As they develop and grow increasingly complex, however, they may set independent scholarly goals and acquire independent cultural functions.Literary theory and criticism is in many ways linked to the humanities, some of which (philosophy, aesthetics) serve as its methodological basis; other branches of the humanities resemble literary theory and criticism in their goals and subject of investigation (folklore studies, art studies) or are related by a general humanistic orientation (history, psychology, sociology).
Drawing on Belinskii’s legacy, revolutionary-democratic criticism attempted to restore the broad philosophical and epistemological context of literary research: “If it is important to collect and study facts, it is equally important to try to grasp their meaning.
In defending the mixing of genres S. Johnson pointed to Shakespeare’s works in his It is more difficult to date the appearance of literary criticism in the strict sense, which evolved in the course of more than a century, from F. Malherbe, Boileau, and J. Dryden (whom S. Johnson called the father of English criticism) to Lessing, Diderot, J. Marmontel, and N. M. Karamzin, who was the first Russian to include in his magazine a substantial section devoted to criticism and bibliography.In the late 18th century an important change occurred in European literary thought, shaking the stable hierarchy of artistic values. Despite the differentiation of disciplines that had occurred, the chief form of literary study in Russia (in contrast to Western Europe) and the one which was developing the richest content and incorporating the other branches of learning was precisely philosophical criticism. Literary criticism (or even ‘literary theory’) goes back as far as ancient Greece, and Aristotle’s Poetics.
There developed a strong sense of the intrinsic merit of artistic criteria of different ages which ought not to be compared. Adhering to the classification of art forms proposed by J. F. Schiller However, in establishing modern art as romantic, as imbued with the Christian symbolism of the spiritual and infinite, the romantics imperceptibly, and despite the dialectical tone of their doctrine, restored the category of model (historically medieval art and regionally Oriental art). In the mid-20th century the concept of philology suggests the affinity between literary theory and criticism and linguistics; in the strict sense philology denotes textual criticism.In Europe the first concepts of art and literature were developed by the ancient thinkers. Contemporary schools of literary theory and criticism in the West include the existential, the sociological, the ritual-mythological, and the structuralist.
Is it same as a literary theory? Literary theory deals with the ways to distinguish literary texts from each other and establish categories, classifications and schools of thoughts that are apparently visible in literary texts. .
In accordance with their doctrine of dialectical and historical materialism, Marx and Engels described the basic problems of aesthetics and art. This has brought into focus the problem of the literary work as a complex system to be considered within the framework of a changing historical and social context.Such an approach, which opposes the atomistic-metaphysical trends of positivist literary theory and criticism, establishes the hierarchical nature of the work’s inner organization and considers its components functionally, in their changing relationships to one another. The many links between literary theory and criticism and linguistics are based not only on common material (language as a means of communication and as the raw material of literature) but also on the contiguity of the epistemological functions of words and images and on an analogy between the structure of words and images. The nature of the aesthetic and the distinction between it and the moral and cognitive were established philosophically by I. Kant. However, how can the literary theory be established without an act of literary criticism?
In the 1960’s there also emerged the sociological approach of L. Gold-mann and P. Macherey, reacting against formalist methods and subjective tendencies. Pypin came close to this method in his The scholarly work of A. N. Veselovskii was based on the mingling of many 19th-century methodological traditions. In literary theory it provides knowledge of the structure of any literary work (general poetics). Impressed by the successes of the natural sciences, the school of cultural history attempted to reduce causality and determinism in literary study to precise, tangible factors, such as H. Taine’s triune of race, milieu, and moment In Russian literary theory and criticism the positivist tendencies were opposed by revolutionary-democratic criticism. Many of the exponents of this approach related literary phenomena directly to socioeconomic factors.In general, contemporary literary theory and criticism has failed to resolve such key problems as literature’s relation to public life and the interrelationship between artistic form and content. Guidelines for solving this problem in terms of Marxist literary theory and criticism were provided by Lenin’s doctrine of “two national cultures in each national culture” (that of the ruling classes and democratic and socialist culture), as well as by his defense of the cultural heritage of the past, which he developed in the course of his struggle against Proletkult.
Many new courses were offered in literary history, notably those of F. Bouterwek in Germany, L. S. Sismondi in Switzerland, and A. Villemin in France.