Moralistic approach
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This document discusses the moralistic approach to literary criticism, which judges works based on their ethical teachings and effects on readers rather than formal principles. It provides examples of critics like Plato, Horace, Sidney, and Johnson who took a moralistic view and praised literature that encouraged virtue or condemned works that misguided readers. The document also discusses related movements like humanism during the Renaissance which emphasized order, restraint, discipline, and the study of classical works. It notes 20th century critics like More, Babbitt, and Foerster who followed a neo-humanist, moralistic approach to literature.
Moralistic approach
- 1. MORALISTIC APPROACH Dr. T. Lilly Golda Assistant Professor of English A.P.C. Mahalaxmi College for Women Thoothukudi
- 2. MORALISTIC APPROACH – A tendency—rather than a recognized school—within literary criticism to judge literary works according to moral rather than formal principles. – Judging literary works by their ethical teachings and by their effects on readers. – Literature that is ethically sound and encourages virtue is praised – Literature that misguides and corrupts is condemned.
- 3. Plato – Banished poets from Republic for fear that he might spread immorality and destabilize the country
- 4. Horace – Studied how Poetry could be used to promote morality in his Ars Poetica
- 5. Sir Philip Sidney – Praised the role of the poet in purifying the imagination, which the historian and the philosopher were capable of.
- 6. Dr. Johnson – Was a stern upholder of morality and attacked Shakespeare for his slip shod treatment of moral values.
- 7. Matthew Arnold – Great poetry is marked by high seriousness and true criticism pays attention to what a poem says than to how it says.
- 8. Humanists (order, restraint, discipline) – Major intellectual movement of the Renaissance. – Proponents of humanism believed that a body of learning, humanistic studies (studia humanitatis), consisting of the study and imitation of the classical culture of ancient Rome and Greece, would produce a cultural rebirth after what they saw as the decadent and “barbarous” learning of the Middle Ages. – Humanism was characterised by lots of creativity and interest in the Arts and Humanities brought about by increased scientific knowledge, a renewed approach to ancient Greek-Latin texts
- 9. Humanists – Neo Humanists – Renaissance Humanists
- 10. Neo Humanism –Opposed Naturalism –Opposed Romanticism –Moral earnestness & aesthetic sensitivity
- 11. 20th Century Critical Movement – Paul Elmer More- Shelburne Essays – Irving Babbit- Literature and the American College
- 12. Neo Humanists – Norman Foerster – Harry Hayden Clark – G.R. Elliot – Robert Shafer – Frank Jewett Mather – Gorham Munson – Stuart Sherman Pratt
- 13. Religious Humanism – T.E. Hulme – Religion & morality – T.S. Eliot- Christian Humanist – Edmund Fuller – Hyatt Waggoner
- 14. Traditional concern for the moral ends of literature – F.R. Leavis – Yvor Winters – Marxists- The Social Approach – Allen Tate – John Crowe Ranson