Abstract

The Critic's Dilemma: III. Pure Criticism

Literary history reminds that mutually destructive theories of the nature of art have been held by the most distinguished critics of the past, and introspection makes it clear that when he pretends to discuss a work of literature as though it were an objective fact he is, in reality, discussing an apperception of it which is, in no small measure, influenced by his own experience and temperament. Literature differs from geometry by the fact that it inevitably deals with materials which have a human significance, and hence the criticism of it cannot wholly detach itself from the influence of those materials and the critic's attitude toward them. Consider, for example, the fact that both language and literature are in their very nature allusive.