CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

I would like to begin with an invocation to our Muse of Music and

Literature, Goddess Saraswathi:

Q.cnl4 Iq IG.!4'1::RB
-!l "

3-l;:;qG.I01ii ·-ll �ciii_ I I

The most ancient texts of all literatures, the Vedas, are supposed to

have originated in the imagination of Lord Brahma. Thus the first literature,

which came into existence about four thousand years ago, being- pure and

divinely inspired, there was no room for criticism or evaluation. It was

earnestly appreciated, and studied for enlightenment. Later, literature

developed as a social product-largely based on mythology and ritualism

and adventure legendry. In its pristine form, literature was purely creative

and was meant for aesthetic enjoyment.

Critical outlooks and viewpoints developed later, perhaps much before

the time of Plato in the West, whereas no such development of criticism is

seen in early Sanskrit literature. Though literary criticism in Europe found its

first articulation in Plato many centuries of critical scholarship might have

preceded him. Generally, the origin of criticism in the Western tradition can

be traced to the time of the pre-Christian Greeks.

 It appears that in ancient creative works, critical commentary

appeared as part of literature. There are countless critical references

scattered in different works-poems, plays, dialogues and the like.

There are, for instance, passages of great critical significance and

penetrating enquiry in the epics of Homer and Aristophanes's famous

comedy The Frogs. Aristophanes, while considering the relative merits

of Aeschylus and Euripides, considers concepts such as the criteria of

merit in poetry and drama, the relative importance of craftsmanship and

morality in a work of art and the choice of language. Lascelles

Abercrombie, in his Principles of Literary Criticism, says that Socrates

was the first person to distinguish between the ability to criticize

literature and thG ability to compose it (8).

What makes Socrates's 'Apology' the first milestor.e in the

1istory of criticism is simply this: that there Socrates for the

iirst time clearly pointed out that criticism is a distinct

Bpecies of literary activity, and also why it is distinct. (9)

Abercrombie further quotes Socrates thus: '"I soon fou:id out,"' he said,

"'that poets do not compose poetry because they are wise, but because

they have a certain nature or genius, which is capabie of enthusiasm"'

(8). Poets in this respect are similar to prophets and oracular persons,

who also say many fine things without knowing what it is they are

saying. When Socrates invited poets to tell him what their poems

meant, he was testing them for what he called 'wisdom', that is to say,
for the power of rational analysis conducted in strict accordance with

definite intellectual principles. In other words, he was inviting them to

criticize their own poems, but he found them unable to do so.

This substantiates that from Socratic times there was a clear

demarcation between critical and creative faculties. The creati\te faculty

was considered superior as the ecstasy or the rhapsodic excitement of

the poet and the magic spell in which one listens to poetry are traced to

divine inspiration. A certain kind of ecstasy or 'getting-out-of oneself'

was a pre-requisite for poetic creativity. The Muse gives the poet the

choicest words, the story and a pleasing voice. These stir the emotions

of the listen9rs. Only a benign Muse could ensure the success of a

poet. The early Greek poets were masters looked upon by people as

their teachers and guides in actual life. The critical faculty on the other

hand, akin to philosophy, involved rational analysis based on certain

principles. !n this approach, the works of poets are observed and the

findings are set out in an orderly manner. It is a studied and deliberate

approach. However, comedies similar to The Frogs, which combine the

critical as well as the creative spirit, must have existed, although rarely.

It must be assumed that a certain distinction between the two faculties

existed even in Greek times, and commentaries on works of art were the

outcome of rational analysis. The early literary theorists were

professional philosophers, not critics, that is, their area of interest was

not restricted to literature alone. The welfare of the society was their
chief concern and since they were teachers, their voice was

authoritarian. P.S. Sastri, in Plato's Phaedrus, says that there is

mention of a hierarchy of professionals in descending order; here the

philosopher occupies the top position above the ruler and the seer,

whereas the poet is accorded a position much lower, with the farmer, the

artisa11, the maker of bed, etc., below him (History of Literary Criticism

15).

Plato, primarily a philosopher, is often considered the first

European literary critic, even though his comments on literature were

part of his observations on the corrupt influences 011 society. Plato's

The Dialogues and The Republic belong to the realm of philosophy

rather than criticism. But references to these works are unavoidable in

discussions on the origins of literary criticism, as Plato's views on

literature have been proved comprehensive and seminal to later

developments in literary criticism. Platonic teachings also formulated the

philosophy of 'idealism'-a concept which privileges the non-corporeal

as the ultimate source of reality. In the tenth book of The Republic,

Plato wanted the lovers of poetry to defend poetry in prose.

Aristotle, Plato's disciple, seems to have taken his cue from

Plato's exhortation to the lovers of poetry, and after a systematic study

of all the poets and dramatists, he formulated a comprehensive theory of

'pJesis'. Here he made an attempt to classify imaginative writing into

various genres like epic, tragedy, comedy, etc. These ideas, presented
 Gt 33910
through his lectures, were the first thoroughly philosophical discussions

of literature, and more importantly, the foundation of all later theories

related to literature.

One important contribution of Greek criticism is the concept of

'Mimesis'. Mimesis denotes imitation, i.e., an imaginative identification

with the obJect, and is essential for a!I artistic activity. Humphry House

explains Aristotle's concept of mimesis thus:

[. ..] it is evident that the pleasure derived from imitation has

ceased to be the plea:-;ure of an intellectual, rec'.scY·:ing

process about 'likeness', and has become a pleasure like

that which Plato describes in Book X of The Republic, a

pleasure of sympathy, a fellow feeling, of sympathetic

emotion into which we are led by the art of the poet.

(Aristotle's Poetics 118)

Thus, in Aristotelian theory, all kinds of art necessarily involve

mimesis. Aristotle's method is essentially that of sc ·entific observation

and analysis. He examined observed phenomena in order to identify

their qualities and characteristics.

His concern is the ontological one of discovering what in fact

literature is rather than the normative one of describing what

it should be. He is describing, not legislating; yet his

description is so organized as to make an account of its

 function, and its value emerge in terms of its function.

( Critical Approaches to Litarature 24)

In Poetics, we find Aristotle's conclusions deduced from the whole body

of extant Greek literature, and subsequently these conclusions came to

be applied to literature as a whole. Following Plato, Aristotle too called

the poet an imitator, although Aristotle differs widely from Plato her-e.

The Aristotelian concept cites poetry as springing from two instincts-the

instinct of imitation and that of harmony and rhythm.

Aristotle's theory of poetry is broadly based on the assumption

that much of what is written in verse, irrespective of its content, is poetry.

