Literary Criticism

 The literary language has been defined through history by many different authors. The definitions that have agreed since ancient times is that it is a language aesthetically pleasing  and that imitates or reflects upon people´s lives because there is realistic or non-fictional and fictional literature. Since the Greeks the theory of literature defines itself as the communication which has a pleasure purpose using a lot of stylistic figures and tropes. 

The history of literary criticism starts in Greece, in fact the origin of the word comes from "kritei" and "kritikos" that means jugdement and a judge of literature. In Greece between the sixth an fifth centuries appears the earliest known critic named Xenophantes of Colophon who attacked in his works to Homer and Hesiod, the Sophist philosophers wrote about "rhetoric" and poetry especially authors Gorgias and Protagoras. The Greek playwright Aristophanes in his play "The Frogs" in which there are critical evaluations of the poetic styles and moral utility for Athenian citizens of plays because its plot is a literary contest in the Underworld between Aeschyllus and Euripides. Plato stated that poetry was an imitation of an imitation and criticised that it lacked truth and could influence society negatively. However Aristotle defended poetry as a natural learning process in his "Poetica"he discussed the principles of tragedy and he introduced concepts such as mimesis and catharsis or emotional purging. Roman authors wrote about the theory of literature such as Horace in the first century B.C. his "Ars Poetica" a guide of poetic composition. During the Middle Ages the arts of poetics and rhetoric were related disciplines as the art of good writing and the normative precepts of rhetoric formulated for public discourse used aesthetic forms of language. In the Renaissance there are humanistic thinkers like Sir Philip Sidney who wrote a treaty about literature in "An Apology for Poetry". In the Baroque the treaties about literature praised proportion, harmony, unity, decorum, conceit and wit still a heritage of the Renaissance neoclassicism. Amidst the scholars of the Enlightenment like Samuel Johnson there is criticism against satire or novelty. The Romantic Criticism emphasized new aesthetic ideas in literary studies, the German movement with Hegel was crucial in England influenced by the Sturm und Drang as a rebellion against the Classical theory of genres and rules, stating the individuality of each literary work. The industrial revolution, the realism and naturalism introduced historical criticism an approach focused on the social and cultural atmosphere, the time and author´s experiences and beliefs of the literary work thus biographies became crucial in the understanding of literary works.                     Scientific literary criticism reflects the trends in positivism, realism and naturalism to make systematic psychological anaylisis of the author of any literary work. Although at the end of the nineteenth century symbolism and impressionism defend the right to subjectivity, unconsciuous and fantasy. In the twentieth century the first three trends are Russian Formalism, Stylistics and American New Criticism which react against historicism and scientism of the previous century. Russian Formalism was born after the Linguistic Circle of Moscow in 1914 and in foundation of the Society for the Study of the Poetic Language dealing with the technical problems of the novel and the tale, stylistic problems, etc. When Marxism increased this group developed into Linguistic Circle of Prague again the linguist Roman Jakobson took part of it. Marxist Criticism considers social, economic and political factors in the literary work and this approach seeks to understand how the work can reflect and criticise the struggles of the working class. According to the Czech School of Structuralists the literary discourse is characterised by systematic foregrounding and utilitarianism. Foregrounding depends on the a background, a language used in customary and predictable ways. Jakobson said that the poetic function of language is set towards the message of its own sake, and explains that the addresser sends a message in a code to the addressee in a context and contact which is a physical channel and psychological connection between the addresser and addressee. There are many types of speeches according to Jakobson based on these factors such as the referential message set towards the contexts, the emotive message set towards the addresser, the conative message set towards the addressee, the phatic message set towards the contact, the metalingual message set towards the code and the poetic message for its own sake. The Structuralism  criticism focuses on language, style, syntax, meaning and the Formalist approach makes a literary criticism based on form and structure. Along with the 20th century the American Descriptivism which derives from the Structuralims of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure and the Geneva School states the language is self-contained and focuses on the syntagmatic and paradigmatic analysis, later the Feminist Criticism highlights the gender roles and criticises the patriarchal society and advocates for women´s rights. The Reader-Response criticism emphasizes the reader´s response to the text, it seeks to undertand how readers´response to the text, it seeks to understand how readers interpret and engage with the work and how their experiences , beliefs and values influence the literary work.

Northrop Frye´s work "Anatomy of Criticism" in 1957 was a crucial work to understand the trends of literary criticism during the last century. Postcolonial Criticism examines how the literary work reflects the legacy of colonialism and how it portrays the experiences of colonized people. In the USA the New Criticism was the most prevalent in the mid 20th century and it draws attention to a close reading of texts elevating from formal elements, imagery and symbolism and the speculation and authorial intention or reader response (affectionate fallacy). This approach seeks to understand how these elements contribute to the meaning and effect works. In the twenty-first century the Poststructuralism or Deconstruction Criticism seeks to challenge and subvert the traditional meanings and interpretations of the literary work. New approaches to literary criticism are based on pragmatics, sociolinguistics and cross disciplinary approache analyse language and discourse with social sicences such as Psycological criticism that examines the psychological and emotional aspects of the work, induction the character´s motivations, desires and fears. There are many literary genres according to the style and purposes. Since antiquity genres are divided in narrative, poetry and drama. 

Plato in his "Republic" divides poetry as mimetic or dramatic poetry, non-mimetic or lyrical poetry and mixed or epic poetry. Aristotle establishes three ways in poetry; dithyrambic poetry (melody, rhythm, verse), tragedy and comedy or according to the objects of mimesis as tragedy and comedy and in the narrative or dramatic mode. Nowadays the acceptance of classical groups of genres does not limit to reflect hybrid subgenres too, for example poetical-lyrical genres are lyrical, epic (ballads and romance) and dramatic lyrical (eclogue and debate).  Although the Criticism in the 20th century the term genre has been used along with style or discourse. Poetry is fiction in verse because is intensely rhythmical in some additional linguistic way, it may have lines and regular units as hemistichs, feet, syllables, etc. and groups of lines can form larger units called stanzas. Prose or Narrative, literary narrative has been used since modern times with the rise of the novel in the eighteenth century onwards. The functions are predetermined in sequences that contribute to the meaning of the story of the main characters or protagonists. There are epic narrative subgenres such as lyrical epic (autobiographical, lyrical and romance novels) and dramatic epic (dialogical novels), didactic essays can be narrative, dramatic or lyrical essays too.  Drama presents communication in process while the author and sender, and the receiver and reader or audience (in theatre) and the channel are placed equally in the communication. Dramatic subgenres such as lyrical dramatic (monologue, poetic drama) and epic dramatic (epic drama and mystery).  Besides we take into account the history of literature in the formation of subgenres for example during the Anglo Saxon period elegies were trendy though after the Norman conquest ballads were fashionable and later during the Elizabethan period were the sonnets (by Sidney, Spenser, etc.), songs, epithalamion, eglogue, epigram, ode and epitaphs. In Victorian epoch the dramatic mologue (Browning Tennyson) were fashionable along with tales, novels and pastoral epics and ballads were revived along the Romantic and Scottish poetry revival. The theories of Decontructionism from the last century evolved with the philosophical, socioeconomic and literary new approaches to literature such as new historicism, ethnic, critical race and legal studies into literary criticism that makes literary and non-literary texts blurred progressively and critics trying to differentiate genres and the meaning lying behind literary texts.