TRB POLYTECHNIC - ENGLISH CRITICISM
I A Richards: Practical Criticism
Practical criticism is, like the formal study of English literature itself, a relatively young
discipline. It began in the 1920s with a series of experiments by the Cambridge critic I.A.
Richards.
In Practical Criticism of 1929 he reported on and analysed the results of his
experiments. The objective of his work was to encourage students to concentrate on 'the
words on the page', rather than relying on preconceived or received beliefs about a text.
For Richards this form of close analysis of anonymous poems was ultimately intended to
have psychological benefits for the students: by responding to all the currents of emotion
and meaning in the poems and passages of prose which they read the students were to
achieve what Richards called an 'organised response'. This meant that they would clarify
the various currents of thought in the poem and achieve a corresponding clarification of
their own emotions.
Richards shows an interest in the effect of poems on the reader. He tends to locate poem in
readers response. The being of the poem seems to exist only in the readers. Poetry is a form of
words that organizes our attitudes. Poetry is composed of pseudo statements, therefore it is
effective. He talks about the close analysis of a text.
Like a new critics, he values irony. He praises the irony and says that it is characteristics of
poetry of higher order. In “The Forth Kinds of Meaning”, he talks about functions of language.
Basically he points out four types of functions or meaning that the language has to perform.
The Four Kinds of Meaning
Sense
What speaker or author speaks is sense. The thing that the writer literally conveys is sense. Here,
the speaker speaks to arouse the readers thought. The language is very straightforward which is
descriptive. This language is not poetic. Words are used to direct the hearer's attraction up on
some state of affairs or to excite them. Sense is whatness of language use.
Feeling
Feeling is writer’s emotional attitude towards the subject. It means writer’s attachment or
detachment to the subject is feeling. It is an expression. The speaker or writer uses language to
express his views. This very language is emotive, poetic and literary also. Here only, rhyme and
meter cannot make poetry to be a good, emotion is equally important. Especially in lyric poem,
emotion plays vital role.
Tone
Tone refers to attitude of speaker towards his listener. There is a kind of relation between
speaker and listener. Since speaker is aware of his relationship with language and with the
listener, he changes the level of words as the level of audience changes. It means tone varies
from listener to listener.
Intention
Intention is the purpose of speaker. Speaker has certain aim to speak either it is consciously or
unctuously. Listener has to understand the speaker's purpose to understand his meaning. If the
audience can't understand his purpose the speaker becomes unsuccessful. The intention of author
can be found in dramatic and semi- dramatic literature.
There four types of meaning in totality constitute the total meaning of any text. Therefore all
utterances can be looked at from four points of view, revealing four kinds of meaning are not
easily separated. But they are in dispensable terms for explaining. Basically, the four meaning
are interconnected in poetry.
Doctrine in Poetry
Here Richards talks about the proper way of analyzing the text and what critic and reader should
be like. He tends to locate the poem in readers response to it. It means readers analyze the text
and respond any poetry from similar judgmental aspects. It shows every reader produces same
meaning from same text as the text is organic whole obstacles and barriers the variation of
meaning occurs.
His ideas are oriented toward distinguishing the belief of readers from that of the poets. If there
occurs contradiction between the belief of readers and the belief of poets, the readers do not get
sole meaning from the text. Because of readers’ temperament and personal experience, they don't
get same meaning from the text The obstacle that brings variation in meaning is doctrinal belief
of readers.
Richards finds two kinds of belief and disbelief
i) Intellectual belief
ii) Emotional belief
In an intellectual belief we weigh an idea based on doctrinal preoccupation, where as an
emotional belief is related to the state of mind. He thinks that the good kind of being comes from
the blending of the both. Until and unless we are free from beliefs and disbeliefs there comes
variation in meaning. But to free our mind from all impurities is not possible. Therefore the
reader should be sincere to get single meaning escaping from such obstacles. This sincerity is the
way to success. The sincere reader has perfect and genuine mind. To be genuine mind, one
should be free from impurities. In this sense the reader should be free from obstruction these
obstacles is not possible.
Northrop Frye: The critical path
Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary
critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the
reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the
theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most
important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American
critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as
"the foremost living student of Western literature. He was a major influence on Harold
Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others
Inspired by his work on Blake, Frye developed and articulated his unified theory ten years
after Fearful Symmetry, in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957). He described this as an attempt at a
"synoptic view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism" (Anatomy 3).
Frye’s major points that go along with each of the above sections.
1. Discusses His Approach
· Most of the well trodden paths, i.e. the other schools of criticism, were not working for
him, so he decided to try something different
· He wanted a type of criticism that would:
i. take the “major phenomena of literature” (later explained as convention, genre, and
archetypes) into consideration (p. 280)
ii. take into account literature’s place in all of civilization/history
· Therefore, he came to the conclusion that criticism was best achieved “through literature
itself” or intertextual criticism (p. 280).