Thus the Greek poet Homer and the fifth century philosopher

Empedocles a1·e equally referred to as poets. From the beginning of

criticism we can see the prevalence of two tendencies-firstly, to

generalise about literature and draw conclusions from it, which

constitutes what can be called theory, and secondly, to analyse

individual works and interpret them for readers, which would constitute

what has com0 to be designated in the twentieth century by the term

practical criticism. Thus, in the Greek and Latin originals, we have

Aristotle who formulated a general theory about tragedy-he offers a

definition of tragedy, expounds about character and explains how

character is revealed through action. As Peter Barry observes, "Aristotle

was also the first critic to develop a 'reader-centred' approach to

literature, since his consideration of drama tried tJ describe how it

affected the audience (Beginning Theory 21 ). Aristotle's formulations,

although text-dependent, cannot be described as being subordinate to

literature.

Post-Aristotelian critics like Theophrastus, Neoptolemus,

Erastosthenes, Callimachus and Aristarchus seem to be more engaged

with rhetoric and linguistic studies, and so the period saw a growth of

grammarians and scholasts. In the first century before Christ, critical

activity seems to have moved to Rome. Plautus and Terence, Cicero,

Lucilius and Philodemus, are a few names associated with this time.

Horace, the author of Ars Poetica, who is mentioned in connection with

earlier critics, seems to be a writer guided by a critical sense.

Another critic familiar with Jewish as well as Greek works, whose

ideas on literature have gained popularity in the Western tradition, is

Longinus and his text is Peri Hypsos. Longinus's approach is radically

different from that of Aristotle and Plato, in that he contributed to the

effect art had on the reader or audience and produced "the first

'affective' theory of literature" (Critical Approaches to Literature 46).

Longinus refers to those qualities in a work of :iterature

which instantaneously create in the reader a sense of being

carried to new heights of passionate experience; sublimity is

the greatest of all the literary virtues, the one which makes a

work, whatever its minor defects, truly impressive. The

ultimate function of literature, and its ultimate justification, is

 to be sublime and to have on its readers the effect of

ecstasy or transport that sublimity has. (46)

!t was during the Renaissance that these ancient works were

discovered and made available to the western world. The discovery of

Poetics towards the end of the fifteenth century and the exposition of this

text by Italian critics stimulated a lot of critical activity. Several Greek

manuscripts and texts were made available to the English. The

intermingling through time of Platonic and Aristotelian notions related to

art produced what came to be known as a classical view of art. This

view of art sees art as nature perfected and as a repository of timeless

ideals. Literary works were valued as they were supposed to contain

universal and timeless truths,. rather than an individual or particular

perception of the world. The intensely rational perspective of the

Renaissance scholars overemphasized the aesthetic observations of

antiquity and later generations insisted on the observance of these rules.

By the eighteenth century, the classical rules of antiquity became an

exacting standard by which all creative works were judged. Deviation

from these norms was stron�Jly disapproved of. These tendencies, which

came to be known as Neo-classical views, have influenced the ways in

which literature was evaluated from the Renaissance to the modern

times.

These Neo-classical tendencies were widespread in literature not

only in the so-called Neo-classical age in the eighteenth century; a

8
further manifestation of these views emerged in the first half of the

twentieth century as well, in the writings of the New Critics. Thus it could

be said that criticism from the Renaissance to the 1950s was dominated

by

a commonsense view of literature, which proposes a

practice of reading in quest of expressive realism [. . .]

Common sense assumes that valuable literary texts, those

which are in a special way worth reading, tell truths-about

the period which produced them, about the world in general

or about human nature-and that in doing so they express

the particular perceptions, the individual insights, of their

authors. (Critical Practice 2)

The Neo-classical views which developed during the Renaissance

prevailed and the belief that important works of art contained truths

about the world in general and about human nature persisted. These

truths were revealed through the insight of the author. Language was

considered a transparent medium through which individuals transmitted

messages to one another. This was based on an essentially humanistic

belief that man was the origin and source of meaning. The knowledge

he had was what his mind interpreted from his experience. The

Empiricist theory that knowledge could be gained only through

experience was the reigning belief. Art was viewed as linked to reality.

Imitation and expression were accepted as the important features of art.

The greatness of a work was judged on the basis of its mimetic

accuracy. ln this traditional view of criticism, the text was a bearer of

stable meaning, and the critic, a faithful seeker after the truths

embedded in the text. In this general mode of approach criticism was

not a self-conscious or deliberate practice.

Towaids the end of the eighteenth century, there was

considerable critical activity in Germany which in turn had an impact on

the English writers, and this further reflected in the Romantic Age in

literature in the nineteenth century. These German critical theories gave

a new direction to approaches in criticism, and critical terminology

became a part of English criticism. Coleridge was the critic who was

most influenced by the German writers. The idea of an organic unity,

which was implicit in classical scholars like Plato, Aristotle and Longinus,

acquired importance in the Romantic Age.

The concept of 'imagination' as a higher faculty that helps in the

creation of poetry was conceived by Coleridge. According to Coleridge,

imagination:

dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create, or

where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all

events it struggles to idealize and unify. It is essentially

vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed

·'.nd dead. (Glossary of Lii,;;:1:y Terms 63)

10
 All t�is paved the way for the autonomy of the poetic world. As

the popular belief was that the work of art was formed by the personality

of the author, this gave way to biographical criticism. The writings of

Rousseau and Immanuel Kant gave impetus to Romantlcism.

The concept of inspiration came to be replaced by the

unconscious and the l.!nconscious element in the artistic process was

emphasized. This paved the way for an exploration of the psyche of the

writer. The teachings of Schiller, Hegel and Goethe became popular

and this led to a distinction between the classical and the romantic.

Romanticism came to be the governing fashion in the poetry and art of

the late nineteenth century. Subjective experience was given great

importance in the works of the period. The text embodied the presence

of the author. The development of associational psychology brought

about an increased interest in the human psyche. A literary work was

supposed to reflect the reality of experience as perceived by the author

of the work. The nineteenth century artist believed that art was the

faithful representation of objects found in nature.

The task of the nineteenth century critic was to find out what the

· author was trying to say through his work. While trying to e�plain the

text, the critic had to elucidate it in terms of the author's ideas, his

psychological state and social background. A knowledge of the author's

biography was considered essential for a proper understanding of his

work. The critic had to highlight and bring out the author's intuition. The

11
poets who held the banner of Romanticism in the early nineteenth

century-Wordsworth and Coleridge-both seem to have held the

critical spirit infinitely inferior to writing poetry. They attributed such a

low status to criticism, as is evident from one of the letters Wordsworth:

[... ] if the quantity of time consumed in writing critiques on

the works of others were given to original composition, of

whatever kind it might be, it would be much better

employed; it would make a man find out sooner his own

level, and it would do infinitely less mischief. A false or

malicious criticism may do much injury to the minds of

others; a stupid invention, either in prose or verse, is quite

harmless. (qtd. in FC 131)

This aversion to criticism seems tc stem from the harm that hostile

criticism always inflicted on poets and writers or the time. The

stratification or grading into hiernrchies, the critical and creative

endeavours, and the denigration of the critical spirit to a lower slavish

position, seem to have started in the English tradition of the nineteenth

century.

