The Literary Criticism Web

"[W]hile we may grant the basic position that literature is primarily art, it must be affirmed also that art does not exist in a vacuum. It is a creation by someone at some time in history, and it is intended to speak to other human beings about some idea or issue that has human relevance. Any work of art for that matter will always be more meaningful to knowledgeable people than to uninformed ones."

                -- Guerin, et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature

In literary circles, the twentieth century has brought a series of revolutions in critical theory, beginning with the Formalist assertions of the New Critics of the 1920s and 1930s. Each new approach has defined itself against preceding theories and traditions of criticism. Intellectual fashions may change or be repackaged but no critical approach has been absolutely vanquished and relegated to the academic dustbin. Certainly this is true with the "old" criticism that the New Critics rejected.

Before the New Critics took the field, critical commentary primarily focused on a piece of literature as an extrapolation of historical-biographical information or as a record of moral-philosophical ideas. This definition of literature as an evaluation of realities of human experience was the product of Humanistic and Romantic values that can be traced far back in Western European culture. From Chaucer and Mallory, to Sidney and Shakespeare, to Dryden and Swift, to Wordsworth and Dickens -- literature in one fashion or another held a mirror up to human experience, exposing its virtue and its vice. In doing so, literature managed to teach and inspire, to entertain and delight, to broaden the social consciousness and deepen the personal self-awareness.

The New Critics and other still newer criticisms have challenged and refocused this mimetic and didactic understanding of literature. Yet many readers are intuitively engaged by the opportunities for historical, social, romantic and moral quests of discovery and insight provided by literature. And as the work of George Watson, E. D. Hirsch and others indicates, many critical scholars also continue to see literary experience as inherently historical. For the socio-historical critic, literature is a purposive activity whose meaning is the product of a particular writer's intentions.

Critical Assumptions

Whatever the specific focus of the socio-historical critic, the work of literature is explored based upon these assumptions:

Critical Strategies

Based upon the above assumptions, the critical reader inevitably must move beyond the text and beyond personal reaction to discover literary meaning. In this quest for meaning, the socio-historical reader uses the following strategies:

Whatever strategies the critical reader uses, he seeks to articulate THE meaning of the text. Meaning does not reside in the text, but the meaning of the text is determinate and accessible to all readers if they only follow the textual allusions and clues to the proper external ccontexts.

updated 08/30/06