2. Class (8) Items
•Late 19th Century Critics
➢The Victorian Age
➢Realism & Naturalism
• Hippolyte Taine
• Matthew Arnold
3. 1. Realize the importance of the critic in literary
theory and criticism.
2. Explain the main ideas of the critic.
3. Discuss some ideas of the critic.
4. Explore the application of the critic’s ideas to
literature.
5. Relate the critic’s ideas to critical practice.
6. Criticize the critic’s ideas and critical practice.
7. Describe the main features of the Realistic and
naturalistic Critical Ideals.
8. Realize the main features of the Victorian Age and
Scientism.
Class (8)
Objectives
By the end of this part, you will be able to:
4. Class (8)
Questions
1. What were the main features of the Victorian Age?
2. What are the main causes and features of
Scientism?
3. Write abut Realism and the main features of the
realist Critical Ideals.
4. Write abut Naturalism and the main features of
the naturalist Critical Ideals.
5. How important is Taine in literary criticism and
theory?
6. What were the environmental elements that Taine
introduced to criticism? Explain each element.
7. How important is Arnold in literary criticism and
theory?
8. How did Arnold reshape the function of criticism?
5. The Victorian era
• The Victorian era (c. 1832–1901) refers to
the period of English history between the
passage of the first Reform Bill (1832) and
the death of Queen Victoria (reigned 1837–
1901).
• It is remembered for strict social
conservatism and frequent clashes between
religion and science.
• This period also saw prolific literary activity
and significant social reform and criticism.
6. A Shift to Scientism
• With the rise of the Victorian era in the 1830s, reason, science, and a sense of historical
determinism began to supplant Romanticism's emphasis on intuition and the imagination as
avenues to truth.
• Writers, philosophers, and scientists began to give more credence to empirical and
rationalistic methods for discovering the nature of their world rather than to Romantic concepts
of emotion, individualism, and intuition as pathways to truth.
• Science usurped the place of Romanticism's "religion of nature" and the beliefs of most other
traditional religions.
• Philosophy became too esoteric and, therefore, less relevant as a vehicle for understanding
reality for the average Victorian.
• The growing sense of historical and scientific determinism found its authoritative voice and
culminating influence in Charles Darwin and his text On the Origin of Species (1859).
• Humankind was now demystified because we now knew our origins and understood our
physiological development. Science, it seemed, had provided us with the key to our past and an
understanding of the present and would help us determine our future if we relied on the
scientific method in all our human endeavors.
7. Realism
Realism (c. 1830–1900) is a late-19th-
century literary movement that aimed at
accurate detailed portrayal of ordinary,
contemporary life.
8. Naturalism
Naturalism (c. 1865–1900) is a literary
movement that used detailed realism to
suggest that social conditions, heredity,
and environment had inescapable force in
shaping human character.
11. Importance
• Hippolyte Taine was French historian and
literary critic.
• His chief contribution to literary criticism and
history is his text the History of English
Literature, published in 1864.
• In this work Taine crystallizes what is now
known as the historical approach to literary
analysis.
• He was an admiring adherent and a strong
voice of science's methodology, its
philosophical assumptions, and its practical
applications.
12. Environmental Elements
• Taine asserts that to understand any literary text, we must examine the
environmental causes that joined together in its creation.
• He divides such influences into four main categories:
• For Taine, a work of art is "the result of given causes" and can best be
represented by using the following formula:
Race Milieu Moment
Dominant
Faculty
Work
of Art
Race Milieu Moment
Dominant
Faculty
13. Authors of the same race, or those born and raised in the same country, share peculiar
intellectual beliefs, emotions, and ways of understanding.
By examining each author's inherited and learned personal characteristics, Taine
believes we will then be able to understand more fully the author's text.
Race
We must also examine the author's milieu or surroundings.
English citizens respond differently to life than do French or Irish citizens.
Accordingly, by examining the culture of the author, we would understand more fully
the intellectual and cultural concerns that inevitably surface in an author's text.
Milieu
We must investigate an author's epoch or moment—that is, the time period in which
the text was written.
Such information reveals the dominant ideas or worldview held by people at that
particular time.
Moment
We must examine each author's individual talents or dominant faculty that makes him
or her different from others who share similar characteristics of race, milieu, and
moment.
Dominant
Faculty
16. Importance
• Matthew Arnold is the self-appointed voice
for English Victorianism.
• Arnold proclaims that poetry can provide the
necessary truths, values, and guidelines for
society.
• Arnold wanted to create a type of poetry and
criticism that could supposedly rescue
society from its baser elements and preserve
its most noble characteristics.
• More than any other critic, Arnold helps
establish "culture" and, in particular,
literature as the highest object of
veneration among civilized peoples.
17. ➢“a disinterested effort to learn and propagate
the best that has been known and thought”
➢“to see the object as in itself it really is”
➢“culture and anarchy”
➢“a criticism of life”
Even modern-day literary criticism remains peppered
with some of his distinct phrases:
18. The Function of Criticism
• In his pivotal essays "The Function of Criticism at the Present
Time" (1865) and "The Study of Poetry" (1888), Arnold crystallizes
his critical position.
• Arnold reaffirms but slightly amends the social role of criticism: to
create "a current of true and fresh ideas."
• The critic will be able to pave the way for high culture.
• The critic is no longer just the interpreter of a literary work, the critic
now functions as an authority on values, culture, and tastes.
• This new literary "watchdog" must guard and defend high culture
and its literature while simultaneously defining what high culture and
literature really are.
19. The Function of Criticism
• The critic must avoid becoming embroiled in politics or
any other activity that would lead to a form of bias.
• The critic establishes objective criteria whereby we can
judge whether any poem contains or achieves, in
Aristotelian terms, "higher truth or seriousness."
• The critic's task is "to have always in one's mind lines and
expressions of the great masters, and to apply them as a
touchstone to other poetry."
• By comparing the newly written lines to classical poems
that contain elements of the "sublime," the critic will
instantly know whether a new poem is good or bad.
20.
21. Explain how the environmental
elements of Taine’s historical
criticism can be applied to a
literary works of your choice.
22. Class (8)
Questions
1. What were the main features of the Victorian Age?
2. What are the main causes and features of
Scientism?
3. Write abut Realism and the main features of the
realist Critical Ideals.
4. Write abut Naturalism and the main features of
the naturalist Critical Ideals.
5. How important is Taine in literary criticism and
theory?
6. What were the environmental elements that Taine
introduced to criticism? Explain each element.
7. How important is Arnold in literary criticism and
theory?
8. How did Arnold reshape the function of criticism?
