FIVE APPROACHES

OF LITERARY
CRITICISM by Wilbur Scott
Prepared by JAHZEEL L. SARMIENTO
Critical Approaches are different perspectives we consider
when looking at a piece of literature.
They seek to give us answers to these questions, in addition to
aiding us in interpreting literature.
1. What do we read?
2. Why do we read?
3. How do we read?
Five Approaches of Literary
Criticism by Wilbur Scott
• MORAL APPROACH
• PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
• SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• FORMALIST APPROACH
• ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
THE MORAL APPROACH
• Has undoubtedly the longest history
• The importance of literature is not merely in its way of
saying, but also in what it says
• Gives emphasis to the “what” meaning
THE MORAL APPROACH
• Expressed chiefly by writers who are grouped by the label,
NEO-HUMANIST
– Chief interest lies in literature as a “criticism of life”
– The study of the technique of literature is the study of means
– Concerned with the ends of literature as affecting man, with literature
as it takes its place in the human forum of ideas and attitudes
– Their analysis of man is traditional, going back to that of Renaissance
Humanists
THE MORAL APPROACH
• Expressed chiefly by writers who are grouped by the label,
NEO-HUMANIST (20th century)
– “Man is being who may be distinguished from the animal by his reason
and his possession of ethical standards.”
– “Man stands as a free being, prone to animalistic urges or egocentric
yawps; but is responsible to place these tendencies, insofar as he
wishes to cultivate his peculiarly human nature, under the control of
reason.”
– Watchwords are order, restraint discipline
THE MORAL APPROACH
• NEO-HUMANISTS
– Paul Elmer More – Robert Shafer
– Irving Babbitt – Frank Jewett Mather
– Norman Foerster – Gorham Munson
– Henry Hayden Clark – Stuart Shermann Pratt
– G. R. Elliot
THE MORAL APPROACH
• NEO-HUMANISTS
– Tended to oppose two literary tendencies: Naturalism and Romanticism
– Naturalism- debased view of man, denying him free will and responsibility
– Romanticism- excessive cultivation of the ego and sympathy with
comparatively unrestrained expression
– Unite moral earnestness, based on a thoughtful and dignified concept
of man’s nature, with aesthetic sensitivity
– End of the movement occurred in the early thirties
– It is possible that Humanism did not die but underwent a rebirth with
modification into RELIGIOUS HUMANISM.
THE MORAL APPROACH
• NEO-HUMANISTS
– More became associated with institutional religion and G. R. Elliot
declared positively the necessity of an alliance between religion and
morality; other’s followed Babbitt’s lead in remaining secular or
religiously noncommittal.
– T. S. Elliot criticized Babbitt and Foerster for this central weakness as
he saw it: morality that has no vindication outside of itself
cannot compel reasonable belief.
– The result of this turmoil was finally to incorporate the warrant of
religious persuasion into the recommendation of moral standards.
– When the movement died, the values survived, and still survive,
in alliance with religion.
Application of Major Figures
• Plato’s Republic
– Concerned with the moral effect the poet might have

• Horace
– Gave great weight to the usefulness as well as the beauty of poetry

• Dr. Johnson
– Judge the moral content of the writers

• Matthew Arnold
– Argued the importance of the “high seriousness” of art
Application of Major Figures
• F. R. Leavis and Yvor Winters
– Express the traditional concern for the moral ends of literature
– Winters has been described as making “the same inveterate defense of
classical virtues, the same condemnation of eccentric individualism,
the same stress on moral values that literature should exemplify, the
same adherence to a system of absolutism

• Marxists
– Criticism is at base moral though the image of man they propose
differs greatly from that of the humanists, and is related to so special a
theory of human forces that the Marxists are best understood as
exemplars of “The Social Approach.”
Application:

• T. S. Elliots’ “Religion and Literature”

