Abrams ’ Quaternity of Critical Approaches to Literature

1. Abrams’ Quaternity ofCritical Approaches to Literature • UNIVERSE • WORK • ARTIST • AUDIENCE TCG, 2004-2012

2. WORK • i.e., the text itself, as artifact, and a supposedly objective analysis of purely aesthetic matters (think "textbook" literary terms); • supposedly, too, the sole intrinsic approach, while all others are extrinsic; • e.g., Formalism (including New Criticism), various rhetorical & genre theories, Structuralism, & (to a great extent, even) Deconstruction

3. ARTIST • i.e., the author (and his/her inner, inspired, self-expressive/emotive, soul-burning "LAMP"); • e.g., expressive (expressionist) criticism, biographical criticism, and much psychoanalytic criticism (which ponders the unconscious underpinnings of an author’s creativity)

4. AUDIENCE • i.e., the reader(s); key terms here include "affective" and "pragmatic" (that is, how does the work move the reader, to emotional response, or even action?); • e.g., impressionistic criticism & various brands of reader-response theory (the latter usually a more concerted analysis of how/why readers respond as they do)

5. UNIVERSE • i.e., the "world" (and culture) out there, "outside" the author/text/reader; • think the "real world" (as in art being a realistic or Platonic "MIRROR" [mimesis] of said world); or (more usually today): • historical-political worldviews/ ideologies/values-systems imposed on the text by the critic (e.g., feminism, Marxism, postcolonial & critical race theory, queer theory, & ecocriticism)

6. Historical Time-Line (I) • Classical Greece—Plato: art as a reflection of his idealistic World of Forms (UNIVERSE); Aristotle: art as catharsis (AUDIENCE); Aristotle's genre prescriptions (WORK) • Medieval & Renaissance periods (heck, well into the 17th & 18th centuries)—not only various versions of Platonic mimesis (UNIVERSE) and Aristotelian catharsis (AUDIENCE), but a strong (Christian) moral-didactic emphasis (UNIVERSE)

7. Historical Time-Line (II) • 19th-century Romanticism—both a new emphasis on the individual’s creativity (expressionism: ARTIST) and a comparable freedom for the critic to be subjective & “impressionistic” (AUDIENCE) • 19th-century Realism—Stendhal's mimetic notion of the novel as "a mirror carried along the road" (UNIVERSE)

8. Historical Time-Line (III) • 1st half of the 20th century: • —highlighted, above all, by a new emphasis on the (form of the) WORK of art per se (New Criticism, Russian Formalism, structuralism) • —however, the late 19th- and early 20th centuries also included lots of (old-fashioned) biographical criticism (ARTIST) and (old-fashioned) historical criticism (UNIVERSE: that is, how does this author's work reflect the "world," the "reality," of his/her socio-cultural milieu?)

9. Historical Time-Line (IV) • 1st half of the 20th century (continued): • —but also a new Freudian psychoanalysis of the ARTIST • —and also the rise of Marxist theory (UNIVERSE) and of reader-response theories (AUDIENCE)

10. Historical Time-Line (V) • 2nd half of the 20th century: • —the climax of structuralism, and its contradictory spawn, poststructuralism (both WORK, at last) • —the climax of reader-response theories (AUDIENCE) • —the climax of Marxism, and the advent of other politically/culturally based agendas, like feminism, race studies, and postcolonial theory (UNIVERSE) • 1st half of the 21st century: the ultimate victory of Reality TV, 12-year-old MTV divas, and Kill Abdul: the Video Game!?

11. Coda/Notes • Abrams' "quaternity" has been derived from— • Abrams, M.H. The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition. London: Oxford UP, 1953. • (see especially pages 6-7) • All misreadings thereof are the complete and utter fault of Thomas C. Gannon, U of Nebraska-Lincoln, Aug. 2004.