· Important quotation: “It seemed to me obvious that, after accepting the poetic
form of a poem as its primary basis of meaning, the next step was to look for its context
within literature itself” (283). In other words, look at the text itself to find meaning, and then
look to how this meaning stands within other works-use literature, not other subjects, to
find/prove points.
i. Along with this conclusion, Frye suggests that after going to the text, the next best place
to go is to the author’s other works, and then to other works within that genre, or other works
that have similar conventions and/or archetypes.
ii. According to Frye, all literature should be looked at in terms of conventions, genres, and
recurring image groups, or archetypes.
2. Defines Criticism Generally and Historically
Generally:
i. Frye distinguishes criticism from literature itself, from criticism of the arts or from “the
subject called aesthetics” (p. 280), from those so-called critics who are really only interested in
“social, philosophical, and religious” pursuits rather than literary ones (p. 280), from second-rate
writing, and from other subjects/schools that do not deal primarily with literature.
ii. He also writes that criticism should not develop, as it has, “suburbs like Los Angeles” (p.
281).
o These “suburbs” include biography, psychology, and history (in terms of the “social
situation” of the author) (p. 281).
o One should note that these “suburbs” that Frye opposes are the bases on which our
other schools of criticism are founded.
iii. Any and all criticism should be based on two aspects: the structure of literature and the
social environment of literature.
· Historically:
i. English literature was not an academic subject.
ii. Literary Criticism was based on philology.
iii. In North American universities, criticism was based on history and philosophy
iv. Other movements, based mainly on a historical perspective, include (in the historical
order that he presented): Determinism, Catholic Determinism (Eliot), nominalism, Protestantism,
liberalism, subjective idealism, solipsism, and Marxism
o Frye highlights three problems with these movements:
a. Literary form is not considered
b. Poetic/metaphorical language is not part of the major meanings of these movements
c. The quality of the poet relates negatively to or opposes the content area from which the
poet is being observed (all from p. 282).
v. Frye believed that New Criticism was good because of its return to formalism, but noticed
that it eventually returned to or relied on other subjects, just as the above movements do.
vi. He believes his new type of criticism (intertextualism) will become or should become a
critical movement as well, one than can replace the others that usually fail.
o Frye thought that there were two contexts from which critics could find poetic meaning:
the context of literature and the context of everyday ideas/language. He believed that the latter is
too often used as context and that the context of literature should be employed more often.
3. Warns of the Necessary Evils of Criticism
· “Pre-critical experience,” or a naïve view of literature, sometimes inhibits the critic (p.
285). This experience deals with one’s initial, non-verbal reactions to a text on first reading.
· Devotion to “determinism” limits our understanding of literature. In other words,
believing that everything has a specific outcome or meaning, and separating “social reference
and structure” (p. 287) is inhibiting to critics.
· Our views of literature are always changing. Each time we reread, we have a different
interpretation of the work, and no matter how slight the differences are, they are still present.
· “Criticism…is one of the sub-academic areas in which a large number of people are still
free to indulge their anxieties instead of studying their subject” (p. 287). Basically, do not do
this.
4. “The Critical Path”
· Frye uses influences from William Blake’s prophecies (the idea of the path) and from
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (“‘the critical path is alone open’” p. 280) to relate his
development as a critic to the history of criticism and to the development of intertextuality.
· There are many paths that diverge too much from “The Critical Path” and these should
be considered when incorporating other subjects into criticism. Basically, biography, history,
philosophy, psychology, and other subjects should be considered, but should not overwhelm the
piece and the literature that it is a part of.
· Along this path, we as writers are moving from the naïve to the “sentimental,” or
unified, way of looking at literature, and criticism only begins where the sentimental view begins
(p. 286).
· We must also learn to separate initial responses and determinism from criticism.
· Through criticism, we can reach a higher level in ourselves and in reality. (As an aside,
this was too abstract for me, but I understood it as an imaginative and somewhat Buddhist-like
way to say that criticism helps us to better understand this world and the literature that comes
from it).
[The Critical Path] is the first book since the Anatomy of Criticism that I’ve actually written, i.e.,
that hasn’t been a series of public lectures. It’s also a very important book.