– Enunciated and interesting split of judgement:
“The greatness of literature cannot be determined solely by literary standards;
though we must remember that whether it is literature or not can be
determined only by literary standards.”
Application:
• T. S. Elliots’ “Religion and Literature”
– Discussed the relationship of religion and literature
– Supported the propositions:
– Literary criticism should be completed by criticism from a definite ethical
and theological standpoint.
– The “greatness” of literature cannot be determined solely by literary
standards.
– Moral judgments of literary works are made only according to the moral
code accepted by each generation.
– What is ‘objectionable’ in literature is what the present generation is not
used to
Relationship of religion to
literature according to Elliot
• Religious Literature – Bible
• Religious or Devotional poetry
• Literary works of men who are sincerely desirous of
forwarding the cause of religion: PROPAGANDA
• The common ground between religion and fiction is behavior.
• Religion imposes our ethics, our judgment, and criticism of
ourselves, and our behavior towards our fellowmen
• Fiction affects our behavior towards our fellow men, affects
our pattern of ourselves
 “We shall certainly continue to read the
best of its kind, of what our time provides;
but we must tirelessly criticize it according
to our own principles, and not merely
according to the principles admitted by
the critics who discuss it in the public
press.”
~T.S. ELLIOT
Application:
• Edmund Fuller’s The New Compassion in the American Novel”
– Talked about how authors, publishers and reviewers have kicked
around the word compassion so loosely that its meaning may become
corrupted and lost
– Decline of compassion is the decline of tragedy
– laments the progression from the "lovable bum" to the "genial rapist, the
jolly slasher, the fun-loving dope-pusher
– Foolish romanticizing of the scalawags
– Lacks the requisites for compassion as much as it subjects lack the
requisites for tragedy
From Here to Eternity by James Jones- sentimental about incorrigible antisocial
and criminal types and whores
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
• In general, the application of psychological knowledge to art
can generate 3 kinds of illumination:
1. Analysis of constituents of the aesthetic experience…-- that is
a particular and harmonious kind of response in the audience, brought
about by the stimulus of a work of art(I. A. Richards in his Principles of
Literary Criticism, 1924).
Application:
o Kenneth Burke’s essay “Antony in Behalf of the Play”
• Examines the unconscious relations between writer and reader
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
2. Application to literary biography - the study of the lives of the authors
as a means of understanding their art (Edmund Wilson)
-the relationship between artist and art is similar to that between patient and
dream
- the writer has “shed his sickness” (D. H. Lawrence)
- the critic then becomes the analyst, taking the art as the symptom, by
interpretation of which he can discover the unconscious repressions and
drives of the artist.
Application:
o Wilson’s essay “The Wound and the Bow”
• Exemplify how effectively this approach can be used to lead us to understand
not only the personal problems of writers, but also the underlying patterns of
their writings.
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
3. Explain fictitious characters
- provides numerous instances from life which clarify the actions and
reactions of created characters who might otherwise be puzzling or
implausible ( F. L. Lucas in Literature and Psychology, 1951).
- The critic becomes a PSYCHOANALYST, searching for the
subconscious patterns which motivate a character
Application:
o Ernest Jones’s study of “Hamlet”
• Provides an answer to the Hamlet’s delay in avenging his father
PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
• views a text as a revelation of its author’s
mind and personality. It is based on the work
of Sigmund Freud.
– Also focuses on the hidden motivations of
literary characters
– Looks at literary characters as a reflection of
the writer
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL APPROACH
Application:
o Geoffrey Gorer’s “The Myth in Jane Austen”
• tried to show ‘the myth’ in Jane Austen works be related to Jane Austen life
• Examines the fourfold repetition in Jane Austen’s 4 novels (Sense and
Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma): “the girl who
hates and despises her mother and marries a father-surrogate”,
which he considered as reversal of Austen’s life.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• Sociological criticism
