A Critical Note on New Historicism Essay - 2751 Words

Introduction: The records of literary criticism and theory are almost as old as literature itself. As known, literary criticism is a sort of mental exercise of evaluating, classifying, analyzing, interpreting, judging, and valuing the literary art. This indicates that criticism also includes creative skill to comprehend the literary artist’s work first, and then put forward one’s valid view. In this sense, it is really ‘meta-literature’. The world’s successful critics and theorists are only the renowned literary figures. As Ben Jonson says that â€Å" To judge of poet is only the faculty of poets†. This means that only a writer can understand the mysteries and mental regions of his/her fellow writers and can respond them aptly and effectively.†¦show more content†¦Horace, Quintillian and Longinus are the authentic and penetrating critics of this period. Horace’s Ars Poetica and Longinus’s On Sublime like Aristotleâ€℠¢s Poetics have proved as torch bearers, and their merits and utility have been acknowledged by all the major literary figures. Renaissance Criticism: With the advent of Renaissance, the critical curiosity accelerates and the enquiry of the antique Greek and Roman founders of creative and critical business also enlarge the horizons of learning. The term Renaissance is described as the birth of the modern world out of the ashes of the Dark Ages; as the discovery of the world and the discovery of man; and the era of the emergence of untrammeled individualism in life, thought, religion and art. In Renaissance England, critical thought evolves swiftly through four successive stages. The preliminary phase is the critique of style and language of classical rhetoricians; the second is the effort to introduce the ancient practitioners’ meters in the English poetry; the third step is an attempt to defend the imaginative literature in the face of moralist puritans; and in the final stage, the critics try to expound their own rules and norms. Among these critics, the prominent ones are Sir Philip Sidney whose Apo logy for Poetry is indispensable in the history of criticism. Ben Jonson is anotherShow MoreRelatedHamlet and New Historicism795 Words   |  4 PagesNew Historicism is a modern literary theory that focuses on how events, culture, and places within a society influence a written work. New Historicists analyze allusions to characteristics of the time period in which the work was written. 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