The beginning of literary criticism

The term criticism comes from the Greek krisis which means selection, separation, judgment = judgment that helps to choose books we want to read because the study of literature forces the reader to choose this work or that.

The Greeks did not have a word for literature and poetry as a song was a usual term, inspired by the Muses. The word poetry originated from religious songs with the beginning of SOLON’s democracy in Greece 600 BC so democracy appears more of less at the same time as poetry. DEMOCRITUS was a Greek philosopher, the first one who said that everything is created out of atoms. According to him, a poet forms atoms of language to produce a specific feeling in the auditor’s psyche in the same way in which citizens shape the state through democracy. The rise of poetry is related to the decline of religion. Poets no longer rely on divine Muses but shape the words like the carpenter uses wood.

PLATO (424-347 BC) was a student of Socrates. His work The Republic is a utopian vision of how the Greek Republic should function as an ideal state. Plato claimed that we cannot perceive anything directly. As in a cave, we see fire’s shadows on the wall and it is the same in real life where we see only reflections of things, not things themselves how they really are. Just philosophers go out of cave to see the real life and return back to say it to people. What we see are only copies of things and art is therefore a copy of a copy since it is imitating already a copy = poetry does not convey the truth. Plato wanted to use poetry for moral and didactic purposes.

He performed taxonomy of literary genres and divided literature into high and low which we still are not able to overcome. He distinguished two kinds of poetry:

In imitative poetry = comedy and tragedy, a poet pretends that somebody else is speaking so he imitates the action of someone else. Plato stated that these plays are dangerous because in an ideal republic each person has a certain function in society but people can get weird ideas if they see other possibilities featured in plays (like some timber man aspiring for a politician). Therefore, poets should be censored so that they will not show bad examples on stage like slaves, cowards, drunkards and women. Plato acknowledged narrative poetry = epic as more appropriate because there is not much space for imitation, has more uniform style and viewers are not trying to identify with characters.

ARISTOTLE (384- 322 BC) was a student of Plato and a teacher of Alexander the Great. He also thought that art is an imitation but not an imitation of an imitation. He focused rather at the form, not that much on morality and believed there should be censorship at least for children. He wrote a critical text Poetics where he expressed his idea of art in politics and medicine. According to him, 6 main aspects should complement a tragedy: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song. He also came up with the law of three unities of place, time (no more than 24 hours) and action (no subplots).

Mimesis is a critical term that indicates imitation. For Aristotle, the imitation is good for education but an artist must either describe what was or what is commonly believed to exist and an ideal state so he would not appreciate modern fantasy. Characters should be realistic and morally good, certainly no villains as main characters.

The highest form is tragedy where not characters but actions are important and only those that produce pity and fear which give viewers pleasure. At the end there should be catharsis = purification, feeling of relief that would link plays to medicine with their psychological effect. Characters of pity and fear are noble because a bad thing happening to common people is normal. Misfortune falls upon them not because they are bad but because they mistook something or simply did not know. Oedipus is not evil; he marries his mother because he does not know it is her and kills his father due to fate. The worst kind of tragedy is where a character knows what to do and intends to do it but does not.

Aristotle criticism on Hamlet:

Hamlet is not moralistic, not didactic, provides no knowledge and certainly is not a good example. Shakespeare does not follow three unities of place (features a castle, a graveyard, a ship to England), action (a subplot of Ophelia going insane, gravediggers) and time (takes much longer than 24 hours). Hamlet as a character is of noble birth but unable to act. He kills his friends, lets Ophelia go mad, does not confront his uncle and even then stabs the curtain without checking who is really behind it which is not heroic at all.

We feel sorry (character of pity and fear) for Oedipus because it is not his fault but Hamlet’s indecisiveness is his own fault – he knows how to solve the situations (he should simply revenge his father and take the throne) but he does not do it. And when he finally does something, he is not in charge. It is just a series of accidents, more pathetic than tragic. For a successful tragedy, there must to be a greatness of soul but Hamlet is a looser. Hamlet is the worst tragedy ever.