In The Critical Path, in 1971, Frye talks about a “myth of concern” as comprising “everything
that most concerns its society to know” and as functioning to “hold society together, so far as
words are can help to do this” (36). This, then, is the equivalent in Frye’s thinking to the New
Historicism focus on ideology. But, for Frye, literature is not the same as concern: “it displays
the imaginative possibilities of concern” (98). Much later, in Words with Power, published in
the same year as “Varieties of Eighteenth Century Sensibility,” Frye develops this discussion
into a dialectic of “primary concern” — those things that concern all peoples in all societies at all
times — and “secondary concern,” the ideological preoccupations of specific societies at specific
historical moments: and literature is where secondary and primary concern are brought into
relationship (42-3). These reflections are where Frye’s veer sharply away from both the literary
Marxism he engaged in the first quarter of his career, and the New Historicism he confronted in
the final quarter. It is in maintaining the distinction between an ideology and a myth that Frye’s
criticism preserves the multicultural component that A.C. Hamilton has suggested will give it
permanence in “an increasingly globalized world.” (CW 17, xxv)
To which I can only add that the inability of a whole generation of literary scholars to maintain a
distinction between ideology and myth is at the root of the problems literary criticism now faces,
including its steady decline in influence upon the general reading public. In our current post-
post-structuralist age, scholars tend only to talk to one another in a rarefied language only they
understand. But much of this is no more than what Frye calls the “squirrel’s chatter” of
specialized scholarship. He knew better than most that, because literature belongs to everybody,
literary criticism belongs to everybody as well and can be written in a way that is accessible to
anybody, as surely as every literary work is available to every reader who cares to engage it.
What makes literature accessible –and ought to make literary criticism equally accessible — is
the universality of primary concern and literature’s unique ability to explore its imaginative
possibilities. As Frye puts it in Words with Power, any work of literature will reflect the
secondary ideological concerns of its time, but it will also place those ideological concerns in the
context of “making a living, making love, and struggling to stay free and alive.” And that’s
something everyone can understand. We can only hope that literary scholarship will recognize
sooner rather than later what Frye could already lucidly articulate forty years ago.
T.S.Eliot : Hamlet and his Problems
Hamlet and His Problems is an essay written by T.S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical
reading of Hamlet.
The essay first appeared in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in
1920. It was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in Selected Essays, 1917-1932.
Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that Hamlet is "most certainly an
artistic failure."
Eliot also popularised the concept of the objective correlative—a mechanism used to
evoke emotion in an audience—in the essay.
The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism
Objective correlative
The objective correlative concept that Eliot popularized in this essay refers to the
concept that the only way to express an emotion through art is to find "a set of
objects, a situation, [or] a chain of events" that will, when read or performed,
evoke a specific sensory experience in the audience.
This sensory experience is meant to help the reader understand the mental or
emotional state of a character
Eliot writes that Hamlet's state of mind is a direct result of his confused emotions
and the lack of external representation for these emotions in an objective
correlative.
He goes on to say that Hamlet's initial conflict is disgust in his mother, but his
feelings regarding the situation are too complex to be represented by Gertrude
alone. Neither Hamlet nor Shakespeare can grasp or objectify these feelings, and
so it acts as an obstacle to the character's revenge and Shakespeare's plot. But
Eliot points out that if Shakespeare had found an objective correlative for
Hamlet's internal conflict, the play would be entirely changed because the
bafflement that characterizes it is a direct result of Shakespeare's shortcomings in
this respect.
Eliot does, however, give credit to Shakespeare's use of the objective correlative
in his other works. As an example, he references a scene in Macbeth in
which Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and the imagined sensory impressions
Shakespeare provides allow the audience to understand her mental state.
A summary of an influential essay – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential essays. It
was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the bold claim
that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far from being a triumph, is an artistic failure. Why?
Eliot is being provocative with such a statement, but he does provide some reasons for
this position. In this article, we’re going to analyse Eliot’s essay, which you can read here.
In summary, Eliot’s argument in ‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is that Shakespeare’s play is a
‘failure’, but the play has become so familiar and ubiquitous as a work of art that we are
no longer able to see its flaws. This bold revisionist claim is founded on several points, not
least of which is the fact that Shakespeare inherited the original play-text of Hamlet from
another writer (probably Thomas Kyd, who also wrote The Spanish Tragedy). This earlier
play contained many of the ingredients that appear in Shakespeare’s later rewriting of the
story of Hamlet, but is a cruder example of the revenge tragedy. Shakespeare rewrote it
and updated it for a later, more refined theatre audience – but the Bard failed to graft his
more sophisticated reading of the character of Hamlet (notably, his odd feelings towards
his own mother) onto Kyd’s more primitive version of the character. Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is too ‘big’ for the plot of the play and the ‘intractable material’ Shakespeare is
being forced to work with. It’s as if a master analyst of the human mind, such as
Dostoevsky, tried to rewrite the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a
psychologically complex novel. (That’s our analogy, not Eliot’s.)
So, far from being a literary masterpiece, Shakespeare’s reworking of the Hamlet story
fails, according to Eliot, because Shakespeare attempted to do too much with the
character and, as a result, Hamlet’s emotions in the play seem unclear. There is a gulf
between the emotion felt by the character and the way this is worked up into drama in
the play.