Criticism attained the status of an academic discipline only in the

latter half of the nineteenth century, after Matthew Arnold. The

innovation in critical writing which Arnold seems to have initiated, are

certainly of a different dimension. Though his writings include evaluative

remarks on poets, and even though they are sometimes of a hostile

12
nature, the main purport of Arnoldian criticism is different. They seem

more to expound the critic's task-a sort of metacriticism in the shape of

essays which discuss, analyse and express firmly the duties and

responsibilities of a critic to literature, to society, to politics and to

morality at large. This interest in a wide range of concerns, which Arnold

showed in practice, started a new trend in literature. The critic emerged

as a man of letters, with a definite say in the world of letters. Arnold was

the first literary critic who insisted on the value of criticism. He defined

criticism as "the endeavour in all branches of knowledge, theology,

philosophy, history, art, science, to see the object as in itself it really is"

(FC 130). He adds that the power and value of Engiish literature was

impaired because of the absence of criticism in it. According to Arnold,

"for the creation of a master-work of literature two powers must concur,

the power cf the man and the power of the moment," and "the power of

the moment" is within the control of the critical power" (133).

The importance that Matthew Arnold gave to criticism was carried

on in the twent,eth century by poets and critics like T. S. Eliot and Ezra

Pound. Responding to Arnold's formulations on criticism, and reacting

to it, T. S. Eliot's three influential essays "Tradition and the Individual

Talent" (1917), "The Function of Criticism" (1923), and "The Frontiers of

Criticism" (1956) built up an impressive edifice of critical theory. It may

probably be assumed that Eliot's critical writing was the harbinger of

13
Nee-classical tendencies in the twentieth century, for he tried to

preserve classical norms in thought and expressions.

With the advent of the New Critics, the norms and presuppositions

of traditional criticism were toppled over. Thus the earlier notion of the

text as an embodiment of stable meanings came to be questioned. The

reverence for meaning was also done away with. The concept of the

critic in search of the determinate meaning posted in the text by the

author's intention gave way to a new concept of the reader-critic. In the

earlier notion, a literary work was supposed to reflect the social milieu of

the time. The text as an articulator of the historical and social force at

work at the time of composition was also undermined. The relevance of

a text as we!I as its impact on the society too was immaterial. For T. S.

Eliot, Irving Babbitt and F.R. Leavis, the function of criticism also

involved a critique of culture. But these notions gave way to new

classical tendencies and the world of criticism saw a new upsurge in

criticism with T. S. Eliot as its main source of inspiration.

Eliot's major theoretical formulations like his emphasis on close

analysis of a text as concept of a unified sensibility, his exaltation of the

metaphysical poetry for its unity, irony and symbolic complexity, his

theory of impersonality, all had a profound impact on the New Critics.

As Paul de Man says in "Resistance to Theory":

The perfect embodiment of the New Criticism remains, in

many respects the personality and ideology of T. S. Eliot, a

14
 combination of original talent, traditional learning, verbal wit

and moral earnestness, an Anglo-American blend of

intellectual gentility [... ]. (Modern Criticism and Practice

335)

The major theorists and practitioners of the New Criticism-I. A.

Richards, T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, Yvor Winters, J. C.Ransom, Cleanth

Brooks, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, R. P. Blackmur, William K.

Wimsatt and William Empson-were concerned with the isolated poem.

To them, a work of art is autotelic; it is a self-contained, a self-subsisting

autonomous whole which has no relation to the poet, poetic history or

social or political background.

There came to be a shift in emphasis from the ::1uthor to the text.

New Critics like Beardsley and W. K.Wimsatt expounded the concept of

'Intentional Fallacy', which proved to be a breakthrough from the

traditional mode. The critics of this generation were sceptical ·about the

authenticity of the supposed intention of the author and they thought the

quest for the intention of the author would mislead the critic. The

author's purpose thus became anterior to the text. The critic's duty was

redefined: his attention was to be directed to the text, the text

representing the printed matter on the page. The text was analysed on

the basis of its qualities of "integrity", "unity", "maturity" and "subtlety"

(Verbal Icon 9). The poem was now considered as a verbal icon, that is,

an entity in itself. The use of words and images in a work of art was

15
focused upon. Evaluation was based on textual evidence and what the

critic could arrive at from the text, about the author. Thus they allowed

for the intention of the author implicit in the text.

The concept of objective impersonal criticism, inspired by T. S.

Eliot, took firm roots in the English critical tradition. Eliot also advocated

a mode of reviewing a poem as an independent and self-sufficient

verbal-object. Objectivity in criticism gave the implication that al! intrinsic

facts-the biography of the author, the social context of liter�ture and

literary history had to be done away with. I. A. R:chards's Practical

Criticism (1929) and William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity (1930)

enriched this new mode with their technique of close reading and textual

analysis. The technique of close reading implied detailed and subtle

analysis of tre words and interrelation between different words in c1

work. Any attempt to divert critical attention from the text was

discouraged.

One important aspect of New Criticism was the importance it gave

to the use of language and meaning. The language of poetry was

differentiated from the language of science, as one involving figures of

speech and symbols. I. A. Richards identified in po,�try an 'emotLve' use

of language in contrast to the 'scientific' use found in other discourses.

The New Critics are considered completely ahistorical in their handling

of texts. Although they brought a knowledge of the classical,

renaissance and enlightenment cultures to their reading of poetry, they

16
insisted on a close reading of the poem which yielded its structure. They

deemed the meaning of any text to be timeless and universal.

For the New Critics, the text is not bound to the period in which it

is produced, or to the society either. They thus isolated the text. In their

theory, the poem is a closed and self-contained entity. They also

concerned themselves with truth. But this was the truth of unchanging

experience which the poem as icon embodies in language and offers for

contemplation. This contemplation, performed in isolation, involves only

the reader and the text.

In New Criticism, the task of the critic was an objective analysis of

form. Great emphasis was laid on the objectivity of the critic. But they

dicl not expiore the relationship between the language and meaning.

Thus New Criticism isolated criticism From all other concerns. Criticism

was not assigned any sociological and cultural functirJn, and

consequent:y it declined to a sterile quest for ::;omplexities and

ambiguities. The New Critics made criticism parasitic on other texts.

Criticism became a secondary activity, and offered little scope for

intertextual studies. The confrontation between author and text was

unmediated by the experience of other texts.

