the appeal to the idea of a generalised, supposedly
inclusive, human nature is likely in practice to marginalise, or denigrate, or even deny
the humanity of women, or disadvantaged groups.”
The above material is retrieved and edited for the purpose of study

Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural

Theory by Peter Barry
A summary of Beginning Theory:  An Introduction to Literary and Cultural
Theory by Peter Barry (Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2002) [Barry is
a “Reader in English at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth]
Introduction
Aristotle’s Poetics was the first literary theory.  In this work, Aristotle
“offers famous definitions of tragedy, insists that literature is about character,
and that character is revealed through action, and he tries to identify the required
stages in the progress of a plot.”[i]  Around 1580, Sir Philip Sidney wrote his
groundbreaking “Apology for Poetry.”  In this work, he made the radical claim
that literature was different from other forms of writing in that it “has as its
primary aim the giving of pleasure to the reader, and any moral or didactic
element is necessarily either subordinate to that, or at least, unlikely to succeed
without it.”  Samuel Johnson was another important figure in the history of
critical theory.  Johnson’s in depth commentary on Shakespeare was the first
time one had given “intensive scrutiny” to a non-sacred text.[ii]  The Romantic
poets Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, and Shelley all engaged in a great detail of
literary criticism.  Notable Victorian literary critics include George Eliot, Matthew
Arnold, and Henry James. 
The three major literary critics in the first part of the twentieth century were I.A. Richards
and F.R. Leavis (both of whom were from Cambridge) and T.S. Eliot.  In his Practical
Criticism (published in 1929), Richards claimed that readers should focus on a text’s actual
words and not its historical context.  One of Leavis’ major contributions was to claim that
literature should be moral, that it should strive to instill its readers with values.  T.S. Eliot made
three major contributions.  First, he claimed that a “dissociation of sensibility” (that is, a radical
separation of thought from feeling) “occurred in the seventeenth century.”[iii]  Second, he
advocated the idea of impersonality, which claims that one should view poetry, “not as a pouring
out of personal emotion and personal experience, but as a transcending of the individual by a
sense of tradition which spoke through, and is transmitted by, the individual poet.”  Third, he
advocated the objective correlative, which claims that “the best way of expressing an emotion in
art is to find some vehicle for it in gesture, action, or concrete symbolism, rather than
approaching it directly or descriptively.”  In other words, the artist should try to show and
not tell emotions.[iv] 
            There are two “tracks” in the “development of English criticism.”  The “practical criticism”
track (which “leads through Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold to T.S. Eliot and F.R. Leavis”)
focuses on “the close analysis of the work of particular writers, and gives us our familiar tradition
of ‘close reading.’”  “The other track is very much ‘ideas-led’ rather than ‘text-led’:  it tends to
tackle big general issues concerned with literature—How are literary works structured? How do
they affect readers or audiences? What is the nature of literary language? How does literature
relate to the contemporary and to matters of politics and gender? What can be said of literature
form a philosophical point of view?”  This second track is interested with many of the same
issues that literary critics have been since the 1960s.[v] 
Liberal humanism is the type of criticism that “held sway” before “theory” emerged in the
1960s.  Barry describes ten tenets of liberal humanism.  First, good literature transcends the
culture in which it was written; it speaks to people throughout all ages.  Second, a text “contains
its own meaning within itself.  It doesn’t require any elaborate process of placing it within a
context, whether this be” socio-political, literary-historical, or autobiographical.[vi]  Third, one
should strive to approach a text with an open mind, “without priori ideological assumptions, or
political pre-conditions.”[vii]  Fourth, “Human nature is essentially unchanging.”  Therefore,
“continuity in literature is more important and significant than innovation.”  Fifth, every person