Eliot goes on to argue that Coriolanus, a late tragedy by Shakespeare, is, ‘with Antony and
Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success.’ This is a contrarian view and
should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt: in 1919 Eliot wanted to stand out as a new
critic on the literary scene, and slaughtering sacred Shakespearean cows is one way to get
yourself noticed. Championing a relatively little-read tragedy by Shakespeare (why
not Macbeth, King Lear, or Othello?) is another way of getting people talking about you.
Eliot’s view of Coriolanus continues to be one of the more famous things about the play. A
recent review of Ralph Fiennes’ film adaptation of Coriolanus even quotes from Eliot’s
essay, showing how his critical pronouncement has endured.
Eliot justifies his analysis of Hamlet – and the play’s problems – by referring to what he
calls the ‘objective correlative’ of the play: the ‘only way of expressing emotion in the
form of art’, Eliot tells us, is by finding an ‘objective correlative’. He defines this as ‘a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular
emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience,
are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.’ Eliot provides an example from another
Shakespeare play, Macbeth, arguing that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her
sleep is ‘communicated to [the audience] by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory
impressions’. There is an air of ‘inevitability’ about Lady Macbeth’s fate, thanks to the
careful accumulation of images, stage-effects, and emotional details which precede her
death.
This idea of the ‘objective correlative’ (Eliot did not invent the term, but he made it his
own with the above definition of it) would prove to be hugely influential on mid-
twentieth-century criticism, which was often concerned with interpreting the symbols
and images employed by writers to convey the emotional ‘life’ of a character.
Can we analyse T. S. Eliot’s own poetry in light of the idea of the ‘objective correlative’?
Think about the images of ‘ragged claws’, the ‘yellow fog’, or the ‘patient etherised upon
a table’ in his own ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, all of which are outward and
visible signs of an inward feeling or mood. So the patient on a table at the start of
‘Prufrock’ conveys J. Alfred Prufrock’s own attitude to the sunset – it evokes in him
torpidity and inaction, as if he himself is barely conscious. The image of the ‘yellow fog’
and the ‘pair of ragged claws’ are continuations of this mood.
‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is not without its problems, not least because it remains
difficult to pin down precisely how T. S. Eliot sees the ‘objective correlative’ working (or
not working) in great literature. Nevertheless, his analysis of Hamlet and his thoughts
about how writers can successfully convey internal moods and emotions remain worthy
of study and analysis in their own right.
Multiple choice question
1. T.S. Eliot in his essay 'Hamlet and His Problems' gives his famous theory of-objective correlative
Explanation: Eliot justifies his analysis of Hamlet - and the play's problems - by referring to what he calls
the 'objective correlative' of the play: the 'only way of expressing emotion in the form of art', Eliot tells
us, is by finding an 'objective correlative'.
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot's 'Hamlet and his Problems
Objective Correlative is a term popularized by T.S. Eliot in his essay on 'Hamlet and His Problems' to
refer to an image, action, or situation - usually a pattern of images, actions, or situations - that somehow
evokes a particular emotion from the reader without stating what that emotion should be.
What is Objective Correlative? - Bachelorandmaster
T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock shares many correlating themes with
William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Despite their evident similarities in style, Eliot criticizes
Shakespeare's Hamlet in his essay Hamlet and His Problems, calling it "a problem which proved too
much for him" (Eliot,184). Eliot said that the main theme, the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son,
was a failure because Hamlet's feelings were too strong to be stirred solely by his mother.
Hamlet Essay | T.S. Eliot and His Objective Correlative
The theory of the 'Objective Correlative' is one of the most important critical concepts of T. S. Eliot. He
formulated his doctrine of the 'Objective Correlative' in his essay on Hamlet and
His Problems. Eliot called Hamlet 'an artistic failure'.
Objective Correlative in Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred
Eliot uses this "problem" to formulate his definition of the "objective correlative"; though not the first
person to use the term, Eliot made it a permanent fixture in the literary and critical fields. According
to Eliot, Hamlet's true feelings are unknowable because they do not find adequate representation in the
play.
Hamlet by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
Eliot formulated his doctrine of the 'objective correlative' in his essay on "Hamlet and his Problems".
According to Eliot, the poet cannot communicate his emotions directly to the readers, he has to find
some object suggestive of it and only then he can evoke the same emotion in his readers.
Practical criticism is, like the formal study of English literature itself, a relatively young
discipline. It began in the 1920s with a series of experiments by the Cambridge critic I.A.
Richards.
In Practical Criticism of 1929 he reported on and analysed the results of his
experiments. The objective of his work was to encourage students to concentrate on 'the
words on the page', rather than relying on preconceived or received beliefs about a text.
For Richards this form of close analysis of anonymous poems was ultimately intended to
have psychological benefits for the students: by responding to all the currents of emotion
and meaning in the poems and passages of prose which they read the students were to
achieve what Richards called an 'organised response'. This meant that they would clarify
the various currents of thought in the poem and achieve a corresponding clarification of
their own emotions.
