ENG 303 Lecture Notes - Lecture 22: New Criticism, Secular Humanism, Russian Formalism
Document Summary
Matthew arnold, the function of criticism at the present time, in the context of walter pater and oscar wilde, and the broader debate among objectivist and subjectivist literary theory, circa. Key ideas in matthew arnold"s function of criticism at the present time : Liberal humanism, the best that is thought and known, criticism as the free play of the mind . The comparison between the creative and the critical faculties; places the creative. Higher than the critical, but not absolutely; they are interdependent; critical thinking is itself creative, and vice-versa. The assertion that criticism should be disinterested, that is, free and existing for its own sake (the sake of intellectual inquiry) and not in the interest of ulterior political or moral ends. The proposal that criticism can and should be objective, in other words, that it can be a relatively stable, principled, consensus-built discipline. The norton editor"s introduction calls matthew arnold the founding father of modern criticism in the.
