Humanism in Literary Theory

Z. Nasrollahi

Against divinity and supernatural power

Human mind as a supreme power and

center of being

Humanism

Reason over EmotionReason the carrier of

culture

Static form of reality

Art could never be true

Plato

Objects are copies of forms in ideal realmArt is copying from a copy

Art threatens social order

ARISTOTLE

Form through concrete instances

Pleasure another type of truth

Putting nature in a medium

Ever-changing world

Form

Classify and catalog

What a work is

Art is positive social forces

Formal criticism

HORACE

Sweet and Useful

Purpose of

literatureDidacticPleasure

Poet should imitate nature and authors

Sir Philip Sidney

Instruction

PleasureArt

Providing enjoymentwhile

Teaching

Sir Francis Bacon

Poetry presents a better world

History, fact and reason tied to human experiences

Imagination presents a feigned history

Joseph Addison

How literary work affects the reader

Aesthetic effect

Pleasure in ImaginationSecondary Pleasure

Experience of Ideas

Primary pleasure

Experience of objects

Art completes

nature

Edmund Burke

Human knowledge comes from sensory experiences

Imagination:Present images of nature

Combine images

Art is a kind of REcreation

Assessment of art based on

Taste

Samuel Johnson

Assessment of fiction based on moral effects

Good art: good messageBad art: bad message

Novelist must choose noble subjects and positive morals

Any critic and writer must have the knowledge of Classical literary

tradition

Sir Joshua Reynolds

Eternal nature of Things

The purpose of criticism finding beauties and faultsSensibility is a collection of

experiencesImitation is the lowest style

of art

William Wordsworth

A poet is a man speaking to man

Language of common speechNature is better than culture

Feeling is the central element in poem

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Art values unity of subject and object

Elevates the artist to the status of a god

Poetry is free from imitative rules

John Keats

Poetry and science are oppositional

Negative capability in poet

Edgar Allan Poe

Producing an intense emotional response in the reader

Poem should be short

Didactics is rejected

Mathew Arnolds

the goal of criticism is "to see the object as in

itself it really is"

Make judgment about the quality of literature itself

Thank You