– Art’s relation to society are vitally important
– Investigation of the relationship may organize and deepen one’s
aesthetic response to a work of art
– Art is not created in a vacuum; it is the work not simply of a person ,
but of an author fixed in time and space, answering to a community of
which he is an important part.
– Interested in understanding the social milieu and the extent to which
and manner in which the artist responds to it
SOCIOLOGICAL CRITICISM
• argues that social contexts (the social
environment) must be considered when
analyzing a text.
– Focuses on the values of a society and how
those views are reflected in a text
– Emphasizes the economic, political, and
cultural issues within literary texts
– Literature is a reflection of its society.
THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• Applications of Major Figures
o Vico’s study of Homer’s epics
o Revealed the social conditions in which the Greek poet lived
o Taine
o “Literature is the consequence of the moment, the race, and the milieu.”
o Marx and Engels
o Introduced the methods of production and made possible the development
in the thirties of that special branch of the sociological approach– Marxist
criticism
o Howells, Jack London, Hamlin Garland, and Frank Norris
o Concerned with the relation between literature and society
THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• Applications of Major Figures
o Vico’s study of Homer’s epics
o Revealed the social conditions in which the Greek poet lived
o Taine
o “Literature is the consequence of the moment, the race, and the milieu.”
o Marx and Engels
o Introduced the methods of production and made possible the development
in the thirties of that special branch of the sociological approach– Marxist
criticism
o Howells, Jack London, Hamlin Garland, and Frank Norris
o Concerned with the relation between literature and society
THE SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH
• Applications of Major Figures
o Harry Levin
o Stated that “…the relations between literature and society are reciprocal.
Literature is not only the effect of social causes; it is also the cause of social
effects.”
o Christopher Cauldwell in “George Bernard Shaw: A Study of the
Bourgeois Superman
o Exposed the weakness as well as the essence of characteristically
bourgeois brand of socialism
THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH
• The most influential critical method
• Emphasis on the arrangement of the parts, the “how” of a poem’s
meaning
• Major Figures
1. T.S. Elliot
– Announced the high place of art as art, rather than as an expression of social,
religious, ethical, or political ideas, and advocated the close study of the texts of the
works themselves
– The poet escapes into the poem from emotion and personality, encouraged critics to
move away from biographical study into the scrutiny of the craft of the poem
– Concerned to formulate a kind of criticism that would be free of the pursuit of
extrinsically historic, moral, psychological, and sociological interpretations, and free to
concentrate on the aesthetic quality of the work
THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH
• Major Figures
1. T.S. Elliot
– says that “a true poem is that which presents the extinction of the poet and
not exposition of the poet’s life”
– The poem in his opinion must not become the mouth piece of the poet.
– When a poem is published, the poet is dead. The umbilical cord between
the author and his text is severed when the book is published.
THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH
• Major Figures
2. I. A. Richards
– Offered a vocabulary for discussing and analyzing the kinds of meaning
that occur in the response to verbal stimuli; and laid the foundations of the
semantic approach in literary criticism (with Oden in The Meaning of
Meaning, 1923)
– His investigation of meaning led on the one hand into semantics, the
science of signs and the sign interpretation and on the other into the
scrupulous explications of poems
– A work of art therefore, in his opinion, must be analysed in the light of the
text of the author. 
THE FORMALISTIC APPROACH
• Major Figures
3. Chicago critics
– the text should be criticized on the basis of its various aspects like
metre, rhyme, simile, metaphor, structure, alliteration, assonance,
oxymoron, grammatical pattern and its aesthetic sense
FORMALISTIC APPROACH
• Seeks to appraise a writer’s performance in a given work in
relation to the nature and requirements of the particular task
he has set himself, the assumed end being the perfection of
the work as an artistic whole of the special kind he decided it
should be (Crane)

