Criticism

Criticism is an activity of criticising someone or something, that is pointing out faults as a way of disapproval. It later developed into a way of delivering final judgment on the value of a piece of art and literature based on personal perceptions of the critic regarding what is good and what is bad, making the judgement subjective. Such criticism carried bias of the critic, and hence a need of neutral way of criticism was felt. Earliest form of criticism were essentially Moral, Ethical criticism, or Ideological Criticism.

Then developed objective criticism to determine the real value of the piece of literary work as against the bias laden subjective criticism. Even in the objective criticism, the critics adopted various ways to determine the value of the piece of the literary work in many ways - giving rise to several way of criticism, initially by the philosophers of the ancient Greece in the 4th century BC, such as we find in Plato's (c. 428–423 BC - 348/347 BC) Republic and Aristotle's (384–322 BC) Poetics, in which the works of drama and poetry were analysed to give a framework for understanding them. They were called Literary Criticism.

Nevertheless, later scholars added several ways to the Literary Criticism in the light of new development in the field of knowledge, such as Historical Criticism, Psychological Criticism, Aesthetic Criticism, Constructive Criticism, Social Criticism, Biographical Criticism, Textual Criticism, Cultural Criticism and so on.

We have also 17th century Baroque Criticism, 18th century Enlightenment Criticism, 19th century Romantic Criticism, and 20th century New Criticism that dominated until the late 1960s.

T.S. Eliot (1888 – 1965) viewed literary criticism as a "disinterested exercise of intelligence" aimed at elucidating works of art and correcting taste.

Philosophical Criticism based on philosophical literary theories, such as structuralism and post-structuralism dominated between 1960s and 1990s. Today, criticism based on various literary theories are favoured while differences persist on the goals and methods of literary criticism. However, the focus of criticism today is to provide comprehensive view on the piece of literary work.