has a unique “essence,” which transcends his “environmental influences.”  Though one can
“change and develop” this essence (“as do characters in novels”), “it can’t be transformed—
hence our uneasiness with those scenes (quite common, for instance, in Dickens) which involve
a ‘change of heart’ in a character, so that the whole personality is shifted into a new dimension
by force of circumstance—the miser is transformed and changes his ways, or the good man or
woman is corrupted by wealth.” 
Sixth, “The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life and the
propagation of human values,” but not in a preachy, propaganda-like way.[viii]  Seventh, “Form
and content in literature must be fused in an organic way, so that the one grows inevitably from
the other.  Literary form should not be like a decoration which is applied externally to a
completed structure.”  Eighth, writers should be sincere and honest.  For example, he should
avoid clichés, or “over-inflated forms of expression.”  In so doing, the writer “can transcend the
sense of distance between language and material, and can make the language seem to ‘enact’
what it depicts, thus apparently abolishing the necessary distance between words and
things.”  Ninth, “What is valued in literature is the ‘silent’ showing and demonstrating of
something, rather than the explaining, or saying, of it.” [ix]  According to this view, “words should
mime, or demonstrate, or act out, or sound out what they signify, rather than just representing it
in an abstract way.  This idea is state with special fervency in the work of F.R. Leavis.”  Tenth,
the “job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate between it and the reader.  A theoretical
account of the nature of reading, or of literature in general, isn’t useful in criticism.”[x]
In the 1960s, scholars began to rejection liberal humanism in favor of “critical theory.”  In the
Sixties, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, linguistic criticism, and feminist criticism all
emerged.  The Seventies saw the rise of structuralism and post-structuralism.  In the Eighties,
“history, politics, and context were reinstated at the centre of the literary-critical agenda.”  New
historicism and cultural materialism.  “Both of these take what might be called a ‘holistic’
approach to literature, aiming to integrate literary and historical study while at the same time
maintaining some of the insights of the structuralists and post-structuralists of the previous
decade.”  The major movements that arose in the Nineties were postcolonialism and
postmodernism
Barry describes five “recurrent ideas in critical theory.”  First, theory is anti-
essentialist.  “Many of the notions which we would usually regard as the basic ‘givens’ of our
existence (including our gender identity, our individual selfhood, and the notion of literature
itself) are actually fluid and unstable things, rather than fixed and reliable essences.”  These
notions are socially constructed, “that is, dependent on social and political forces and on shifting
ways of seeing and thinking.”  “There is no such thing as a fixed and reliable truth (except for
the statement that this is so, presumable).”[xi]  Second, theory claims that all interpreters are
biased:  “all investigators have a thumb on one side or other of the scales.  Every practical
procedure…presupposes a theoretical perspective of some kind.”  Third, theory claims that
language doesn’t merely “record reality;” rather, “it shapes and creates it, so that the whole of
our universe is textual.  Further…meaning is jointly constructed by reader and writer.  It isn’t just
‘there’ and waiting before we get to the text but requires the reader’s contribution to bring it into
being.”  Fourth, “The meanings within a literary work are never fixed and reliable, but always
shifting, multi-faceted and ambiguous.  In literature, as in all writing, there is never the possibility
of establishing fixed and definitive meanings:  rather, it is characteristic of language to generate
infinite webs of meaning, so that all texts are necessarily self-contradictory, as the process of
deconstruction will reveal.”[xii]  Fifth, the idea of “human nature” is rejected, “since it is usually in
practice Eurocentric (that is, based on white European norms) and androcentric (that is, based
on masculine norms and attitudes.  Thus, the appeal to the idea of a generalised, supposedly
inclusive, human nature is likely in practice to marginalise, or denigrate, or even deny the
humanity of women, or disadvantaged groups.”[xiii]

