This document is a student paper submitted to the Department of English comparing criticism and creativity. It discusses how criticism analyzes existing works while creativity brings new works into being. While distinct, the two are interrelated as criticism can be creative and creativity involves critical observation. The document provides examples of writers who were both critics and creatives. It argues that the ideal critic possesses both analytical skills and the vision of an artist to understand a work from its creation. In conclusion, the relationship between criticism and creativity is complex, with each relying on elements of the other.

1. Name: Sarvaiya Jaydipsinh
Roll no: 14
Sem: 1
Course no: 3
Literary Theory &criticism:western-1
Topic: Difference between criticism and
creativity
Submitted to: Department of English
Smt.S.B.Gardi
M.K.B.University

2. Difference between criticism and creativity
 Creating something is very different to being critical
of something that someone else has created. To create
something is to bring something into being. To be
critical is to look at something that already exists and
to then say something about what it is, how it is made,
or whether you like it. I think there is a time and a
place for both, but that education as a whole seems
geared more towards criticism than creativity. No
doubt the gap between the two is also not as cut and
dried as the binary seems to suggest, because criticism
can be creative too, and creativity can be critical, kind
of. But it kind of stands too, I think, in as much as the
terms tend to broadly suggest two different kinds of
thing.

3. Here is some creative writer, critic or both.
 Plato, Aristotle.
 Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney.
 Alexander Pope, Dryden.
 Dr. Samuel Johnson
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats & the Romantics
 Mathew Arnold, Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater – the Victorians
 T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, I.A.Richards, Northrop Frye, Stanley
Fish, F.R. Leavis, Gerald Genette, Derrida, Roland Barthes,
Widdowson, Greenblatt, Edward Said, Gayatri Chakravarty
Spivak, Terry Eagleton.

4. Difference between criticism and creativity
 Creative writer has artistic sensibility. He observes the world
like any comman men. But his vision observes the world quite
differently
 He can perceive from life- experience what common man can
not see at all. This experience and observation get imaginative
colors with the help of artistic sensibility.
 He creates a world of imaginative reality. His world is more
beautiful and artistic than the real world. He is naturally gifted
to create the work which has power to move or transport the
reader. He gets his raw material from the life he is a critic of
life.
 Criticism is a task of those who write on the creative writings.
The word criticism has been derived from the Greek word
Critics, which means „able to discern and judge‟ and whoever
does the act of judging is called Critic. Criticism is the art of
judging the merits and demerits of creative composition.

5. Difference between criticism and creativity
 In Gerard Genette‟s words, „if the writer questions the
universe, the critic questions literature, that is to say, the
universe of signs. But what was a sign for the writer (the
work) becomes meaning for the critic (since it is the
object of the critical discourse), and in another way what
was meaning for the writer (his view of the world)
becomes a sign for the critic, as the theme and symbol of
a certain literary nature’.

6. The egg and chicken problem!
 The relationship between Criticism and Creativity is a
very close and it is very difficult to decide which of these
two processes came first.
 This relationship is as illusive as that of the seed and the
tree, and the egg and the hen. The seed grows out of a tree
and tree grows out of a seed.
 In the same way a hen grows out of an egg and an egg
grows out of a hen. Similarly, it is absolutely impossible
to find out whether an artist came first or a critic.

7. A Critic of literature –
independent & unique identity
 R.A. Scott James has rightly observed “To the critics, of
the arts and especially literature, custom has given an
independent place. In this respect it differs from all
other kind of criticism.”
 The critic of architecture is architecture, of that of
gardening is gardener, but that of poet may or may not be
a poet.
 Thus, since time immemorial, it has been customary to
accept the criticism of art from a man who may or may
not have been artist himself.

8. The debate : Who should be a critic?
 Dramatists like Ben Jonson is of the view that to „judge
of poets is only the faculty of poets; and not of all
poets, but the best‟.
 Only the best of poets have the right to pass judgments on
the merit or defects of poetry, for they alone have
experienced the creative process form beginning to end,
and they alone can rightly understand it.
 Dryden: „…corruption of poet is the generation of
critic…‟

9. Two extreme view points…
 Both the above given views are extreme. While it is true
that the critic has understanding of poetry as well as
analytical mind, which proves dependable – the poets are
not quite without the gift of analytical thinking.
 Moreover, it cannot be said that the poet who creates does
not understand his own creation, and that in order to
understand he must approach the critic.
 Thus, even Ben Jonson is also not quite fair. Most often,
the poet who bursts out into spontaneous utterance has no
critical awareness of it.

10. Two extreme view points…
 Poet has a powerful experience, a vision of life which he wishes to
communicate to others through his work, but whether it is adequately
communicated or not, whether it has moving, transporting qualities or
not, whether the writer has succeeded in expressing what he intended to
express…etc… are the questions which a student of literature(critic)
which balanced mind, poetic sensibility – though not poetic ability and
capacity – has to reply.




Thus, critics are distinguished persons.
They have qualified themselves for the task.
Alexander Pope has rightly said it is heavenly gift.
“Both from Heaven derive their light These born to judge, as well as
those to write.”
 Dr. Johnson – nature and learning has qualified them to judge.
 They give equal value to both the critic and the creative writer. To him
both are gifted writers, one to write creatively and the other to judge the
creativity.

11. Exceptions in Generalization
 But this does not mean that all the critics are fair and
qualified critics.
 Sometimes we find purely professional who lack both
sympathy and impartiality of an ideal critic.
 They do not render good service to literature, but they
hinder the young and rising talent. (Keats‟ premature
death, Hardy gave up writing novels). Oliver Goldsmith
calls them eunuchs – themselves unable to create, and
therefore they hinder creativity in others.

12. A Dog appreciates dog
 R.A.Scott James observed “Less gifted man would be certain to miss the
significance of his drawing. If you show a dog a photograph of his master
he will not recognize it. It will show more excitement at the photographs
of dog next door”
Words of Scott James about
critical literature
 “It may be a gain to attend to the writer of this critical
literature precisely in so far as they are not standing aloof,
like magistrate who were never guilty of crime pronouncing
dispassionately upon the blamelessness or the misdemeanor
of artist”.

13. To conclude…
 No critic can ever form accurate judgment unless he
possesses the artist‟s vision.
 Criticism and creativity are inextricably mingled with
each other. Thus the artist is the critic of life and Critic,
that of art.
 The artist must have the imagination and vision to
critically imitate the life/nature; the Critic from beginning
to end, relive the same experience.

14. Have a good day