FUNCTION OF CRITICS

In every age there have been critics and there have been criticism but it is only after the publication of Arnold’s remarkable essay that numerous theories about the function of criticism has been constructed and more so in our own age. After Arnold the modern critic unlike their predecessors have theorized more about the role and the function of the critic than about the role of an artist

Our age can be called the age of criticism and one of the dominant figures of our age T.S.Eliot is an example of this fact. He has theorized more about criticism than he has done actual criticism., and he has theorized more about the critic than about the artist.

The function of criticism is the commentation and exposition of the works of art by means of written word. As definition it sounds remarkable but if we try to analyze it nothing substantial will come out of it. We are told nothing about the principles on which the commentation and exposition of the work of art has to be done.. Thus in case of every new critic there will be a new commentary on and a new exposition of every work of art. And who is the critic we should believe more than the others.

Eliot denies that criticism is autotelic and he specifically asserts that it must always profess an end and view,which he roughly defines as the elucidation of work of art and the correction of taste. Again the same difficulty arises.Eliot does not qualify the statement further, and in itself it does not go to explain the function of the critic. Elucidation is an ambiguous phrase. Elucidation will itself vary according to the purpose of the elucidator. A poem aplay a novel can be very many things at the same time

It can be reflection of the cultural climate of the age,a document in the mental history of the author, a fable a piece of rhetoric, an insight into some human experience etc How a critic may choose to elucidate the work as any one of these things or as any two or so many as he thinks he can conveniently handles. In that case there will be many vague impressions of seious critics about one single work of art.

We see that Eliot makes a sharp distinction between scholarship and criticism. For him a critic should ignore a work of art as a document in the history of ideas,as an expression of the writer’s personality, or as anything but a poem, a novel,a play really is. To do this is the work of scholarship What the critic should concern himself with the peculiar individual quality of a work of art which distinguishes it from the rest., and having done this can proceed to explain it as a work of art.

This is not what Eliot alone has to say, but what the majority of modern critics have established as the function of modern criticism. Eliot then goes on to say that even the lowest order of the work of art produced has more quality and truth in it than nine tenth of the pretentious criticism produced about it

Any statement as Eliot asks a critic to make about a poem or a play or a novel will be an inadequate one, if a great portion of the complex meaning of that work of art is left out and the sense that the true quality of art escapes this sort of defining and categorizing which has persisted throughout the history of criticim. And it is the habit of making this kind of evasive statement about a work of art that has given rise to evasive impressionism in order to avoid coming to grips with the basic question of whether and why a given work of art is good

Eliot says that the real criticism is impossible. Not because there is an absence of standard of value that we must fall back on personal taste, but because no critical statement about a work of literary art can be a complete statement about what it is and how good is it? No doubt a set of principle is possible on the level of aesthetic theory, but this is not possible on the level of practical criticism,which is designed to demonstrate the nature and quality of a literary work to increase the understanding and appreciation

Such criticism must be approximate indirect and fragmentary. For example Eliots statement abou Hamlet is just inadequate. Firstly it is anegative statement for it does not say any thing about what the play is but about what the play is not. Then no single statement can define Hamlet.

Art is meant to be experienced and the function of art is to assist in this experience even as the performance of the play does. Therefore one must not forget the pedagogical aspect of criticism which is to increase awareness of what a literary work of art really is and by doing so increasing the appreciation of it

Eliot is a purely philosophical critic., for him it may be sufficient to say that interpretation is legitimate only when it is no interpretation at all, but merely putting the reader in possession of fact which he otherwise would have missed, but not for an appreciative critic. We know well what Eliot means by facts. It is another word for statement about it. We have seen how inadequate and faulty these statements can be and how they are of no use to the common reader whom a critic is expected to assist

The job of the appreciative critic is therefore not to give statements but to use any mean at his disposal to arouse the interest to produce that communicative interest without which all further critical discussion is useless T.S.Eliot is a classicist. He does not tolerate individual liberty of the romantic poets. He believes in an outside authority. The romantics listens to their inner voice and interpret accordingly. They import their own impressions the result is no insight but fiction

T.S.Eliot approach to criticism is objective. In order to judge a work of art we should avail ourselves of tradition and the accumulated wisdom of time. The critc should a highly developed sense of fact so that they may not import his own impressions. This is one way The other way is that he should have as his tools comparison and analysis. The former to see how the work modifies past tradition and the later to see it as it really is.

T.S.Eliot says that a work of art has to be judged by the standards of the past and not amputated by them. Not to be judged as good as or better than or worse than the dead and certainly not judged by the cannons of the dead critics. a critic should just elucidate a reader would make his own judgment. Eliot want to avoid the judgment completely because he fears that personal likes and dislikes will take the place of objective standards.

Eliot is more interested in comparing a writer to his past and not to his contemporaries. He is more interested in joining one period of literature to the other than forming the unity of an individual era. A critic must have a very highly developed sense of fact.analysis must deal with the facts of a work of art and this means that all those facts about the work of art about its history and back ground which affect it as a work of art and nothing else.

Biography may throw some light and reveal certain things. But it cannot be literary criticism. The fact which criticism uses must be instruments of appreciation which help us to realize the nature of art and the nature of individual work of art But T.S.Eliot does not like the nature of individual work of art. He does not like the lemon squeeze criticism. Which analyze a work of art in isolation without reference to the author and to his other works.

Despite recognizing the limitations of the factual method, he believes in objective standards, and does not tolerate importing of ideas impressions into criticism