Imagine yourself in a cave with a lot of markings and drawing on the wall. Now, let’s say the drawings date back to 200 BC, but here you are, in 2020, how do you get an understanding of what the markings/drawing in the cave means?
Let’s say, like in Dan Brown’s thrillers, the markings on the cave are to lead you to where the antidote to a killer disease is, how do you interpret them so that they can lead you to that antidote?
This is the role of criticism in art.
What then is literary criticism?
Mathew Arnold, defined literary criticism as ‘an endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world”. It is a disciplined activity that attempts to describe study, analyze, justify, interpret, and evaluate a work of art. This brings me back to my cave analogy. Here you are, travelling back from 2020 to 200bc to get an antidote to a disease. The markings and drawing on the cave walls are to Lead you to where the antidote is. But how do you interpret what was written in a language that is different from what you have in your time Seeing that art is influenced by the time and environment in which it was created? Even futuristic works are influenced by our idea of the past and present. How do you gain entry into the artiste’s mind and say for sure this was what he is saying through his drawings on the cave? That attempt at understanding, describing, interpreting, studying, evaluation etc., is what is called criticism.
Now imagine you travel back in time to 200bc with a handbook. In that handbook are diverse studies, evaluations, interpretations, justifications … of the drawings on the wall. Now all you need to do is to consult a general consensus of what the drawings on the cave wall are, what they mean, what each figure symbolise and where they lead to That way, you have escaped the arduous task of trying to understand what was written in a time, environment, socio-cultural/political/religious clime that was different to yours.
Criticism is not a discipline on its own. This is because, for criticism to exist, there must have been art in the first place and this is why the art of criticism has always existed since the beginning of time. Literary criticism can be traced back to Greece – where the word was derived from according to Terence Irwin, the moral outlook (which is a type of criticism) of Homer’s poems influence the Greek thoughts. So, criticism is as old as art itself, and it is the lifeblood of art. I believe without criticism, art would have degenerated. Creativity might not have gone into extinction, but without appreciation and or criticism, no one will value art again, Although criticism can be harsh, it is a necessary evil for the preservation of art
Types of Literary Criticism
There are quite a number of types or approaches to literary criticism. You may view it from a different School of thought as there is no one right way of approaching criticism. For example, when I look at a piece of literature, I used to approach it from a purely didactic point of view. That’s talking about Didacticism and Aestheticism (which I have always wanted to write on, but I’m yet to). Didacticism describes a type of literature that is written to inform or instruct the reader, especially in moral or political lessons. While they are also meant to entertain the audience, the aesthetics in a didactic work of literature are subordinate to the message it imparts.
Aestheticism, on the other hand, is about art for the sake of its beauty alone. It doesn’t seek to teach any moral or lesson. When didacticism comes to mind, you think of writers like Charles Dickens, Leo Tostoy, even Williams Shakespeare. While people like Oscar Wilde, John Keats, and Percy Bysshe Shelley are all writers who see art as merely existing for its sake alone. Although in his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde tried to bring a balance of both aesthetic and didactic elements of literature.
Click to read – Writing a Good Piece: What Poets Should Know
So, this is one way to approach a piece: what morals is it teaching? What socio-political condition is it talking about? What we remember about books like ‘Silas Marner or ‘The Merchant of Venice’ is the moral they teach. Merchant of Venice was about how greed and unforgiveness is bad. Romeo and Juliet was about not allowing feuds to run deep. The morals in these novels override the style and forms in which they’re written. We love them not because of the beauty of the prose, but what the prose teach.
-
Archetypal Criticism
Archetypal criticism is a critical approach to literature that seeks to find and understand the purpose of archetypes within literature. These archetypes may be themes, such as love, characterizations, such as the hero; or patterns, such as death and rebirth. This has to do with analysing the essential elements of the work in question. This includes asking, what are the themes? What do the characters in the story/poem represent?
-
Cultural Criticism
Here, the critic is only concerned about the historical and cultural context of the work. For example, Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’, is about the impact of colonisation on the culture of the Ibo people. It is about how the imposition of another culture/religion affects the people. Although there are other things to consider, like what some character and their actions symbolise, here, I’m only concerned about the historical/cultural context of the work. From an archetypal approach, I’ll be concerned about themes like colonialism, exploitation, and characterisation and symbolism. For example, Okonkwo represents African masculinity and culture. His suicide symbolises the death of a culture. I may critic Achebe by saying Okonkwo’s character is not fully developed because all through the story, we only associate him with one dominant emotion: anger.
-
Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-response criticism is a critical approach that shifts the emphasis to the reader from the text or the work’s author and context. This approach focuses on the individual reader’s evolving response to the text. The readers, through their own values and experiences, “create” the meaning of the text and therefore there is no single correct meaning or interpretation of the work.
-
Post-Structuralism
Post-structuralism refers to a critical approach to language, literature, and culture that questions or criticizes structuralism. Post-structuralists relies on close readings of texts; however, post-structuralists believe that language is inherently unstable in meaning and the meaning of the texts is ultimately indecipherable. The best known post-structuralist approach is deconstructionism.
-
New Criticism
Practitioners focus on both the “external form” (e.g. ballad, ode) and the “internal forms” (e.g. structure, repetition, patterns of figurative language, plot/content, syntax/diction, tone, mood, context/setting, style, literary devices, theme). These practitioners reject consideration of the author’s intention and the effect on the reader as illegitimate. The movement is also referred to as formalism or structuralism.
The reason I critique a piece of art (mostly movies and novels) is to try and tell others why they should or shouldn’t read a book. In the critique of ‘Joker’ in the NY Times, one question the critic raised was: how will people in certain demography receive and understand the movie? Won’t the movie and its subtle messages give rise to some problems, especially by people who think they are neglected by society? People who see the ‘Joker’ as a representative of who they are. This question is not new. Anytime a movie that deals with violence or antisocial behaviours is released, some critics raise this question. There are some who are concerned about the quality of directing, acting, and plot and all, these ones don’t concern themselves with the message the movie is passing, but how well it was produced.
So critics concern themselves with different aspects of art and I think one thing that has marked western creatives differently from Africans is that they’re more open to giving and receiving criticisms. Imagine the backlash that an award movie like Joker got. Martin Scorsese once said Marvel movies are not cinema and no one said he was hating on them; he was engaged on intellectual and professional grounds. Compare that to a Tyler Perry who keeps producing movies that promote a certain stereotype; not to mention that his scripts are average and there are flaws in directing. But the black demography sees criticisms as an attack on their person. And they don’t adjust to it.
Late last year, Jerry Chiemeke critiqued Ayo Makun’s Merry Men; and both the producer and the director came after him. Not long afterwards, a NY Times critic critiqued the same movie and gave it a poor two-star rating The point I’m trying to make is if we want to create art that last, we must learn the art of criticism and be open to it as creatives. The point I’m trying to make is, criticism is not a gentle art. It is not rubbing a grown-ass man’s head because he fell down while playing football. No. It is both constructive and deconstructive. It is harsh. Though the critic has to be gentle and constructive in his review or art, it is not his work to pamper the creative.
– Adeola Adejuwon Gbalajobi,
Nigeria