New Criticism shifted attention from the author to the text and

concentrated on the use of language in a work of art. Thus there was a

renewed awareness of the complexities of language which a close

reading of the poem could yield and this also gave a new importance to

17
the critic or the reader. However, the process of 'ir,terpretation' which

was· to assume dynamic proportions in the second half of the century

was nowhere in the horizon. Thus, even though by arguing for

objectivity and the need for isolating a text, the New Critics' tended to

reduce the scope of textual meaning and interpretative freedom-it

paved the way for opening up new vistas in the area of critical inquiry.

The post-war period saw tremendous growth in the area of critical

theory with a new development in each decade. In America there was a

tendency towards a more scientific and managerial mode of thought

which resulted in a more ambitious form of critical writing. New Criticism

was generally disapproved of as it tended to ignore the broader, more

structural aspects of literature.

The Canadian critic Northrop Frye's contribution to criticism

sought to do precisely that. For Frye, criticism was a coherent and

systematic study of literature. Frye's Anatomy of Criticism (1957) tried to

provide the critic with a system of classification of modes, symbols,

mythic structures and genres. He made a distinction between art and

criticism: While art was natural, criticism was the objective study of art.

For Frye, "it is therefore impossible to learn literature: one learns about it

in a certain way, but what one learns, transitively, is the criticism of

literature" (Anatomy of Criticism 11 ). According to Frye, literature

worked by certain objective laws anci criticism could hecome systematic

by formulming them. These laws were the various r1odes, archetypes,

18
myths and genres by which all literary works are structured. At the root

of all literature lay four narrative catefJories-comic, romantic, tragic and

ironic-which could be seen to correspond respectively to the four

mythoi (pre-urban images of the natural cycles)-of spring, summer,

autumn and winter.

Three recurrent patterns of symbolism-the apocalyptic, the

demonic and the analogical are identified. These modes and myths are

transhistorical. But unlike New Historicism, for which literature was

ahistorical, Frye finds in literature a substitute histrxy, with all the

collective structures of history itself. Frye sees the entire world of

literature as an enclosed system with a recycling of literary texts. Thus

in Frye's system, literature is untainted by history.

Frye's system, in order to survive, must keep itself rigorously

closed for, if anything external is allowed to creep in, its categories will

be deranged. Thus Frye seems to exhibit a greater fom1alism than even

New Criticism. For him, literature is an autonomous verbal structure,

completely cut off from any external resistance. It is an inward looking

realm. Frye does not see literature as the self-expression of individual

authors either, for in this system authors are no more than functions in

this universal system.

Frye is extremely important to post-structuralist critics, for he

initiated a new interest in romanticism. He is also a critic who defined

19
criticism as a distinct mode of study. Frye says that we often confuse

criticism as a subdivision of literature:

Criticism, rather, is to art what history is to action and

philosophy is to wisdom: a verbal imitation of a human

productive power which in itself does not speak. And just as

there is nothing which the philosopher cannot consider

philosophically, and nothing which the historian cannot

consider histO! :,:;;:.,;:y, so the critic should b · �:;b!s to construct

and dwell in ::1 cn,1ceptual universe of his r/11vn. This critical

universe seems to be one of the things irnplied in Arnold's

ronception of culture. (Anatomy of Criticisi,, : 1-2)

While the New Critics isolated the text, Frye introduced the concept of

archetypes which helped to connect one text with another, breaking

down the traditional barriers between authors and historical periods.

These archetypes are images or symbols which provide a sort of link

between texts and they provide the source of intelligibility of the texts. It

was Frye who introduced the concept of intertextuality. After Frye,

literature came to represent a realm of autonomous cuiture. He

considered the traditional realist text, which was a microcosm of the

external world, as non-literary. He tried to pull dowri barriers between

texts by emphasizing the essential mythical patterns underlying all

works. He upgraded criticism to an autonomous 3nd systematic study,

rejecting as well the idea of the author as the guarantee of the single

20
 it
meaning of the text. Criticism, to Frye, has a social function too, for

can function as a solvent for class struggle in the imagination.

In the 1960s, Saussure's theory of language and Nietzsche's

philosophy began to make their presence felt in critical canons.

Important post-Saussurean schools of criticism include Russian

Formalism, Marxist criticism, Semiotics and Structuralism. Critics

belonging to these various schools derived their techniques of analysis

from Ferdinand de Saussure's pioneering work on language.

S3ussure's theories provided the necessary impetus to change in

different a1 eas of inquiry where language and cultu�e are sGen to be

central. There was also an increaser! awareness of the role of language

in various disciplines, especially in philosophy. Central to Saussure's

theory is the idea that various sciences speak about "objects." These

"objects" are not real objects external to language but "conceptual

objects" located within it. Saussure argued that the signifiers of

language, i.e., the sound structures of speech and the notations by

which they are represented in writing, do not signify real things or real

relationships, but the concept of things and the concept of relationships.

Our knowledge of the external world is always mediated through and

influenced by the organizing structure which language inevitably places

between it and ourselves. The post-Saussurean c 1·itics challenged the

earlier realist way of understanding the relationship between language

and the world. They argued that what seemed obvious and natural was

21
not given but produced in a specific society based on how the society

talked and thought about itself and its experiences. As Catherine Belsey

says:

Post-Saussurrean theory starts from an analysis of

language, proposing that language is not transparent, not

merely the medium in which autonomous individuals

transmit messages to each other about an independently

constituted world of things. On the contrary, it is language

which offers the possibility of constructing a world of

individuals and things, and of differentiating between them.

( Critical Practice 4)

Saussure's theory is thus a warning against the opacity of language. As

a result, the framework of assumptions and discourses, which supported

the earlier ways of thinking and talking, was lost. The concept of realism

came to be questioned. For traditional criticism, experience prx'.x:ed

language, whereas for the critics after Saussure, language preceded

experience.

The source of the most innovative critical theories after 1960 can

be traced to' the radical elements in Saussure's theory of the sign. After

Saussure, the study of literature as a signifying practice gained

importance. In Saussure's theory, language is a system of signs. The

arbitrary relationship between the signifier and the signified disproves

the earlier beiief in the transparency of language. Saussure says: "If

22
words stood for pre-existing concepts, they would all have exact

equivalents in meaning from one language to the next, but this is not

true" (Course in General Linguistics 116).

In traditional literary criticism, literature denotes a particular set of

fictional, imaginative and creative piece of writing, which requires

specific methods of analysis for a proper understanding. But the

question of what constituted literature changed from time to time

accorc ing to the perspective offered by the reigning critical theory of the

time. The tr.:1ditional concept of literature embodied a historically relati\/e

way of viewing culture. The Marxist critics considered this outdated, as

it separated the study of "literary" texts from other �ultural practices.

They were interested in the political effects of texts. Marxist criticism

had a historical and materialist theoretical orientation. Therefore, these

critics tried to devise methods of analysis which would explain the

production of literary texts and other cultural forms as part of a

materialist theory of ideology. They seem to have a firm belief that a

proper understanding of works of literature is possible only when they

are placed in the context of the economic, social and political milieu in

which they are produced. They tried to adopt a political stance in

relation to literature. Critics tried to evaluate works on the basis of the

political effects these works had on society.

