Criticism and the academy

Defining Literary Criticism

“…it might as well be asserted that the direct end of Scripture lessons is Conversion'. 80 However, they were to become the bedrock of Cambridge's course, placing increased emphasis on the student's own experience of the text.…”

“…] nor is any one of them so indispensable to our object as that close familiarity with the plays, that native strength and justice of perception, and that habit of reading with an eager mind, which make many an unscholarly lover of Shakespeare a far better critic than many a Shakespeare scholar. 80 Nevertheless, it is significant that even while Bradley asserted the importance of an intuitive approach to literature, he also drew on techniques that would help to give his work the appearance of a more scholarly kind of text. The first two lectures on which Shakespearean Tragedy was based took the form of an investigation of the moral and philosophical world of Shakespeare's tragedies, and of the patterns Bradley identifies in their underlying structure.…”

“…79 For Murry, literature could fulfil spiritual and emotional needs that were no longer assuaged by 'social or religious security': in The Problem of Style, he described a respect for Thomas Hardy as evidence of 'a hunger, if not for religion, for the peace of an attitude of mind which might with some truth be called religious'. 80 This Arnoldian vision of the redemptive power of criticism had obvious consequences for the critic's role. While Murry believed that every reader had the potential to be a critic, he also insisted that the critic possessed a set of skills that elevated him above the ordinary reader.…”

“…79 It is clear that for Bloom, such 'phantoms' represent a corruption of literature's primary humanist purpose, a sustaining and consolatory process that 'retains considerable continuity with the past, however [reading] is performed in the academies'. 80 Similarly, Carey states his aim as being the cultivation of 'pure readingpleasure', a criterion ignored by 'the lists of "great books" concocted by panels of experts and published from time to time in the literary press'. 81 Carey is less vehement than Bloom in his opposition of academic practices, but the suspicion with which he treats the concept of 'great books' and his disparagement of the views of 'experts', make his intention to champion his own version of the 'common reader' quite plain.…”