Moral & Philosophical
Criticism
EH 4301
Moral Criticism

“The best poetry has a power of forming,
sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else
can. … More and more mankind will discover
that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for
us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry,
our science will appear incomplete; and most of
what now passes with us for religion and
philosophy will be replaced by poetry.”
- Matthew Arnold, “The Study of Poetry”
Literature
An important source of moral guidance
and spiritual inspiration
 A worthy substitute for religion

 extreme
position
 in harmony with critical tradition
Moral Criticism
Moral approach has the longest history.
 The importance of literature


not just its way of saying
 but also what it says
Moral Criticism

Critics who concentrate on the moral
dimensions of literature often
 judge
literary works by their ethical teachings
and by their effects on readers
Literature that is ethically sound and encourages
virtue is praised.
 Literature that misguides and corrupts is
condemned.

Moral Criticism

Some modern critical theories may make
us resist the idea that literature has a
didactic purpose.
 but
cannot deny many of the greatest writers
have considered themselves teachers as well
as artists.
Moral Criticism

Plato
 acknowledged
literature’s power as a teacher
by believing it capable of corrupting morals
and undermining religion
Moralism
 Utilitarianism

Moral Criticism

Aristotle and Horace
 considered
literature capable of fostering
virtue
 Horace

Literature should be “delightful and instructive”
Moral Criticism

Samuel Johnson
 Function
of literature
To teach morality
 To probe philosophical issues

Moral Criticism

Matthew Arnold
 “The
Study of Poetry”
Most important thing is the moral or philosophical
teaching
 Great literary work must possess “high
seriousness”
 literature (poetry)


Important source of moral and spiritual inspiration
 Would probably replace philosophy and religion
Moral Criticism

Matthew Arnold
 Can
accept his idea that there are moral and
religious significance in literature.
Moral Criticism

20th century moral evaluation
 Neo-Humanist
Originally American
 Literature as a criticism of life
 the study of the technique of literature is a study of
means


concerned with the ends of literature
 How it affects the reader
Moral Criticism

Neo-Humanist
 Paul
Elmer More
 Irving Babbitt
 Norman Foerster
 Harry Hayden Clark
 G.R. Elliott
 Robert Shafer
 Frank Jewett Mather
 Gorham Munson
 Stuart Sherman Pratt
Moral Criticism

Neo-Humanist
 Opposed

Naturalism


two literary tendencies:
Denies man free will and responsibility
Romanticism
Excessive cultivation of ego
 Sympathy with unrestrained expression

Moral Criticism

Irving Babbitt
 most
influential and controversial moral critic
of the 20th century
 held that literature must help us recognize
the reality of evil
 the necessity of controlling our impulses

Moral Criticism


Babbitt
“Genius and Taste” (1918)
 “Truly
great literature conforms to standards, to the
ethical norm that sets bounds to the eagerness of the
creator to express himself.” (164-165)

Literature that does not abide by such
standards leads to:
 self-indulgence
 moral
degeneration
Moral Criticism

Babbitt
 Rousseau
and Romanticism (1919)
critical of romanticism
 condemns romantic morality
 sees Blake as “the extreme example” of dangerous
romantic rejection of limits and restraints:



“He proclaims himself of the devil’s party, he glorifies a
free expansion of energy, he looks upon everything that
restricts this expansion as synonymous with evil.”
Blake & other poets have contributed to a moral
decline in society.
Moral Criticism

Paul Elmer More

“Criticism”
It is the critic’s duty, to determine the moral
tendency of literary works and to judge them on
that basis.
 The greatest critics are “discriminators between
the false and the true, the deformed and the
normal: preachers of harmony and proportion and
order, prophets of the religion of taste.”

Moral Criticism

Paul Elmer More
 “The
Praise of Dickens”
Focuses on what is “false” and what is “true” in
Dickens’ works.
 Values Dickens’ “divine tenderness” and “human
delicacy” but also says “a strain of vulgarity” runs
through his works (166).

