Criticism: The Major Statements: A Book that Anyone Interested in Writing Should Own

The symbiotic relationship between serious academic criticism and creative writing is typically looked at as oppositional depending on which side you are on. Nevertheless, the simple fact is that without constructive critical analysis most great works of literature would be nothing more than quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. Same thing with many great films. Were it for nor serious critical attention, nobody today would have ever even heard of Citizen Kane; it was a box office flop thanks to the fascist tactics of Willam Hearst. A terrific critical notice can turn a nobody into a major figure overnight; on the other hand, critical devastation typically has little effect on the popularity of a work of art unless it genuinely seems to have little or no value whatever.

A book that any student of criticism should definitely own, and that any creative writer can benefit from as well, is Criticism: The Major Statements. Really, the title speaks the truth; what is included in this anthology are some of the seminal works about literary criticism. This could serve as a textbook for a college class on literary theory or critical theory and I imagine it has been used for just that purpose. But don’t let that scare you off. Criticism: The Major Statements goes back in time to probably the earliest western documents on the importance of criticism, back to the dynamic duo of the ancient Greeks, Plato and his student Aristotle. In fact, it is the range of what is included in the book that is truly amazing. I’ve looked over a lot of anthologies on critical theory and literary criticism and it’s very difficult to find one that compares with this book as far the breadth of its historical range.

The whole history of critical theory from those Greeks all the way up to the 1980s work of such stable feminist theorists as Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar can be found here. (I might quibble that the brilliant Donna Haraway isn’t included, but you can’t have everything.) The last entry in the book comes from Henry Louis Gates with a selection from his dazzling The Signifying Monkey.

Among the other groundbreaking writers of criticism and works of criticism that can be found within are Alexander Pope’s poem as theory “An Essay in Criticism”, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “A Defence of Poetry”, Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Poetic Principle”, Sigmund Freud’s “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” and Tristan Todorov’s “How to Read?” These titles will be achingly familiar with any college student currently pursuing a degree in English, or anyone who already holds a degree in that discipline. For anyone not familiar with these works, I heartily recommend that you track them down. Whatever you are writing-fiction or non-fiction-your talent cannot help but be enhanced by familiarizing yourself with the theoretical concepts being taken up by these great authors.

Besides those veritable kingpins in the world of critical thought, Criticism: The Major Statements also includes Henry James’ The Art Of Fiction, which might well be considered a companion piece to Percy Shelley’s A Defence of Poetry. At the time James wrote, the novel was still considered a kind of illegitimate child of literature and James was working to bring some sort of respectability to it. A key work in the world of critical theory is Matthew Arnold’s The Study of Poetry. This essay is especially illuminating since Arnold was working from both sides of the street. Not only was he a major force in the world of poetry at the time, but he was also carving out a niche for himself as a particularly incisive critic.

Nearly every sort of literary theory is represented: linguistic theory, Freudian theory, postmodernism, Jungian archetypes, feminism, Lacanian. One of the amazing things about owning a volume like this is to see how even across millennia, some of the same concerns about the value of literature seem always to be at play. I especially enjoyed the wealth of works of 20th century theorists writing brilliantly on some of the 20th century’s greatest literary movements. Jacques Derrida is included with his difficult yet thoroughly amazing “Structure, Signs and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” and Terry Eagleton’s landmark “Marxism and Literary Criticism” was awarded not just one, but two chapter excerpts. I myself would have chosen something other than “Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narratives” to represent Roland Barthes, but let’s face it, when it comes to Roland Barthes, there’s no such as an actual bad choice.

All in all Criticism: The Major Statements more than lives up to its in-your-face title.