While the Marxists were influenced by ideology, the formalists

were influenced by the developing methods of linguistics. The latter

tried to establish the study of liiterature on a scientific footing. They wern

concerned only with the question of literariness, i.e., with the analysis of

the formal properties of literature. They emphasized the aesthetic

function of literature, and favoured literary works which presented

defamiliarised experience. Consequently, their concept of criticism

seems to be one which tried to analyse the formal device by m8ans of

which such an effect was achieved. They too argued that literature

could not be a reflection of reality. This raised the question of the word's

relntionship to what it signified. In formalist criticism, the word has an

aesthetic and communicative function. The referential meaning of the

word is suspended in poetry. While New Criticism emphasized the

evocative 2. r ::1 emotive functions of p:-:.etic language, Formalism ten··:r'.d

to stress the cognitive function. Instead of reflecting reality, literary texts

tend to make it strange. What distinguishes literature from other for: ns

of discourse is its ability to defamiliarise the forms through which we

perceive the external world. At the level of content, the formalists tried

to reveal the devices by which total structures of work helped to

defamiliarise certain dominant conceptions of the social world. They

regarded literature as a practice which would effect a transformation of

received categories of thought and expression through a variety of

formal devices. Shklovsky argues that literature thus "creates a 'vision'

of the object instead of serving as a means of knowing it" (Art as

Technique 18). Realist modes of writing, which persuade the reader to

24
read through formal artistic devices without noticing them, are not the

formalists' favourite. In fact, they preferred works which focus the

reader's attention on the artistry of the work. This shows their

susceptibility to Kant's doctrine of art for art's sake. They were

motivated by purely "literary" considerations, unlike the Marxist critics

who were inclined to the historical and sociological aspects of criticism.

Other developments in continuation of Formalism ar·e

Structuralism and Semiotics. What Structuralism shares with Formalism

and Saussurian linguistics ls the similarities they have in their

methodologies. The Structuralists maintain that cultural forms such as

myths, folk tales and literature can be viewed as being derived from

linguistics paradigm and can be applied in these also. Coward and Ellis,

with referenr.e to the relationship between social systems and linguistics,

observe that "all social practices can be understood as meanings, as

significations and as circuits of exch3nge between subjects, and can

therefore lean on linguistics as a model for the elaboration of their

systematic reality" (Language and Materialism 1 ). Structuralism does

not limit itself purely to the area of criticism. Scholars have used it as a

mode of analysis of cultural artefacts. It has also been applied to

disciplines like anthropology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history and

semiotics.

Literature too is considered a system. It is organized like

language and is governed by a set of intrinsic laws. The structures have

25
unity and internal coherence. This implies that structu·res are

characteristically closed systems. But still, they are always in a process

of change. Terence Hawkes says:

The structure is not static. The laws which govern it act so

as to make it not only structured, but structuring. Thus in

order to avoid reduction to the level merely of passive form,

the structure must be capable of transformational

procedures, whereby new material is constantly processed

by and through it. ( Structuralism and Semiotics 16)

One important critic of Structuralism is Jonathan Culler. In his

Structuralist Poetics, he tries to formulate:

a poetics which strives to define the conditions of meaning

granting new attention to the activity of reading, it would

attempt to specify how we go about making sense of texts,

which are the interpretative operations on which literature

itself, as an institution, is based. (viii)

The most important contribution of CL!ller's structuralism is its return to

the text. HE: is concerned not with the content, but with the process by

which the ccntent is formulated. Culler says: "a text can be a p0em only

because certain possibilities exist within the tradition it is written in

relation to other poems" (30). Culler's main aim is not an interpretation

of the poem. Just as Saussure's linguistics attempts to account for an

abstract system (langue) which generates the concrete event (parole),

26
Culler tries to account for a poetics of writing and reading, conceived as

an abstract system of conventions, by means of which "poems," and

"novels," are generated and are perceived as such by members of the

culture involved. He tries to establish a concept of literary competence

capable of generating all the constituent elements of literature. He

insists on the nature of writing as a social institution and of reading as a

social activity. He considers the written word in its own rigbt, which

enjoys autonomous productivity.

Another important critic of the time is Roland Barthes, who started

as a structuralist but later challenged the ideas of Structuralism itself.

He extended the structuralist approach and developed it into semiology.

The distinctive contribution of structuralism to literary criticism lies in its

recognition of the nature and implications of the acts of reading and

writing. Barthes insisted that literature was not merely concerned with

conveying a pre-ordained content to the reader. Instead, it is a

signifying system which characteristically and autonomously makes use

of the activities of reading and writing. Barthes also emphasized the role

of the reader in interpreting a work of literature. The reader is free to

open and close the text's signifying process without respect for the

signified. He explains the process of signification, in his Mythologies. In

this book he expounds his ideas of myths, which refer to the "complex

system of images and beliefs which a society constructs in order to

sustain and authenticate its sense of its own being" (113). Barthes's

27
concept of signification invites readers to participate in the production of

infinite meanings. Thus, in Barthean criticism, the reader has an

important role in the production and writing of texts.

Barthes attributed to literature a social and cult 1Jral function. He

evoked the cultural and sociological dimension of a piece of work. While

New Criticism advocated an unmediated confrontation with the words on

the page, Barthes argued that pre-suppositions of an economic, social,

aesthetic and political order shape our response towards a text.

In the short essay, "The Death of the Author," Barthes does away

with the author also. In keeping with structuralist notions, he too

considers the individual work as part of a larger impersonal system.

This is similar to the new critical stance which rejected the importance

given to the author by traditional critics. But, in New Criticism, the work

had subterranean connections with the author as it represented the

author's intuition about the world.

One important contribution of Saussure to literary criticism is his

concept of the synchronic and diachronic approaches to language.

While structuralist critics were interested in the synchronic approach to

the study of language, the post-structuralists took up the diachronic

aspect of language, i.e., the development of language over a period of

time. Thus in post-structuralist thinking temporality became important.

Post-structuralist criticism includes deconstruction, new-historicism and

Lacanian psychoanalytical criticism. But critics in the post-structuralist

movement cannot be limited to specific groups because they share

certain concepts. Works of critics like Barthes and Culler show a clear

shift from structuralist to post-structuralist tendencies. However,

Jacques Derrida is considered the most powerful exponent of post­

structuralist c1·iticism. Other critics like Paul de Man, Hillis Miller,

Geoffrey Hartr:1an and Harold Bloom were also influenced by the

writings of Derrida and later came to be known as the deconstructive

school of critics. All these critics were influenced by the writings of the

famous philosopher Nietzsche.