Moral Criticism

Point of contention:
 Whether
the moralist would or would not
acknowledge supernatural sanction for the
moral standards he held up to the arts.

More


Elliott


Associated with institutional religion
Necessity of alliance between religion and morality
Babbitt

Secular and religiously noncommittal
Moral Criticism

1940’s
 “Death”
of Neo-Humanism
 Birth of Christian Humanism (Religious
Humanism)


"a philosophy advocating the self- fulfillment of man within
the framework of Christian principles.“ (Webster)
Most human beings have personal and social needs that can
only be met by religion



T.S. Eliot
Edmund Fuller
Hyatt Waggoner
Moral Criticism

Edmund Fuller
 Man
in Modern Fiction: Some Minority
Opinions on Contemporary American Writing
(1958)
 Fuller’s definition of critic is “to appraise the
validity and the implications of the image of
man projected by the artist’s use of his
materials.”
Moral Criticism


Fuller (like Babbitt and More) sees standards
and restraints as essential for moral action.
Condemns much of modern fiction for rejecting
these guides in the name of compassion.
 “Compassion
must be based on a large and generous
view of life and a distinct set of values” (34).
 The compassion found in many modern novels is “a
teary slobbering over the criminal and degraded, the
refusal to assign any share of responsibility to them,
and a vindictive lashing out against the rest of the
world” (35-37)
Moral Criticism

Tobin Siebers
 The
Ethics of Criticism
“literary criticism is inextricably linked to ethics” (1)
 “…literary criticism accepts the task of examining
to what extent literature and life contribute to the
nature and knowledge of each other” (42).

Moral Criticism

Attempts to extract literature from an
ethical context are misguided and
ultimately unsuccessful.
 Faults
New Criticism

Christopher Clausen
 The
Moral Imagination: Essays on Literature
and Ethics (1986)

“literary works usually embody moral problems and
reflect moral attitudes, sometimes even moral
theories. There is no good reason for criticism to
tiptoe around one of the major reasons that literary
works endure” (xi).
Moral Criticism
Moral approach has become less popular
and influential during the last few decades.
 Why?

 It
could be due to
the excess of the critics
 the deficiencies of the approach itself
 the moral laxness of other critics

Moral Criticism

However, there are other critics/critical
fields which promote a moral fervor in their
writings:
 Feminist
criticism
 Marxist criticism
Moral Criticism

Lawrence Lipking
 “Aristotle’s


Sister: A Poetics of Abandonment” (1983)
In addition to winning critical attention for many neglected
works by women writers, feminist criticism has sparked a
reevaluation of many works traditionally granted high, secure
places in the canon.
“Something peculiar has been happening lately to the
classics; some of them now seem less heroic, and some of
them less funny. Those ‘irrelevant’ scenes of cruelty to
women… have changed their character.” (79)
Moral Criticism
F.R. Leavis
 Yvor Winters

 Do
not categorize themselves as “Humanists”
 Do express the traditional concern for the
moral ends of literature
Religious Criticism

Kenneth B. Murdock
 Literature
and Theology in Colonial New
England (1949)

Analyzes Puritan works

Sermons to poems
 Notes plain style
 Disapproval of art that only pleased the senses
 Imagery: “homeliness” and “realism”
Religious Criticism

Helen Gardner
 Religion

and Literature (1971)
Examined religious elements in secular works

Hamlet
 It is “a Christian tragedy in the sense that it is a
tragedy of the imperatives and torments of the
conscience.”
 Hamlet’s discovery of all the evil and corruption in
the world
 Must recognize Hamlet’s attitude as fundamentally
Christian
Religious Criticism

Stanley Romaine Hopper
 Spiritual
Problems in Contemporary Literature
(1952)
Much modern literature is fundamentally religious
 Quest of the Prodigal is central theme in poetry of
Auden and Eliot

Analysis of such poetry would be incomplete without
taking religious themes into account
 Studying such poetry can help the reader understand
vital religious issues