Richards shows an interest in the effect of poems on the reader. He tends to locate poem in
readers response. The being of the poem seems to exist only in the readers. Poetry is a form of
words that organizes our attitudes. Poetry is composed of pseudo statements, therefore it is
effective. He talks about the close analysis of a text.
Like a new critics, he values irony. He praises the irony and says that it is characteristics of
poetry of higher order. In “The Forth Kinds of Meaning”, he talks about functions of language.
Basically he points out four types of functions or meaning that the language has to perform.
The Four Kinds of Meaning
Sense
What speaker or author speaks is sense. The thing that the writer literally conveys is sense. Here,
the speaker speaks to arouse the readers thought. The language is very straightforward which is
descriptive. This language is not poetic. Words are used to direct the hearer's attraction up on
some state of affairs or to excite them. Sense is whatness of language use.
Feeling
Feeling is writer’s emotional attitude towards the subject. It means writer’s attachment or
detachment to the subject is feeling. It is an expression. The speaker or writer uses language to
express his views. This very language is emotive, poetic and literary also. Here only, rhyme and
meter cannot make poetry to be a good, emotion is equally important. Especially in lyric poem,
emotion plays vital role.
Tone
Tone refers to attitude of speaker towards his listener. There is a kind of relation between
speaker and listener. Since speaker is aware of his relationship with language and with the
listener, he changes the level of words as the level of audience changes. It means tone varies
from listener to listener.
Intention
Intention is the purpose of speaker. Speaker has certain aim to speak either it is consciously or
unctuously. Listener has to understand the speaker's purpose to understand his meaning. If the
audience can't understand his purpose the speaker becomes unsuccessful. The intention of author
can be found in dramatic and semi- dramatic literature.
There four types of meaning in totality constitute the total meaning of any text. Therefore all
utterances can be looked at from four points of view, revealing four kinds of meaning are not
easily separated. But they are in dispensable terms for explaining. Basically, the four meaning
are interconnected in poetry.
Doctrine in Poetry
Here Richards talks about the proper way of analyzing the text and what critic and reader should
be like. He tends to locate the poem in readers response to it. It means readers analyze the text
and respond any poetry from similar judgmental aspects. It shows every reader produces same
meaning from same text as the text is organic whole obstacles and barriers the variation of
meaning occurs.
His ideas are oriented toward distinguishing the belief of readers from that of the poets. If there
occurs contradiction between the belief of readers and the belief of poets, the readers do not get
sole meaning from the text. Because of readers’ temperament and personal experience, they don't
get same meaning from the text The obstacle that brings variation in meaning is doctrinal belief
of readers.
Richards finds two kinds of belief and disbelief
i) Intellectual belief
ii) Emotional belief
In an intellectual belief we weigh an idea based on doctrinal preoccupation, where as an
emotional belief is related to the state of mind. He thinks that the good kind of being comes from
the blending of the both. Until and unless we are free from beliefs and disbeliefs there comes
variation in meaning. But to free our mind from all impurities is not possible. Therefore the
reader should be sincere to get single meaning escaping from such obstacles. This sincerity is the
way to success. The sincere reader has perfect and genuine mind. To be genuine mind, one
should be free from impurities. In this sense the reader should be free from obstruction these
obstacles is not possible.
Northrop Frye: The critical path
Herman Northrop Frye (July 14, 1912 – January 23, 1991) was a Canadian literary
critic and literary theorist, considered one of the most influential of the 20th century.
Frye gained international fame with his first book, Fearful Symmetry (1947), which led to the
reinterpretation of the poetry of William Blake. His lasting reputation rests principally on the
theory of literary criticism that he developed in Anatomy of Criticism (1957), one of the most
important works of literary theory published in the twentieth century. The American
critic Harold Bloom commented at the time of its publication that Anatomy established Frye as
"the foremost living student of Western literature. He was a major influence on Harold
Bloom, Margaret Atwood, and others
Inspired by his work on Blake, Frye developed and articulated his unified theory ten years
after Fearful Symmetry, in the Anatomy of Criticism (1957). He described this as an attempt at a
"synoptic view of the scope, theory, principles, and techniques of literary criticism" (Anatomy 3).
Frye’s major points that go along with each of the above sections.
1. Discusses His Approach
· Most of the well trodden paths, i.e. the other schools of criticism, were not working for
him, so he decided to try something different
· He wanted a type of criticism that would:
i. take the “major phenomena of literature” (later explained as convention, genre, and
archetypes) into consideration (p. 280)
ii. take into account literature’s place in all of civilization/history
· Therefore, he came to the conclusion that criticism was best achieved “through literature
itself” or intertextual criticism (p. 280).
