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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Let us begin by taking a look at the semantic background: the word criticism designated an action implying judgment and discrimination based on standardized poetics or on preferred taste. By virtue of implicit or explicit criteria, the principal task of criticism—of things either beautiful or otherwise—was to make a distinction, to disapprove or to praise. If one refers to French dictionaries (from the 17th century onwards), one can see that the first and stable meaning of the noun criticism is:
“The art of judging a work of the mind” (Academy, 1694). To this first acceptation of the meaning of the word was added, in 1740, the idea of enlightenment and explanation. It has now come to designate “literary science,” independently of any judgment of value. This new acceptation, although confirmed by use, did not appear sufficiently clear to the compilers of the 8th Dictionary of the Academy (1932). The definition proposed at this date hardly differs from that of 1694:
Criticism (noun): The art of judging works of the mind, literary production, a work of art. etc.
Critical (adjective): Pertaining to the distinction in a work of the mind, a literary production, a work of art, etc., that which does not correspond to the accepted ideas of beauty, or what one considers to be the truth.
1 For a history of criticism in France see Roger Fayolle, La Critique, (Paris, 1964).
The etymological source of criticism comes from the Greek krites, judge, and, in French, from the act to "cribler" ("sift"), also originating in krinein. Georges Blin recalled this in an opportune manner in his La cribleuse de blé, Paris, 1968. On the question of judgment, see Gaëtan Picon, L'écrivain et son ombre, Paris, 1953.
2 Albert Thibaudet, Physiologie de la critique, Paris, 1930.
3 Again according to Albert Thibaudet's classification.
4 For example, studies on primitivism, undertaken by A. O. Lovejoy and Georges Boas.
5 It was one of Spitzer's grievances with regard to the history of ideas: see "History of Ideas versus Reading of Poetry," Southern Review, VI (1941), p. 584-609.
6 The way in which some people these days are inclined to put the words work, author, creation in inverted commas is a sure sign that in their eyes these terms are invested with the qualities of former, or so called.
7 "Questions de méthode," in Critique de la raison dialectique, Paris, 1960, p. 43.
8 See Le Dieu caché, Paris, 1955, Chap. I, "Le tout et les parties."
9 Paul Ricoeur correctly points out the voluntarily fragmentary nature of Freud's studies on works of art or literary works. See "L'art et la systématique freudienne," in Le conflit des interprétations, Paris, 1969, p. 197.
10 An account of this procedure is given in the first pages of the work Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe personnel, Paris, 1963. To the bitter objections of Serge Doubrovsky (Pourquoi la nouvelle critique, Paris, 1966, p. 104-126), Charles Mauron replied in Le dernier Baudelaire, Paris, 1966, p. 177-186.
11 On the theory of material imagination, see the foreword to La terre et les rêveries de la volonté, Paris, 1948.
12 A fairly full account of this may be found in "Phénomenologie de la conscience critique," published in Quatre conférences sur la "Nouvelle Critique," suppl. to No. 34 of Studi Francesi, Turin, 1968. See also "Conscience de soi et conscience d'autrui chez le critique," which will be found in Stiftung F.V.S. zu Hamburg, Montaigne Preis 1970.
13 Criticism by Jean-Pierre Richard develops, for its part, in a register of sensitive qualities: it is a sensorial experiment, particularly attentive to the meaning of images (of which Georges Poulet, in his asceticism, makes but little mention); but the realities thus described tend, as is the case with Georges Poulet, to be bound up with a specific dissertation, ordered by intrinsic necessity rather than according to the order of the calendar or that of the pages of the book concerned. Jean-Pierre Richard tries in this way, by vigilant reading, to bring out of hiding the "glimmer beneath the surface," the world of images and essential myths concealed below the work and which constitute its fundamental texture. It is a succession of themes, unstable, fluent and produc tive, which are brought to life only to be supplanted by others. If this is a form of thematism, it is at any rate a polythematism where everything is brought back to a perceiving subject in which the material essence of the world is brought out… One may ask if the possibly extreme acuity of "categorial" analysis does not have as counterpart a reduction of the field explored. Yet in each of the major categories chosen by Geores Poulet and Jean-Pierre Richard, strong beats are recorded, where the note struck is surrounded by harmonics and makes a living totality perceptible. Everything which appeared excluded from the field of study is then arranged around a sensitive presence.
14 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism. The first edition of this work dates from 1957. Many new editions have appeared since. It has been translated into French by Guy Durand, Paris, Gallimard, 1969.
15 See Paul de Man, "New Criticism et nouvelle critinque," Preuves, No. 188, October 1966, p. 29-37.
16 It goes without saying that the stylistic plane is only one of the aspects of "form." Composition, articulation between the various parts, choice of narrative perspectives, interweaving of motifs, etc., are among the constitutive elements of the text and must be taken into consideration. See Jean Rousset, "Pour une lectures des formes," in Forme et signification (Paris, 1963) and Gérad Genette, "Raisons de la critique pure," in Figures II, Paris, 1969.
17 Cours de linguistique générale (1916), 4th edition, Paris, 1949. On this point, see Emile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale, Paris, Gallimard, 1966, ch. VIII: "'Structure' en linguistique," p. 91-98.
18 An excellent statement on this will be found in the recent work by Cesare Segre, I segni e la critica, Turin, 1969. See also Umberto Eco, La strut tura assente, Milan 1968.
19 We should note that the desire to question structures, i.e. totalities which are coherent and meaningful, coexists in our epoch with the strongly held conviction which believes that the spirit of the present time is marked for its incoherence, absurdity, confusion of language, the loss or disappearance of traditional values of culture, etc. Structuralism, as an instrument for deciphering today, provides the possibility of discovering readable and comprehensible ensembles. As a result, it implies faith in the immanent presence of structurizing reason, it demands world rationality, or at least readability. Even if it proposes to examine "systems" or sick "organisms" (which also have their own structure), it presupposes on the part of the observer a wager in favour of meaning, an option for intelligibility. ‘Structuralism is a refutation of the facile dramaturgy of absurdity. To be sure, the juxtaposed existence of structures which are varied and shut in on their own organicity leaves the question of the rationality of the whole, at the centre of which heterogeneous systems are present simul taneously, an open question. A general structure, today, can hardly appear to us as the result of one reading: it is normally the result of an ideological construction. Cf. preceding chapter.
20 In the French domain we must point out the extremely coherent effort by A. J. Greimas: La sémantique structurale, Paris, 1966.
21 A few paragraphs of this article have been taken from a study on " Les directions nouvelles de la recherche critique," which appeared in the review Preuves in June 1965. We have also introduced here a few paragraphs from "Remarques sur le structuralisme" which appeared in Strutturalismo e critica (in the care of Cesare Segre), Casa editrice Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1965.
