This document discusses the moralistic approach to literary criticism, which judges works based on their ethical teachings and effects on readers rather than formal principles. It provides examples of critics like Plato, Horace, Sidney, and Johnson who took a moralistic view and praised literature that encouraged virtue or condemned works that misguided readers. The document also discusses related movements like humanism during the Renaissance which emphasized order, restraint, discipline, and the study of classical works. It notes 20th century critics like More, Babbitt, and Foerster who followed a neo-humanist, moralistic approach to literature.

1. MORALISTIC APPROACH
Dr. T. Lilly Golda
Assistant Professor of English
A.P.C. Mahalaxmi College for Women
Thoothukudi

2. MORALISTIC APPROACH
– A tendency—rather than a recognized school—within literary
criticism to judge literary works according to moral rather than
formal principles.
– Judging literary works by their ethical teachings and by their
effects on readers.
– Literature that is ethically sound and encourages virtue is
praised
– Literature that misguides and corrupts is condemned.

3. Plato
– Banished poets from Republic for fear that he might spread
immorality and destabilize the country

4. Horace
– Studied how Poetry could be used to
promote morality in his Ars Poetica

5. Sir Philip Sidney
– Praised the role of the poet in purifying the imagination,
which the historian and the philosopher were capable
of.

6. Dr. Johnson
– Was a stern upholder of morality and attacked Shakespeare for
his slip shod treatment of moral values.

7. Matthew Arnold
– Great poetry is marked by high seriousness and true criticism
pays attention to what a poem says than to how it says.

8. Humanists
(order, restraint, discipline)
– Major intellectual movement of the Renaissance.
– Proponents of humanism believed that a body of learning, humanistic studies
(studia humanitatis), consisting of the study and imitation of the classical
culture of ancient Rome and Greece, would produce a cultural rebirth after
what they saw as the decadent and “barbarous” learning of the Middle Ages.
– Humanism was characterised by lots of creativity and interest in the Arts and
Humanities brought about by increased scientific knowledge, a renewed
approach to ancient Greek-Latin texts

9. Humanists
– Neo Humanists
– Renaissance Humanists

10. Neo Humanism
–Opposed Naturalism
–Opposed Romanticism
–Moral earnestness & aesthetic sensitivity

11. 20th Century Critical Movement
– Paul Elmer More- Shelburne Essays
– Irving Babbit- Literature and the American College

12. Neo Humanists
– Norman Foerster
– Harry Hayden Clark
– G.R. Elliot
– Robert Shafer
– Frank Jewett Mather
– Gorham Munson
– Stuart Sherman Pratt

13. Religious Humanism
– T.E. Hulme
– Religion & morality
– T.S. Eliot- Christian Humanist
– Edmund Fuller
– Hyatt Waggoner

14. Traditional concern for the moral
ends of literature
– F.R. Leavis
– Yvor Winters
– Marxists- The Social Approach
– Allen Tate
– John Crowe Ranson