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Biographical Fallacy
The biographical fallacy is a term used in cultural criticism to critique the view that works of creative art, literature or music can be interpreted as reflections of the life of their authors. Along with the intentional fallacy, the term was introduced by exponents of the New Criticism who wished to emphasise that artworks should be interpreted and assessed as constructed artifacts rather than expressions of the emotions of specific individuals. The term is thus used to criticize the school of literary interpretation called biographical criticism. The argument arose from the increasing tendency of critics during the 19th century to view artworks in terms of the life experiences of their creators, whether their personal lives, or the wider historical conditions represented in the artist's world view, a claim associated with critics such as Hippolyte Taine. This position was referred to as a "fallacy" on the grounds that it neglected both the purely imaginative aspects of the arts a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Intentional Fallacy
In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intent refers to an author's intent as it is encoded in their work. Authorial intentionalism is the view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opponents have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the informal fallacies. Varying attitudes towards intentionalism in literary theory New Criticism New Criticism, as espoused by Cleanth Brooks, W. K. Wimsatt, T. S. Eliot, and others, argued that authorial intent is irrelevant to understanding a work of literature. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley argue in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" that "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art". Revised and republished in The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing—the text is the primary source of meaning, and any details of the author's desires or li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Criticism
New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. The movement derived its name from John Crowe Ransom's 1941 book ''The New Criticism''. The work of Cambridge scholar I. A. Richards, especially his ''Practical Criticism'' and ''The Meaning of Meaning'', which offered what was claimed to be an empirical scientific approach, were important to the development of New Critical methodology. Also very influential were the critical essays of T. S. Eliot, such as " Tradition and the Individual Talent" and " Hamlet and His Problems", in which Eliot developed his notions of the "theory of impersonality" and " objective correlative" respectively. Eliot's evaluative judgments, such as his condemnation of Milton and Dryden, his liking for the s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Biographical Criticism
Biographical criticism is a form of literary criticism which analyzes a writer's biography to show the relationship between the author's life and their works of literature. Biographical criticism is often associated with historical-biographical criticism, a critical method that "sees a literary work chiefly, if not exclusively, as a reflection of its author's life and times". This longstanding critical method dates back at least to the Renaissance period, and was employed extensively by Samuel Johnson in his '' Lives of the Poets'' (1779–81). Like any critical methodology, biographical criticism can be used with discretion and insight or employed as a superficial shortcut to understanding the literary work on its own terms through such strategies as Formalism. Hence 19th century biographical criticism came under disapproval by the so-called New Critics of the 1920s, who coined the term " biographical fallacy" to describe criticism that neglected the imaginative genesis of lite ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippolyte Taine
Hippolyte Adolphe Taine (, 21 April 1828 – 5 March 1893) was a French historian, critic and philosopher. He was the chief theoretical influence on French naturalism, a major proponent of sociological positivism and one of the first practitioners of historicist criticism. Literary historicism as a critical movement has been said to originate with him. Taine is also remembered for his attempts to provide a scientific account of literature. Taine had a profound effect on French literature; the 1911 ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' asserted that ''"the tone which pervades the works of Zola, Bourget and Maupassant can be immediately attributed to the influence we call Taine's."'' Out of the trauma of 1871, Taine has been said by one scholar to have ‘forged the architectural structure of modern French right-wing historiography’. Early years Taine was born in Vouziers into a fairly prosperous Ardennes family. His father, a lawyer, his uncle, and his grandfather encouraged him t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genre
Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other forms of art or entertainment, whether written or spoken, audio or visual, based on some set of stylistic criteria, yet genres can be aesthetic, rhetorical, communicative, or functional. Genres form by conventions that change over time as cultures invent new genres and discontinue the use of old ones. Often, works fit into multiple genres by way of borrowing and recombining these conventions. Stand-alone texts, works, or pieces of communication may have individual styles, but genres are amalgams of these texts based on agreed-upon or socially inferred conventions. Some genres may have rigid, strictly adhered-to guidelines, while others may show great flexibility. Genre began as an absolute classification system for ancient Greek literature, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Literary Criticism
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Though the two activities are closely related, literary critics are not always, and have not always been, theorists. Whether or not literary criticism should be considered a separate field of inquiry from literary theory is a matter of some controversy. For example, the ''Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism'' draws no distinction between literary theory and literary criticism, and almost always uses the terms together to describe the same concept. Some critics consider literary criticism a practical application of literary theory, because criticism always deals directly with particular literary works, while theory may be more general or abstract. Literary criticism is often published in essay or book form. Academic literary ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
