Pragmatic Literary Criticism :: Literature Essays Literary Criticism

Pragmatic Literary Criticism Pragmatic criticism is concerned, first and foremost, with the good impact any literary text has upon an audience. Regardless of arts other merits or failings, the primary responsibility or function of art is social in nature. Assessing, fulfilling, and shaping the needs, wants, and desires of an audience should be the first task of an workman. Art does non exist in isolation it is a potent tool for individualist as well as communal change. Though pragmatic critics cogitate that art houses the potential for massive societal transformation, art is conspicuously incertain in its ability to promote good or evil. The critical pick up of pragmatic criticism is to establish a moral standard of fiber for art. By establishing artistic boundaries based upon moral/ethical guidelines, art which enriches and entertains, inspires and instructs a reader with knowledge of truth and goodness will be keep and celebrated, and art which does not will be judged in ferior, cautioned against, and (if necessary) destroyed. Moral outrage as well as logical argument have been the motivating forces shadower pragmatic criticism throughout history. The tension created between this emotional and quick reaction to literature has created a wealth of criticism with varying degrees of success. Ironic tout ensembley, more like arts capacity to inspire diligence or decadence in a reader, pragmatic criticism encompasses both redemptive and destructive qualities. Plato provides a foundational and absolute argument for pragmatic criticism. Excluding verse line from his ideal Republic, Plato attempts to completely corrupt the power and authority of art. He justifies his position by claiming that the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed) is surely an awful thing (28). Because artists claim their imitations can turn to to the true nature of things, circumventing the need for serious, calmly considere d intellectual inquiry, art should not be pursued as a valuable endeavor. Art widens the gaolbreak between truth and the world of appearances, ironically by claiming to breach it. The artist promotes false images of truth and goodness by appealing to basic tender passions, indulging the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, just now thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small (27). Art manufactures moral ambiguity, and to Plato this is unacceptable. Because it is deceptive and essentially superficial, all art must be controlled and delegitmized for all time.