· Important quotation: “It seemed to me obvious that, after accepting the poetic
form of a poem as its primary basis of meaning, the next step was to look for its context
within literature itself” (283). In other words, look at the text itself to find meaning, and then
look to how this meaning stands within other works-use literature, not other subjects, to
find/prove points.
i. Along with this conclusion, Frye suggests that after going to the text, the next best place
to go is to the author’s other works, and then to other works within that genre, or other works
that have similar conventions and/or archetypes.
ii. According to Frye, all literature should be looked at in terms of conventions, genres, and
recurring image groups, or archetypes.
2. Defines Criticism Generally and Historically
Generally:
i. Frye distinguishes criticism from literature itself, from criticism of the arts or from “the
subject called aesthetics” (p. 280), from those so-called critics who are really only interested in
“social, philosophical, and religious” pursuits rather than literary ones (p. 280), from second-rate
writing, and from other subjects/schools that do not deal primarily with literature.
ii. He also writes that criticism should not develop, as it has, “suburbs like Los Angeles” (p.
281).
o These “suburbs” include biography, psychology, and history (in terms of the “social
situation” of the author) (p. 281).
o One should note that these “suburbs” that Frye opposes are the bases on which our
other schools of criticism are founded.
iii. Any and all criticism should be based on two aspects: the structure of literature and the
social environment of literature.
· Historically:
i. English literature was not an academic subject.
ii. Literary Criticism was based on philology.
iii. In North American universities, criticism was based on history and philosophy
iv. Other movements, based mainly on a historical perspective, include (in the historical
order that he presented): Determinism, Catholic Determinism (Eliot), nominalism, Protestantism,
liberalism, subjective idealism, solipsism, and Marxism
o Frye highlights three problems with these movements:
a. Literary form is not considered
b. Poetic/metaphorical language is not part of the major meanings of these movements
c. The quality of the poet relates negatively to or opposes the content area from which the
poet is being observed (all from p. 282).
v. Frye believed that New Criticism was good because of its return to formalism, but noticed
that it eventually returned to or relied on other subjects, just as the above movements do.
vi. He believes his new type of criticism (intertextualism) will become or should become a
critical movement as well, one than can replace the others that usually fail.
o Frye thought that there were two contexts from which critics could find poetic meaning:
the context of literature and the context of everyday ideas/language. He believed that the latter is
too often used as context and that the context of literature should be employed more often.
3. Warns of the Necessary Evils of Criticism
· “Pre-critical experience,” or a naïve view of literature, sometimes inhibits the critic (p.
285). This experience deals with one’s initial, non-verbal reactions to a text on first reading.
· Devotion to “determinism” limits our understanding of literature. In other words,
believing that everything has a specific outcome or meaning, and separating “social reference
and structure” (p. 287) is inhibiting to critics.
· Our views of literature are always changing. Each time we reread, we have a different
interpretation of the work, and no matter how slight the differences are, they are still present.
· “Criticism…is one of the sub-academic areas in which a large number of people are still
free to indulge their anxieties instead of studying their subject” (p. 287). Basically, do not do
this.
4. “The Critical Path”
· Frye uses influences from William Blake’s prophecies (the idea of the path) and from
Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (“‘the critical path is alone open’” p. 280) to relate his
development as a critic to the history of criticism and to the development of intertextuality.
· There are many paths that diverge too much from “The Critical Path” and these should
be considered when incorporating other subjects into criticism. Basically, biography, history,
philosophy, psychology, and other subjects should be considered, but should not overwhelm the
piece and the literature that it is a part of.
· Along this path, we as writers are moving from the naïve to the “sentimental,” or
unified, way of looking at literature, and criticism only begins where the sentimental view begins
(p. 286).
· We must also learn to separate initial responses and determinism from criticism.
· Through criticism, we can reach a higher level in ourselves and in reality. (As an aside,
this was too abstract for me, but I understood it as an imaginative and somewhat Buddhist-like
way to say that criticism helps us to better understand this world and the literature that comes
from it).
[The Critical Path] is the first book since the Anatomy of Criticism that I’ve actually written, i.e.,
that hasn’t been a series of public lectures. It’s also a very important book.
