A Tentative Study of the Multiple Standard of Literary Criticism

【Abstract】The paper offers a multiple standard of literary criticism after a general introduction of the main trends in western literary criticism from Plato， Aristotle， Horace to Harold Blooms Anxiety of Influence.

【Key words】literary criticism； Horace； Longinus；

The study and research concerning with literary criticism has occupied generations of writers and critics alike； different approaches have been adopted， old terms pruned and new ones coined， yet there is no consensus made. To be able to recite these terms is far from enough to be counted as knowing literature or literary criticism. Besides， the huge amount of terms requires an excess degree of perusal and erudition. Some of these are paradoxical and self-contradictory and others might load their theories with seemingly irrelevant ideas and never-ending conclusions. What I am trying to make here is a brief introduction to some of the basic ideas almost all literary criticism are grappling with， be it Greek school or Renaissance， New Criticism or Cultural Poetics. And then the conclusion is that to interpret works of literature， we must delve into as many theories as possible to find as many meanings as possible， hence a multiple standard of literary criticism.

To begin with， we have to stand in front of Plato， as every other literary people did， to justify ourselves in order not to get kicked out of the land we now live. Although Plato has cursed the poets as thrice removed away from truth and that their works are unsuitable and ruinous to the hearers， he also made his due contribution to the literary world， i.e. all literary works are imitation. His great pupil， Aristotle took its cue and produced the first systematic analysis of literary genres. He ranked literature higher than history when he claimed that “probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities” and “a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility.” Poetry， therefore， is a higher thing than history， for poets write of what could happen according to the law of probability to express the universal， while history only deal with the particular.

After bequeathed such a high honor， later critics devoted themselves to unveiling whats special about literature to justify its high rank. Hence we come to the purpose of literature. Horace is the first to speak of literatures ultimate aim as “to be sweet and useful”. The best writings， he argues， both teach and delight. Robert Frost has to admit his indebtedness to Horace when he said poetry should first entertain， and then enlighten. Horace also defined some characteristics of good writer. His decorum principle refers to the “fittingness” of diction and style. In Horaces thinking， too much originality is undesirable， and the “mad poet” is held up for derision. As to the maxim of imitation， Horace states that apart from imitating nature， we should also imitate other poets， which I think offers some inspiration when T.S. Eliot starts to write his “Tradition and the Individual Talent”. Taine also asserts that “no text is written in a vacuum， but is instead the result of its history.” The writers since then basically agree with that except the school of “art for arts sake”， who denounced the didacticism of literature and embraced the idea that art has nothing to do with morals or ethics. Oscar Wilde even praises evil characters in literary works because they stand for color， change and curiosity from an artistic point of view. While benevolent people only appeals to our reason； evil ones will instigate our imagination. But he is going so far in separating the form and content and dismissing the content as having no use at all.

Then what is it about literature that makes Wilde so confident of the independence of art without any other ornaments？ The answer can be found in Longinus work On Sublimity. Longinus mainly deals with elevated or grand language that affects the audience to ecstasy or rapture. The effect of elevated language is “not to persuade the hearers， but to entrance them.” What transports us with wonder is more telling that what merely persuades or gratifies us. He considers ‘grandeur accompanied by a few flaws clearly superior to ‘mediocre correctness. So Longinus in a way encourages the writers of Aestheticism and intuitionism to write unreasonably and self-consciously to impress readers by their audacity. Moreover， Longinus is the first critic ever to take the readers response into consideration. He appealed to the sympathetic introspection of his readers while composing. This idea of high taste and sublime thinking has its influence revealed in the writing of Russian formalists as well as Mathew Arnold. The “high seriousness” advocated by Arnold is the most important criterion to judge any poetry. For Arnold， poetry， other than religion， science， or philosophy， is humankinds crowning activity. He notes， “More and more humankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us， to console us， to sustain us.” Victor Shklovsky expressed the same idea when he said， “art is a way of expressing the artfulness of an object； the object is not important.”

So far weve looked at several fundamental literary ideas in history； some of their ideas overlap each other and some are in conflict. The reason is what we call “anxiety of influence”， which refers to a poets sense of the crushing weight of poetic tradition which he has to resist and challenge in order to make room for his own original vision. The feeling we have for the works of our predecessors is one of admiration and awe-stricken. It seems that they have expressed what there is to say， leaving us nothing to say. It represents the development of poetic tradition as a masculine battle of wills modeled on Freuds concept of the Oedipus complex： the “belated” poet fears the emasculating dominance of the “precursor” poet and seeks to occupy his position through a process of misreading or misprision. Therefore， we will find the revolt of a belated literary theory against the previous one， such as Romanticism versus Neoclassicism， Modernism versus realism. More often than not， their revolt becomes too arbitrary to be reasonable. Since every literary theory has its own blemishes， we cannot judge a work of literature with only one literary theory. Here the ideal state of a reader proposed by John Keats as “negative capability” comes in handy to explain the paradoxes and ambiguities resulting from various interpretations of the same literary work. We need to be able to stay in， and be comfortable with uncertainties， ambivalences. We need to accept the certainty of uncertainty， to appreciate the otherworldliness， sublimity， as well as hard-to-pigeonhole paradoxes of literature. The ambiguities are not fault of imprecision， but sign of poetic richness. Only history has the knack of peeling off the fa?ade of lesser literary works and the remains will shine forth like gold for our rumination.

References：

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作者簡介： 劉可， 男， 文學(xué)碩士， 鄭州航空工業(yè)管理學(xué)院外國語學(xué)院教師，助教。