• Examines the total poem without proper regard for the

species of which it is an example, thus failing to distinguish
between the broad genres (drama, novel, lyric, epic) or still
less, between subspecies (one kind of tragedy, perhaps
mimetic, as opposed to another, perhaps didactic).
Application
• James Smith’s As You like it
– In his opinion, the play is totally unromantic in nature. He starts
criticizing the character melancholic Jaques. The melancholy of Jaques
is not innate in nature. It is assumed, he compares Jaques with
Macbeth and Hamlet. The melancholy of both Macbeth and Hamlet
seems to be genuine while that of Jaques is unreal and artificial. 
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Sometimes called TOTEMIC, MYTHOLOGICAL, or RITUALISTIC
• Requires close textual readings and is concerned humanistically with
more than the intrinsic value of aesthetic satisfaction
• Psychological as it analyzes the work of art’s appeal to the audience
(extending to Richards’ investigations of the poem-reader
relationship)
• Sociological in its attendance upon basic cultural patterns as central
to that appeal
• Historical in its investigation of a cultural or social past, but
nonhistorical in its demonstration of literature’s timeless value,
independent of particular periods
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Discovering the existence of underlying mythological patterns
• The artist is not a neurotic but a “shaman, a myth-maker,
speaking out of his unconscious a primordial truth.”
• Does not necessarily go back to specific myths; it may
discover basic cultural patterns which assume a mythic
quality in their permanence within a particular culture
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Sir James George Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”
o Studied magic and religion, tracing numerous myths back to prehistoric beginnings
o Jane Harrison, F. M. Cornford, Gilbert Murray, Andrew Lang, and others
o Dealt with the ritual conflicts underlying the work of the Greek tragedians and
Homer
o Cornford
o Examined the ritualistic basis of Greek comedy and the ritual figure of the Greek
god-king
o Frazer and Jung
o Asserted the validity of myth, and its retention in the social memory– strongly
appealed to the creative imagination
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o D. H. Lawrence
o His motif of “blood consciousness” is obviously close to the theory that sophisticated man
should respond affirmatively to the elemental forces which alone can instruct him in the
proper, “natural” modes of living.
o Exhibits an inclination to consider various fictitious characters as archetypes , and various
plots as fulfilling fundamental patterns in his Studies in Classic American Literature (1923)
o C. S. Lewis
o Illustrated the appeal by retelling the story of Psyche and Cupid in such a way as to make it
a prefiguration of man’s struggle toward eternal love
o Freud
o Established that rituals and taboos were dealt with consciously by primitive man, but
unconsciously by civilized man
o Look upon the atavistic retention of taboos as forms of illness
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Erich Fromm
o Myth is “a message from ourselves to ourselves, a secret language which
enables us to treat inner as if outer event.”
o Kenneth Burke
o Often relies in his concept of “symbolic action” on social anthropology
o The artist is often a “medicine man”, and the work of art, his “medicine.”
o Discusses taboos, fetishes, ritual paradigms in pursuit of the implied
relationship between poet, poem, and audience
o Works out the strategy of Shakespeare’s drama as rendered necessary by
the traditional feelings of the audience toward authority, revolution and
scapegoat, in his essay “Antony in Behalf of the Play.”
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Leslie Fiedler
o uncovered American cultural pattern involving a relationship between men,
reflected sometimes in the rituals of boyhood gangs, sometimes in
unconsciously symbolic ceremonies of adults (e.g. The Adventures of
Huckleberry Finn and Moby Dick) and in the social mores of cowboys in
Montana
o His analyses are disturbing because of the discomforts many feel about the
homosexual quality of the pattern he investigates
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Gilbert Murray’s Hamlet and Orestes
o explored the remarkable similarities in the Oresteia, Saxo’s Amlodi, and Hamlet
o gives the example of the hero’s madness, which is the same in Euripides and
Shakespeare, but very different from the Northern legend in Saxo or the later form of
the same legend in the Icelandic Ambales Saga
o argues that Orestes shows no character development in Seneca’s Latin
o Reverting to a proposed archetypal dramatic principle in tragedy, he asks: Are we
thrown back, then, on a much broader and simpler though rather terrifying
hypothesis, that the field of tragedy is by nature so limited that these similarities are
inevitable?
o Hamlet’s spiritual power arises from an Orestian root. Both these archetypal tragic
dramas succeed by addressing the ultimate anxieties of existence in an uncertain
age
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Robert Heilman’s The Turn of the Screw as Poem
o explores the suggestion that The Turn of the Screw is a symbolic
representation of the conflict between good and evil. Heilman interprets the
apparitions of Peter Quint and Miss Jessel as evil forces.
o Examined the use of recurrent imagery and symbolic language throughout the
tale, step by step
o Teases out the images associated with the characters. He lists the repeated and
various descriptions of the extraordinary "beauty" of Flora and Miles and how
they are continually associated with images of "light" .
o Concludes, "their radiance suggests the primal and the universal"; in their
innocence, the children represent the archetypes of male and female, Adam and
Eve, embodying the potentials of both great achievement and self-destruction
THE ARCHETYPAL APPROACH
• Applications
o Robert Heilman’s The Turn of the Screw as Poem
o examines the way Bly suggests Eden and how the descriptions of the
changing seasons contributes to the overall impression of the "spiritual
withering that is the story's center" . At one point, the governess describes
the children as "blameless and foredoomed," suggesting the notion of
original sin.
THANK YOU!