Critical Evaluation Of The Approaches To Literary Criticism Essays Example

Literary criticism is devoted to expansion of view on a piece of literature. Long ago it was proved that literature is far more than just a collection of texts with various plots. From century to century more and more hypotheses were suggested and aspects were singled out and investigated to bring in new perspectives on its refinement and value. Different subjects served as starting points for literary analysis, in particular, the text itself, author, reader/audience, the world, and so on and so forth. Though the approaches to literary criticism are very versatile and each unique in their representations, all of them complement each other and help explore a literary work in an overarching, three-dimensional format. Nonetheless, in my estimation, reader-response approach distinguish itself due to its orientation on a recipient of the text as its primary evaluator.
The reader-response approach accentuates on the reader’s importance in terms of their perception and interpretation of a literary text. The text initially is always reader-oriented and reader-based. As all individuals have different background, education, social and moral values, they perceive the text, understand and interpret it in a different manner. Modern views already deviate from the ideal omniscient reader, who is by nature neutral and always can trace or grasp the author’s intention and properly understand the characters and deep sense conceived. The approach chosen gives freedom to a reader to be able to extract the meaning and evalueate it on their own. The reader should understand what he/she feels about the text and make own assumptions and conclusions without any inculcation of biased arguments. I consider it to be essential in literary criticism as reading a literary work is very personal and even intimate process. Ultimate impression of the text is always made by us and always depends on each of us and not on the professional critical sources and generally established interpretations of literary works. That is actually one of the greatest powers of literature – to impress and influence its every single reader, to bring an aesthetic pleasure and to evoke some original and individual emotions and feelings.
In addition, after reviewing other approaches to literary criticism, it is possible to state that the reader-response approach is one of the most substantial. Though other types are fairly authoritative and supplementing to overall analysis, at times they may seem to be quite limiting or conventional. For instance, Marxist, mythological and archetypical approaches seize the personality and allure a reader into a society or community and search for some common grounds, views and beliefs. It makes an individual deprived of personal opinion and the right to personal interpretation. In opposition, deconstruction criticism gives a reader even too much freedom as well as neglects the text itself and its creator. Other approaches have their own peculiarities, but comprise narrower aspects for analysis, as in case of feminist criticism. As a result, the reader-response approach has a range of advantages and in many aspects prevail over other views on literary criticism.
The last but not the least is that despite all grandeur of the author, it is a reader who gives a critical evaluation as well as an eternal life to a literary text. To put it bluntly, what really matters is whether the reader will like the text or not. The literary criticism is already enough elaborated to elucidate a text in all its aspects and intricacies. Even so, the conclusion to draw is very logical. These are writers, who exercise their talent for readers to read and enjoy their works and not the readers who read to encourage them to write.
In conclusion, it is indisputable to claim that the literary criticism plays a significant role in exploring the depths of literature, in its understanding and value. The more diversified it is and the more approaches it has, the more opportunities it opens to achieve these goals. Any literary work is addressed to a certain readership and its primary destination is to cause some particular effect on it. Eventually, the reader-response approach is considered to be the most useful in literary analysis, since it is of utmost importance to evaluate a literary work in terms of the possible reader’ reflections and interpretations of the texts and whether they correspond to those initially implied by the author.