In The Critical Path, in 1971, Frye talks about a “myth of concern” as comprising “everything
that most concerns its society to know” and as functioning to “hold society together, so far as
words are can help to do this” (36). This, then, is the equivalent in Frye’s thinking to the New
Historicism focus on ideology. But, for Frye, literature is not the same as concern: “it displays
the imaginative possibilities of concern” (98). Much later, in Words with Power, published in
the same year as “Varieties of Eighteenth Century Sensibility,” Frye develops this discussion
into a dialectic of “primary concern” — those things that concern all peoples in all societies at all
times — and “secondary concern,” the ideological preoccupations of specific societies at specific
historical moments: and literature is where secondary and primary concern are brought into
relationship (42-3). These reflections are where Frye’s veer sharply away from both the literary
Marxism he engaged in the first quarter of his career, and the New Historicism he confronted in
the final quarter. It is in maintaining the distinction between an ideology and a myth that Frye’s
criticism preserves the multicultural component that A.C. Hamilton has suggested will give it
permanence in “an increasingly globalized world.” (CW 17, xxv)
To which I can only add that the inability of a whole generation of literary scholars to maintain a
distinction between ideology and myth is at the root of the problems literary criticism now faces,
including its steady decline in influence upon the general reading public. In our current post-
post-structuralist age, scholars tend only to talk to one another in a rarefied language only they
understand. But much of this is no more than what Frye calls the “squirrel’s chatter” of
specialized scholarship. He knew better than most that, because literature belongs to everybody,
literary criticism belongs to everybody as well and can be written in a way that is accessible to
anybody, as surely as every literary work is available to every reader who cares to engage it.
What makes literature accessible –and ought to make literary criticism equally accessible — is
the universality of primary concern and literature’s unique ability to explore its imaginative
possibilities. As Frye puts it in Words with Power, any work of literature will reflect the
secondary ideological concerns of its time, but it will also place those ideological concerns in the
context of “making a living, making love, and struggling to stay free and alive.” And that’s
something everyone can understand. We can only hope that literary scholarship will recognize
sooner rather than later what Frye could already lucidly articulate forty years ago.
T.S.Eliot : Hamlet and his Problems
Hamlet and His Problems is an essay written by T.S. Eliot in 1919 that offers a critical
reading of Hamlet.
The essay first appeared in Eliot's The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism in
1920. It was later reprinted by Faber & Faber in 1932 in Selected Essays, 1917-1932.
Eliot's critique gained attention partly due to his claim that Hamlet is "most certainly an
artistic failure."
Eliot also popularised the concept of the objective correlative—a mechanism used to
evoke emotion in an audience—in the essay.
The essay is also an example of Eliot's use of what became known as new criticism
Objective correlative
The objective correlative concept that Eliot popularized in this essay refers to the
concept that the only way to express an emotion through art is to find "a set of
objects, a situation, [or] a chain of events" that will, when read or performed,
evoke a specific sensory experience in the audience.
This sensory experience is meant to help the reader understand the mental or
emotional state of a character
Eliot writes that Hamlet's state of mind is a direct result of his confused emotions
and the lack of external representation for these emotions in an objective
correlative.
He goes on to say that Hamlet's initial conflict is disgust in his mother, but his
feelings regarding the situation are too complex to be represented by Gertrude
alone. Neither Hamlet nor Shakespeare can grasp or objectify these feelings, and
so it acts as an obstacle to the character's revenge and Shakespeare's plot. But
Eliot points out that if Shakespeare had found an objective correlative for
Hamlet's internal conflict, the play would be entirely changed because the
bafflement that characterizes it is a direct result of Shakespeare's shortcomings in
this respect.
Eliot does, however, give credit to Shakespeare's use of the objective correlative
in his other works. As an example, he references a scene in Macbeth in
which Lady Macbeth is sleepwalking and the imagined sensory impressions
Shakespeare provides allow the audience to understand her mental state.
A summary of an influential essay – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle
‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is one of T. S. Eliot’s most important and influential essays. It
was first published in 1919. In ‘Hamlet and his Problems’, Eliot makes the bold claim
that Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, far from being a triumph, is an artistic failure. Why?
Eliot is being provocative with such a statement, but he does provide some reasons for
this position. In this article, we’re going to analyse Eliot’s essay, which you can read here.
In summary, Eliot’s argument in ‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is that Shakespeare’s play is a
‘failure’, but the play has become so familiar and ubiquitous as a work of art that we are
no longer able to see its flaws. This bold revisionist claim is founded on several points, not
least of which is the fact that Shakespeare inherited the original play-text of Hamlet from
another writer (probably Thomas Kyd, who also wrote The Spanish Tragedy). This earlier
play contained many of the ingredients that appear in Shakespeare’s later rewriting of the
story of Hamlet, but is a cruder example of the revenge tragedy. Shakespeare rewrote it
and updated it for a later, more refined theatre audience – but the Bard failed to graft his
more sophisticated reading of the character of Hamlet (notably, his odd feelings towards
his own mother) onto Kyd’s more primitive version of the character. Shakespeare’s
Hamlet is too ‘big’ for the plot of the play and the ‘intractable material’ Shakespeare is
being forced to work with. It’s as if a master analyst of the human mind, such as
Dostoevsky, tried to rewrite the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears as a
psychologically complex novel. (That’s our analogy, not Eliot’s.)
So, far from being a literary masterpiece, Shakespeare’s reworking of the Hamlet story
fails, according to Eliot, because Shakespeare attempted to do too much with the
character and, as a result, Hamlet’s emotions in the play seem unclear. There is a gulf
between the emotion felt by the character and the way this is worked up into drama in
the play.