Introduction

The first chapter of ‘Beginning Theory’ by Peter Barry concerns liberal

humanism – the form of study that preceded criticism. It is referred to
as “the traditional approach to English studies” in the book. Initially, it
describes a short history of the development of English studies
(shown in the timeline above) and then moves on to a report of the
different ideas introduced by academics and poets that have
condensed into liberal humanism. This entry focuses on the history of
English Studies as well as ‘The ten tenets of liberal humanism’.

The Ten Tenets of Liberal Humanism

The key ideas of liberal humanism are presented in the form of a list
that many traditional critics would approve of. Barry argues that the
list elucidates “the values and beliefs that formed the subject’s half-
hidden curriculum”.

The first tenet says that good literature is inherently ‘timeless’. The
clear implication here is that any form of literature should be relevant
at any time it is read. The idea is that time limits the scope of
literature, so something that ‘transcends the limitations and
peculiarities of the age’ would have to be a show of innate human
characteristics that remain constant. This tenet automatically
removes literature from the bounds of historical, political, social and
personal contexts – which is precisely what the second tenet asserts.

The third tenet follows suit by announcing that literature must be

‘studied in isolation’. This implies that attaching context to literature
creates a bias in a critic’s approach to the piece which then defeats
the purpose of criticism (i.e. “to see the object as in itself it really is”).

The fourth and fifth tenet elaborate on the preceding ideas. The
former embraces the ‘unchanging’ nature of human characteristics,
and the latter denounces the transformation of characters. An
essential similarity amongst all five of these beliefs is that they
strongly dissociate literature with societal forces. Good literature (just
like an individual) “is antecedent to, or transcends, the forces of
society [and] experience”.

A dver tise me nts

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The sixth tenet says that literature must be influential but not
‘programmatic’. The key implication here is that while literature must
contain an idea (often referred to as a theme), it must not be explicitly
stated because then it will ‘tend towards propaganda’. Barry argues
that it is human nature to be wary of blatant attempts to influence
views, so writers should strike a balance between ideas (that they
want to propagate) and the techniques they use to convey the ideas.

The seventh tenet advocates the interweaving of literary techniques

and the writer’s ideas in an indistinguishable manner. This means that
poetic devices must be instrumental in the reader’s understanding of
the writer’s message. The eighth tenet follows by clarifying that the
use of these devices (and, in extension, the method by which they are
integrated with the writer’s message) is distinct for each writer. This
gives the different forms of literature their own personalities and adds
‘sincerity’ to their writing.

The ninth tenet uses the preceding idea and links it with the sixth
tenet. Any text that is ‘sincere’ in nature will inherently be implicit
because it will have poetic devices that cloak the writer’s message. It
follows that “what is valued in literature is the silent showing … rather
than the explaining, or saying, of it.”.

The tenth tenet champions the concept of ‘English empiricism’, which

argues that a critic must only ‘trust what is made evident to the
senses or experienced directly’. It is important to note that this does
not mean that a critic should be dismissive of implicit messages. It
instead means that a critic’s work must not include speculation.

Conclusion

To conclude, these tenets provide a detailed framework for critics. In

Peter Barry’s words, “Ideas such as these, and the practice that went
with them, are now often referred to as ‘liberal humanism’.
Theory before theory: liberal
humanism
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and
Cultural Theory. NY: Manchester UP, 1995.

English literature as such was first taught at King’s College, London

(another college of what later became London University) beginning in
1831. For F. D. Maurice (Professor at King’s, introducing the principles
of liberal humanism) the middle class represents the essence of
Englishness, so middle-class education should be peculiarly English,
and therefore should centre on English literature. People so educated
would feel that they belonged to England, that they had a country. In
short, learning English will give people a stake in maintaining the
political status quo without any redistribution of wealth.

I. A. Richards made a decisive break between language and literature.

Richards called it Practical Criticism. This made a close study of
literature possible by isolating the text from history and context.

William Empson was a pupil of Richards and presented his tutor with
the manuscript the book, Seven Types of Ambiguity. Empson
identified seven different types of verbal difficulty in poetry and gave
examples of them, with worked analyses. Not everybody like this ultra-
close form of reading. T. S. Eliot called it the lemon-squeezer school of
criticism.

F. R. Leavis, probably the most influential figure in twentieth-centrury

British criticism. In 1929 he met and married Q. D. Roth. In 1932 they
founded an important journal called Scrutiny and produced it together
for 21years. As the title implies, it extended the ‘close-reading’
method beyond poetry to novels and other material.

Ten tenets of liberal humanism:

1. Good literature is of timeless significance. Such writing is ‘not

for an age, but for all time’ (as Ben Jonson said of
Shakespeare): it is ‘news which stays news’ (Ezra Pound’s
definition of literature).

2. The literature text contains its own meaning within itself. It

should not be required the process of socio-political, literary-
historical, and autobiographical.

3. What is needed is the close verbal analysis of the text without

prior ideological assumptions, or political pre-conditions, or,
indeed, specific expectations of any kind.

4. Human nature is essentially unchanging.

5. Individuality is something securely possessed within each of us

as our unique ‘essence’. The whole Personality can be shifted
 into a new dimension by force of circumstance. The discipline
as a whole believed in what is now called the ‘transcendent
subject’, which is the belief that the individual is antecedent
to, or transcends, the forces of society, experience, and
language.

6. The purpose of literature is essentially the enhancement of life

and the propagation of human values.

7. Literary form should not be like a decoration which is applied

externally to a completed structure; form and content in
literature should be fused in an organic way.