Deconstruction, the major movement that took on from

Saussurean linguistics, strives to undermine the naturalist assumption

· that language arises in some intimate region where thought and

meaning are merged. As in structuralism, here too, the attitude to

language is the core concern. Derrida's writing for the most part is a

critique of philosophers from Plato to Husserl, who held the notion of a

"transcendental signified" beyond the play of textual signification.

Derrida's criticism is directed against this quest for knowledge. The

philosophers ignored the figurative dimensions of language. For

Derrida, texts are rhetorical constructs and literature asserts its deceitful

properties. The works of all deconstructive critics attempt to wilfully

demystify language by removing the appeal to some ultimate ground of

concept or meaning. Derrida's critical theories are not limited to

29
literature alone, because all disciplines make use of language: so the

indeterminate quality of language affects all modes of study.

Structuralism had already made use of Saussure's concept of

language as a system of differences with no positive terms. For

Saussure, meaning was a matter of difference. Derrida holds that,

because language is constituted of "difference," the sign cannot literally

represent what it signified. He takes the structuralist principles one step

forward. In Saussurean linguistics, the relationship between the

signified and the signifier is of an arbitrary nature. Derrida's theories

maintain that no reliable or intimate relationship exists between words

and things. This topples the traditional belief in logocentrism and

phonocentrism. Deconstructing Saussure's concept of difference,

Derrida introduced "differance" to denote a continuous postponement of

meaning. According to the Derridean theory, meaning cannot be fixed

because the meaning of a sign is what the sign is not. This proves that

the search for meaning is senseless.

One important contribution of all structuralist and post-structuralist

critics is the new role and status they offered to the critic. Objectivity

and truth were no longer the hallmarks of criticism. Contrary to

traditional criticism, where the critic was a passive and inert consumer of

an already finished product, the post-New Critical theories made the

critic an active participant in the work he read. The critic creates the

finished work by his reading of it and does not submit to its demands.

30
This upset the earlier role of criticism as something subservient to

creative works. It is the critic who constructs the meaning and makes

the work exist. As Serge Doubrovsky says: "There is no Racine en Soi

[... ] racine exists in the readings of Racine, and apart from the readings

there i� no Racine" (New Criticism in France 7). This implies that a work

of literature includes everything that has been said about it. Barthes,

too, reinforces the above ideas when he says in "Critique et verite": "A

work is eternal not because it imposes a single meaning on different

men, but because it suggests different meanings to a single man,

speaking the same symbolic language in all ages: the work proposes,

man disposes" ( Structuralism and Semiotics 157).

Unlike structuralism, for deconstruction, the centre of the critical

activity is the text itself. But the emphasis is on a particular type of

reading which resists the reduction of the text to a determina!e reading.

It is an interpretative mode of criticism. Derrida does not adopt any

system or method. He represents analytic criticism in the extreme.

Deconstruction encouraged interpretative freedom. The critic was thus

free to do as he liked with the text, without worrying about the authority

of the text. Deconstructive criticism requires an extreme self-critical

awareness while engaging with texts. Derrida also attempts to define

the limits of language and thought, which Nietzsche had attempted

before him. Language is caught up in an endless chain of relationship

and difference. This helps to stress the relativity of meaning.

31
 Derrida's commentary is a lens that gathers in the most

varied texts and focuses them and burns through until we

fear for them once again. It is so radical that, despite its

reference to our dependence on the words of others, the

contained (language) breaks the container (encyclopaedic

book, concept, meaning) and forces upon the reader a

sense of the mortality of every code, of every covenanted

meaning. (Saving the Text xvi)

Derrida's theories influenced a group of critics at Yale University,

who came to be called the Yale deconstructionists. Geoffrey Hartman,

Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller and Harold Bloom were teachers at Yale

University. Each of them responded differently to Derrida's theory.

What they had in common was their fancy for an open-ended, free play

of style uncontrolled by rules which deconstruction advocated. The critic

was free to explore whatever stylistic possibilities he chose without

observing any strict bounds between creative and critical writings. Hillis

Miller, in his essay, "The Critic as Host," takes the two words 'host and

'parasite' and deconstructs them by showing from thE etymologies of the

two words how the meaning of the word 'host' is c1s parasitic 2s the

parasite itself (Modern Criticism and Theory 254 ). Deconstruction

provided the impetus for a total revaluation of interpretative theory and

practice. The deconstructionists asserted through their works the critics'

freedom to exploit a style that actively transformed and questioned the

32
nature of interpretative thought. In a11 editorial note in Modern Criticism

and Theory, David Lodge observes, "The essential instability of

language postulated by Derrida and Lacan, the perpetual sliding of the

signified under the signifier, or endless deferral of determinate meaning,

in discourse, liberates the critic from the obligation to produce

interpretive closure" (37 4 ). Critics like Hartman and Hillis Miller

consciously exploited and subverted the earlier conventions of literary

tradition. Literary texts, according to them, could not be considered

secondary any longer, considering their stylistic complexity and range of

intellectual command. The practice of crossing over from commentary to

literature was common in the texts of Geoffrey Hartman. In this context

of shifting priorities, literary texts had no self-sufficient or autonomous

meaning. They had no existence apart from their changing

interpretations and values. This applies to critical texts also, whose

meaning and significance change from time to time.

The spread of Derridean theories at Yale also resulted in a

renewed interest in the poetry of the romantic tradition. American

deconstructive critics were interested in romantic poetry from the

beginning.· This interest came from the recognition that language is

essentially metaphorical in character. The German romantics had given

central importance to the metaphorical virtue of language. A revived

interest in forms of consciousness was evoked by the literary texts of the

Geneva critics such as Marcel Raymond and Georges Poulet. Texts

,..,,.,
.) .)
were there to be experienced: their meanings were to be brought out by

the critic by an ideal sympathetic recreation. Interpretation w8.s seen as

an effort to grasp the states of awareness represented in literary texts.

Critics like Hillis Miller, Hartman and Bloom did not push criticism to its

extreme, where logic and reason were the governing principles. They

tried to free criticism from abstraction by focusing on the states of

consciousness evoked by the texts. Miller, who was more influenced by

the critics of consciousness, saw interpretation as an attempt to

comprehend the states of awareness present in literary texts.

It is noteworthy that many writers in the twentieth century turned to

literary criticism and some of them made path-breaking advances in the

very nature and concerns of literary analysis. New modes of analysis

and methods of interpretation have come up resulting in an outburst of

literary theories. The political events in the first half of the twentieth

century including the World Wars and associated issues have also

contributed to this elaborate rethinking of concerns. Why some of the

brilliant academicians and the finest literary minds of the time chose

theory or criticism rather than the other genres as their medium invites

serious debate. But one consequence of this massive interest 111

r,riticism resulted in the re-evaluat:on of the function and status of

c1·iticism. One concern that is part of this re-evaluation is a discussion

on the division of literature into two distinct genres-'creative' writing

supposed to be considered as primary and 'critical' writing assumed to

34
be secondary to it. The implication that 'critical' writing is auxiliary to

'creative' and hence 'parasitical' on literature is aggressively debated on.

