PRAGMATICS / ORIENTATION OF LITERARY CRITICISM

1. T.C.
NECMETTİN ERBAKAN
UNIVERSITY
THE INSTITUDE OF
EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES
THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
LANGUAGE TEACHING
ORIENTATION OF CRITICAL THEORIES
PRAGMATIC THEORIES
BY İPEK YILDIRIM

2. PRAGMATIC THEORIES
The second in Abram’s fourfold division is
pragmatic mode.
The theories of this mode emphasize the reader’s
relation to the work.
Towards the end of 19th century, pragmatism
became the most vital school of thought with in
American philosophy.

3. PRAGMATIC THEORIES
 Pragmatic theories emphasize on the reader’s
relation to the work.
 The work is treated as something that is constructed
to achieve certain effects on the audience.
 Effects may be for the aesthetic pleasure, instruction
or any kind of emotion.

4. PRAGMATIC THEORIES
 Pragmatic theories puts the judgment of a literary
work on its effect in an audience. Literary work is
regarded as a rethorical product.
 It focuses in the way a literary work creating a
beauty on the reader’s mind. Therefore, the principle to
judge is the success of a literary work in delivering its
aim.

5. VIEWS OF DIFFERENT
CRITICS
For Philip Sidney, a Renaissance critic,
Poetry has a clear-cut purpose to achieve
certain effect in an audience.
Good poets are those who write both to
delight and teach, or in other words, for
delightful instruction.

6. VIEWS OF DIFFERENT
CRITICS
Horace says;
‘Poets wish either to instruct or to please’.
Other purposes include moral
improvement, emotion, and delight.

7. VIEWS OF DIFFERENT
CRITICS
According to Samuel Johnson;
It is always a writer’s duty to make the
world better by telling stories that result in the
moral improvement of their readers.

8. VIEWS OF DIFFERENT
CRITICS
Pragmatic critics regard the poem as ‘a made
object, the product of an art or craft deliberately
designed to achieve foreknown ends’
 [i.e., not unconscious creations whose
meaning or effects are wholly or partially unknown
to their creators].

9. CONCLUSION
 For convenience, we may name criticism like that,
like Sidney’s, is ordered toward the audience, a
‘pragmatic theory,’ since it looks at the work of art
chiefly as a means to an end, an instrument for getting
something done, and tends to judge its value according
to its success in achieving that aim (Abrams, 1979: 15).

10. CONCLUSION
Briefly, pragmatic theories has an
orientation to see the work as how far
the author succeeds to serve the public
pleasure.