8. sincerity is to be discovered within the text in such matters as

the avoidance of cliche, or over-inflated forms of expression.

9. Ideas should be given the concrete embodiment of enactment.

Words should mime, or demonstrate, or act out, or sound out
what they signify, rather than just representing it in an abstract
way.

10. The job of criticism is to interpret the text, to mediate

between it and the reader. Somehow all ideas are preconceived,
in the sense that they will come between the reader and text if
given half a chance. The clear mark here is called English
empiricism, which can be defined as a determination to trust
only what is made evident to the senses or experienced directly.

Literary theorising from Aristotle to Leavis

1. Aristotle (4th BC): Poetics
Aristotle offers famous definitions of tragedy, insists that
literature is about a character, and that character is revealed
through action, and he tries to identify the required stages in
the progress of a plot. By the combination of pity, fear,
sympathy came about the effect Aristotle called ‘catharsis’.

2. Sir Philip Sidney (1580): Apology of Poetry

A poem is ‘a speaking picture, with this end, to teach and to
delight.’(docere delectando) Sidney’s aim was the
revolutionary one of distinguishing literature from other forms
of writing.

3. Samuel Johnson (18 AC): Lives of the Poets & Preface

to Shakespeare
These two works are the start of the English tradition of
practical criticism, since he is the first to offer detailed
commentary on the work of a single author.
(Wordsworth’s Preface to Lyrical Ballads: Wordsworth and
Coleridge were trying to make their poetic language a much like
prose as possible, avoiding the conventions of diction and
verbal structure which had held sway for so long. Thus, the
book is one of a number of significant critical work in a literary
theory whose immediate aim is to provide a rationale for the
critic’s own poetic work, and to educate the audience for it.
However, Coleridge came to disagree completely with the view
 that the language of poetry must strive to become more like the
language of prose.)

4. Percy Shelley(1821): A Defense of Poetry

Poetry is not simply the conscious rendering of personal
experience into words.

5. Matthew Arnold(1920): The function of Criticism at

the Present Time & The Study of Poetry
He stresses the importance for literature of remaining
disinterested, by which he means politically detached and
uncommitted to any specific programme of action. The goal of
literary criticism is that of attaining pure, disinterested
knowledge, that is, to use another of his favorite phrases, of
simply appreciating ‘the object as in itself it really is’ without
wanting to press the insight gained into the service of a specific
line of action.

6. T. S. Eliot’s contribution to the canon of received

critical ideas being:
a. the notion of the dissociation of sensibility, developed in
the course of his review article on Herber Grierson’s edition
of The Metaphysical Poets,
b. the notion of poetic impersonality, developed in the
course of his two-part essay ‘Tradition and the Individual
Talent’, and
c. the notion of the objective correlative, developed in his
essay on Hamlet.
 The best parts of a poet’s work, he says, are not those which are
mostly original, but those in which the voice of his predecessors
can be most clearly heard speaking through him.

7. The most influential British critic prior to the theory movement

was F. R. Leavis. Leavis, like Arnold in the previous century,
assumed that the study and appreciation of literature is a pre-
condition to the health of society. Leavis began as an admirer of
Eliot’s critical work as well as of his poetry, but later greatly
modified his views. He avoided the coining of critical
vocabulary, and instead used as critical terms words and
phrases which already had established lay sense.

Liberal humanism in practice

1. focus on the evident conflict of values in the story between ‘art’

and ‘life’.

2. this kind of reading is driven by its moral convictions.

3. the second notable aspect of it is that it seems to by-pass

matters of form, structure, genre, and so on and launches
straight into the discussion of matters of content.

The transition to theory

The 1960s: Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, linguistic

criticism
The 1970s: structuralism, post-structuralism

The 1980s: new historicism, cultural materialism (aiming to integrate

literary and historical study while at the same time maintaining some
of the insights of the structuralists and post-structuralists of the
previous decade.)

The 1990s: post-colonialism, postmodernism, Feminism

Some recurrent ideas in critical theory

1. Many of the notions dependent on social and political forces

and shifting ways of seeing and thinking.

2. Language is constitutive.

3. Language itself conditions, limits, and predetermines what we

see.

4. The meanings within a literary work are never fixed and

reliable but always shifting, multi-faceted and ambiguous.

5. Human nature is a myth.