Such a polarity between these faculties had been there in early writings

too. 8,.: 1as taken for gr2nted ;ritical writing did f;; :re

creative or vi�ionary insights, and so\ viJ.�" left as such.

The Renaissance, an important landmark in literary history, is

seen as a turning-point and the significance of this hi.storical moment is

much emphasized by the spokesmen of revisionary criticism. One

important consequence of the Renaissance is that it is after this period

that "values and beliefs identified v1ith religious culture beg2n to be

sublimated into a developing secularism" (Literary Revisionism and the

Burden of Modernity 1 ). Subsequently, literature came to be looked

upon as a source of values and a means of instruction. Jean Pierre

Mileur says that when literature became the repository of secularised

values, it came to be viewed ambivalently, as a means of instruction and

self-examination and, (like values themselves), as something tainted by

the limitations of belief:

This ambivalence takes the form of a rigid distinction

between criticism and literature that performs two

contradictory acts of segregation simultaneously: 1. What is

enlightened in literature is distinguished from what is

suspect by including only the former in the legitimate subject

matter of a disciplinary criticism; and 2. what is derivative

 and mutable [...] is distinguished from what is original and

timeless. So literature is at once suspect and the origin of

value, and criticism is at once the expression of our

enlightened secularity and hopelessly inferlor. (LR 3)

Geoffrey H. Hartman (1929- ) and Harold Bloom (1930- ) are

crltics who belong to the deconstructive wing of the Revisionary school

of critics. The revisionists were against subordinating criticism to

creativity. Their theoretical stance was a reaction to New Criticism and

to the Arnoldian, Leavisite and Eliotian views of criticism. Their major

argument against New Criticism was that it reduced criticism to formal

evaluative remarks on art. They acknowledged the intellectual element

in art but invested criticism with a creative potential. Thus their attempt

was to re-envision the relationship between the critic and the artist.

But the New Critics did not treat criticism on a par with creativity.

For them, the text was primary, and 2 lot of importance was given to the

critics' perspective of the text. Hartman's works seem to reveal an

interest in the creative consciousness that is responsible for a literary

work. He was greatly influenced by the theories of Husserl, Heidegger

and even Sartre, and by their ideas related to the phenomenon of

consciousness. For Hartman, creative activity is the result of an act of

cognition. It reveals his affinity to the hermeneutics and phenomenology

of Husserl. For Bloom, too, the poetic consciousness was important in

another way. His concept of the poet's 'will-to-expression' provides for

36
the importance of the poetic self in creative writing. It is in terms of the

poet's 'will-to-expression' that his stature is gauged. In fact, it seems to

be a return of the author, but in a mucn more sophisticated manner.

This interest in authorial consciousness is coupled with the

Revisionist interest in Romanticism. The revaluation and revival of

Romanticism is a major preoccupation of Revisionist criticism. This

revaluation involves a rethinking of literary history, which questions the

marking of literature into different µeriods and the separati0n of the

modern period from its Romantic origins. The RevisirJnists were greatly

influenced by the works of the German Romantics, especially Kant,

Nietzsche and Friedrich Schlegel. Hartman observes in Criticism in the

1/Vilderness: "If there is one criterion that distinguishes the present

movement in criticism from that prevailing, more or lsss, since Eliot, it is

a better understanding and higher evaluation of the Romantic and

nineteenth century writers" ( CW 46). Bloom embraces Romanticism

because only Romanticism can give solace to the poet suffering from the

anxiety of belatedness. Thus in Figures of Capable Imagination, Bloom

says:

Romanticism, even its most remorseless protagonists, is

centrally a humanism, which seeks our renewal as makers,

which hopes to give us the immodest hope that we-even

we-coming so late in time's injustices can still sing a song

of ourselves. (FCI 57)

37
 Both Hartman and Bloom are Jewish intellectuals who, along with

others, brought the establishment of Judaic studies as part of the

humanities in Yale University. Harold Bloom was influenced by the

Gnosticism of the Jewish intellectual tradition. He goes back to the

Kabbalistic mysteries of creation and the associated hermetic

commentary and uses it as a model for criticism. 'Kabbalah' is the

Hebrew word for tradition and the Kabbalists are medieval interpreters.

Bloom derived his ideas regarding the Kabbalah from Gershom

Scholem, a twentieth-century scholar who had made extensive study of

the Lurianic dialects of creation. Bloom says, "Scholem's descriptions of

the Kabbalah emphasize its work of interpretation, of revisionary

replacements of scriptural meaning by techniques of opening" (Map of

Misreading 4 ). This made allowance for the presence of the interpreter.

Both critics deal at length with the activities of reading a11d writing.

Hartman oopcses this division of literary activity between readers and

wr!ters. He disagrees with the view that criticism is a particularly

specialized type of reading. For him. there must be "1) a text that steals

our consent, and 2) a question about the text's value at a very basic

level: are we in the presence of a forged or an authentic experience"

(CW 25). Bloom brings the critical act into the same orbit as the act of

poetic creation, because both the poem and the criticism are about the

relations between poems. The object of attention for the critic, too, is the

relation between poets.

38
 For both Hartman and Bloom, criticism is a rr.uch more rational

activity. It makes the experience of reading explicit. The critic should

have sympathetic imagination. Such a process of reading involves

psychic dangers too-it might evoke anxiety and this anxiety might bring

about various defences also. Bloom advocates an activity of reading

texts, which can be strongly distinguished from the rhetorical reading of

Derrida and Paul de Man. He calls his concept of reading misreading or

misprision-a process which is pervasive in creative and critical

activities. By the term 'misreading' he insists on the originality of each

reading. Hartman disapproves of the use of the term-"Misreading is a

wrong-headed term, more spirited than helpful. It alerts us to the fact

that reading is not purely disinterested, or contemplative, or theoretical"

(CW 52).

Harold Bloom, one of the most innovative literary critics among the

American deconstructionists, began his career as a critic of British

Romantic literature. He was born in New York in 1930. He studied at

Cornell University and took his Ph.D. from Yale in 1955. Later, he

became a member of the Yale Faculty. Bloom's first published book,

Shelley's Mythmaking (1959) is a defence of Shelley, and at the same

time an attempt to reject the poetics of Eliot and the New Critics. Thus,

from the ve;ry beginning of his career, he started the tendency towards a

revisionist view of literature. This was followed iJy The Visionary

1
Company: A Reading of English Romantic Poetry (1961) and Blake s

39
Apocalypse (1963). In 1970, Bloom published Yeats, followed by The

Ringers in the Tower: Studies in Romantic Tradition (1971 ). In the

1970s, he published the famous tetralogy of books-The Anxiety of

Influence: A Theory of Poetry (1973), A Map of Misreading (1975),

Kabba/ah and Criticism (1975) and Poetry and Repression (1976).

