HISTORICAL CRITICISM

The determining principle for the practice of the historical critic is the conviction that
literature is a recreation of the past. The historical critic sees his function as the
elucidation of the work in the light of the past.

Hippolite Taine was the recognized founder of the historical critical method. For him,
the function of the historical critic was “to recover from the monuments of literature, a
knowledge of the manner in which men thought and felt centuries ago.”
He sees his “critical job of work” to be not simply the elucidation of the literary work, but
the explanation of the literary work in the light of the main characteristic, the unique
quality of the past.

Lionel Trilling, a famous contemporary historian, pointed out that the literary work is a
historical fact, and this is a matter of the aesthetic experience of the readers.

Hippolite Taine considered that the historical critic should take into account three factors
that produced the work: “the condition of race, époque and circumstance”.
His concerns became:
- the attempt to recreate the conditions under which the author worked;
- the philosophical ideas considered important by the author;
- the literary sources and influences of the work;
- the text itself;

1
-the dating of the literary work;
- the intellectual convictions and beliefs of the author;
- the biography of the writer.

We can notice the extra-literary concerns of the historical critic.

The historical critic’s project is one of reconstruction of the past, of the conditions under
which the writer created. Only if we enter the atmosphere of the past we can fully
understand the literary work.

Another very important historical critic is Edmund Wilson. He published an important

essay, entitled “The historical interpretation of literature.”

The historical interpretation means, for Wilson, the interpretation of literature in its
social, economic and social aspects.

Historical criticism has a long tradition, from the beginning of the 18th century.
The work of the writers was explained from the study of the geographical and climatic
conditions in which the authors lived.

In the middle of the 19th century H. Taine completed a prestigious school of historian-
critics.
The tradition of historical criticism was continued by Marx and Engels. They considered
that social classes were formed starting from the way people got their livings – from the
methods of production. They regarded the economic processes as fundamental to
civilization.

2
Edmund Wilson, in the mentioned essay, said that the intellectual activity is, in general,
an attempt to give meaning to our experience.
Literature offers to us some answers, if the readers know how to decode the message,
hidden under many literary devices, cultural allusions, irony and paradox.

Edmund Wilson says:

“The experience of mankind on the earth is always changing as man develops and has to
deal with new combinations of elements; and the writer must always find expression for
something which has never yet been expressed.”

Lect. Dr. Aura Sibisan