Eliot goes on to argue that Coriolanus, a late tragedy by Shakespeare, is, ‘with Antony and
Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s most assured artistic success.’ This is a contrarian view and
should perhaps be taken with a pinch of salt: in 1919 Eliot wanted to stand out as a new
critic on the literary scene, and slaughtering sacred Shakespearean cows is one way to get
yourself noticed. Championing a relatively little-read tragedy by Shakespeare (why
not Macbeth, King Lear, or Othello?) is another way of getting people talking about you.
Eliot’s view of Coriolanus continues to be one of the more famous things about the play. A
recent review of Ralph Fiennes’ film adaptation of Coriolanus even quotes from Eliot’s
essay, showing how his critical pronouncement has endured.
Eliot justifies his analysis of Hamlet – and the play’s problems – by referring to what he
calls the ‘objective correlative’ of the play: the ‘only way of expressing emotion in the
form of art’, Eliot tells us, is by finding an ‘objective correlative’. He defines this as ‘a set of
objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular
emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience,
are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.’ Eliot provides an example from another
Shakespeare play, Macbeth, arguing that the state of mind of Lady Macbeth walking in her
sleep is ‘communicated to [the audience] by a skilful accumulation of imagined sensory
impressions’. There is an air of ‘inevitability’ about Lady Macbeth’s fate, thanks to the
careful accumulation of images, stage-effects, and emotional details which precede her
death.
This idea of the ‘objective correlative’ (Eliot did not invent the term, but he made it his
own with the above definition of it) would prove to be hugely influential on mid-
twentieth-century criticism, which was often concerned with interpreting the symbols
and images employed by writers to convey the emotional ‘life’ of a character.
Can we analyse T. S. Eliot’s own poetry in light of the idea of the ‘objective correlative’?
Think about the images of ‘ragged claws’, the ‘yellow fog’, or the ‘patient etherised upon
a table’ in his own ‘The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock’, all of which are outward and
visible signs of an inward feeling or mood. So the patient on a table at the start of
‘Prufrock’ conveys J. Alfred Prufrock’s own attitude to the sunset – it evokes in him
torpidity and inaction, as if he himself is barely conscious. The image of the ‘yellow fog’
and the ‘pair of ragged claws’ are continuations of this mood.
‘Hamlet and his Problems’ is not without its problems, not least because it remains
difficult to pin down precisely how T. S. Eliot sees the ‘objective correlative’ working (or
not working) in great literature. Nevertheless, his analysis of Hamlet and his thoughts
about how writers can successfully convey internal moods and emotions remain worthy
of study and analysis in their own right.
Multiple choice question
1. T.S. Eliot in his essay 'Hamlet and His Problems' gives his famous theory of-objective correlative
Explanation: Eliot justifies his analysis of Hamlet - and the play's problems - by referring to what he calls
the 'objective correlative' of the play: the 'only way of expressing emotion in the form of art', Eliot tells
us, is by finding an 'objective correlative'.
A Short Analysis of T. S. Eliot's 'Hamlet and his Problems
Objective Correlative is a term popularized by T.S. Eliot in his essay on 'Hamlet and His Problems' to
refer to an image, action, or situation - usually a pattern of images, actions, or situations - that somehow
evokes a particular emotion from the reader without stating what that emotion should be.
What is Objective Correlative? - Bachelorandmaster
T.S. Eliot's famous poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock shares many correlating themes with
William Shakespeare's Hamlet. Despite their evident similarities in style, Eliot criticizes
Shakespeare's Hamlet in his essay Hamlet and His Problems, calling it "a problem which proved too
much for him" (Eliot,184). Eliot said that the main theme, the effect of a mother's guilt upon her son,
was a failure because Hamlet's feelings were too strong to be stirred solely by his mother.
Hamlet Essay | T.S. Eliot and His Objective Correlative
The theory of the 'Objective Correlative' is one of the most important critical concepts of T. S. Eliot. He
formulated his doctrine of the 'Objective Correlative' in his essay on Hamlet and
His Problems. Eliot called Hamlet 'an artistic failure'.
Objective Correlative in Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred
Eliot uses this "problem" to formulate his definition of the "objective correlative"; though not the first
person to use the term, Eliot made it a permanent fixture in the literary and critical fields. According
to Eliot, Hamlet's true feelings are unknowable because they do not find adequate representation in the
play.
Hamlet by T. S. Eliot | Poetry Foundation
Eliot formulated his doctrine of the 'objective correlative' in his essay on "Hamlet and his Problems".
According to Eliot, the poet cannot communicate his emotions directly to the readers, he has to find
some object suggestive of it and only then he can evoke the same emotion in his readers.
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