These books established Bloom as one of the foremost theoretical critics

writing in English. The tetralogy expounded Bloom's theory of poetry,

which deals with the activity of reading. In 1976, he published Figures of

Capable Imagination, and in 1977, Vv'allace Stevens: The Poe.ms of Our

Climate. The latter contains Bloom's most explicit argument against

deconstruction in its extreme form. Agon: Towards a Theory of

Revisionism and The Breaking of the Vessel were published in 1982.

Bloom published Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the

Bible to the Present in 1987.

Bloom was also the editor of a number of books like Enqlis/7

Romantic iotry (1961 ), The \11/i1:.' :nd the Rain (1961 !, 'ii ·r!(Y

Criticism of John Ruskin (1965), The Poetry and Prose of William Blake

(1965), From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick

A. Pottle (1965), Romanticism and Consciousness: Essays in Criticism

(1970), to mention a few. He is now the General Editor of Chelsea

House Modern Critical Views Series and has undertaken to prepare

introductions to more than five hundred works.

40
 Geoffrey Hartman was Karl Young Professor of English and

Comparative Literature at Yale. His first book, The UrJmediated Vision

(1954 ), seems to reveal the influence of Derrida's views on the

inadequacy of language to represent 'reality' or 'presence'. In the

collection of essays, Beyond Formalism (1970), he points out the

limitations of the New Critics. The Fate of Reading (1975) extends the

concerns of Beyond Formalism. Here he does not abandon the

discipline of close reading and rhetorical analysis, but explores the

reader's and the author's shares in understanding a literary work. His

next work, Criticism in the Wilderness (1980), is an attempt to view

criticism as within literature. Saving the Text (1981) is a speculative

commentary on Derrida's Glas and offers a better understanding of

Derrida's work. Easy Pieces (1985) is a collection of essays on different

authors and trends in literature. The Unremarkable Wordsworth is an

assessment of Wordsworth, and Minor Prophecies deals with the

tensions of the critic. He has also edited Psychoanalysis and the

Question of the Text (1978) and Romanticism: Vistas, Instances,

Continuities (� 973). Hartman argues that the critic "belated or

transcendent, [...] owes the great poem or novel an 'answerable style"'

(Fate of Reading xiii) and through his writing he tries to defend criticism

against the "tendencies that feed the inferiority complex so endemic to a

profession which writes books about books" (xiii).

 Bloom's criticism, unlik,e that of Derrida and Paul de Man, is not

rooted in philosophy. His critical work primarily centres around poetry

and it sees itself as poetry. His main concern is with literary texts,

specifically texts of romantic poetry. His accounts of British and

American romantic traditions are a distinct deviation from the traditional

accounts of romantic poetry. In Kabba/ah and Criticism, Bloom says: "I

knowingly urge critical theory to stop treating itself as a branch of

philosophical discourse and to adopt instead the pragmatic dualism of

the poets themselves [. . .] (KC 109). Thus, for Bloom, criticism

approximates poetry and the critic too is a poet with a vision of his own.

Bloom advocates an activity of reading texts, which can be strongly

distinguished from the rhetorical reading of Derrida and Paul de Man

and tries to reinstate a concept of rhetoric that would reinstate the poet

as a seekt:i c1ter truths of his O'vVll n.:, ,d1 t,;.

In Wallace Stevens, Bloom admits the greatness of

deconstruction, which he calls advanced critical consciousness, "the

mos1 rigorous and scrupulous in the field today" (WS 386). What Bloom

shares with the champions of deconstruction is his concept of literary

history. He rejects the notion of the poet as the self-possessed creator

of meaning, an individual subject expressing the 1:-uths of his vision.

Instead, Bloom considers texts in their relationships with one another,

through a process of perpetual displacement, which can be described

only in rhetorical terms. Reading a text is the process of seeking out the
strategies ::·;!', ! defensive tropes by which it confronts or evades the tPxts

that prec1.�-:.:._ ii. The strength of criticism lies in its power to in\/r;'.; ' ' -�.
•.,

strategies of reading with a sense of hard-won significance. However,

he is not blind to the drawbacks of deconstruction.

This thesis is an attempt to oxamine Bloom's and Hartman's

concept of poetry criticism and the role of imagination in this area. The

main focus is on the revaluation of the status of criticism. In a literary

scenario where books on critical theories capture intellectual attention

much more than the other genres, there has been a lot of talk about their

significance. The main assumption of the thesis is that there is a drastic

change in the modern world's attitude towards criticism, and in the way

criticism looks upon itself. The status of literary criticism, which

underwent an extreme reduction in New Critical Times, was rejuvenated

and restored in Revisionism. In Bloomian theory, reading or misprision

is the central process by which a critic or a poet is made. Bloom tries to

equate the two processes thereby tr�nsgressing the boundary between

these two activities, while Hartma:i fights fiercely for a restitutive

criticism.

This thesis is also an exploration of Bloom and Hartman as

deconstructive critics. Though they are popularly considered as

deconstructive critics, theirs is not an attempt to reduce literature to

trivialities. Bloom's most noted contribution is the importance attributed

to the poetic self in critical writing. For Bloom, imaginative strength and

43
a strong visionary imagination are the hallmarks of real poets. But he

does not use the term 'poet' in a restricted manner. If, for the Greeks

the poet was any writer-literary or non-literary, to Bloom, the poet is a

writer with imaginative strength and visionary power, irrespective of

whether he writes in verse or prose. This lack of distinction is clearer

when Bloom constantly refers to Emerson as one of the greatest of

poets:

After Bloom, Hartman has the most complete and powerfully

articulated revisionist stance in American criticism today.

The juxtaposition of the two allows us to use each to point

out the complementary strengths and weaknesses of the

other, while giving us a clearer, more complete sense of

revisionism's complaint c1gainst and relationship with more

orthodox criticism. Despite their differences, and despite

Hartman's greater involvement with and sympathy for the

deconstructionisrn of Jacques Derrida, both men aim at

transforming our understanding of the concept of

secularization in terms that take into account recent

developments in Europe but ultimately answer to the

peculiar nature of the Anglo-American literary/ intellectual

tre.dition, so different from those of France and Germany.

(LR 9-10)

44
 Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman have been preoccupied with

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primarily the relationship between literature and criticism. It 1s

essentially a revisionist stance as there is a sincere attempt for a fresh

perspective on issues that are live in contemporary polemics such as the

esser.tial instability of language, the continuous displacement of

determinate meaning and the resultant consequences, that is, the

impossibility of achieving interpretive closure.

45