Nature and Function of Literary Criticism Essay

The word reprehension is derived from the Greek word meaning judgment. Hence, criticism was known to be the exercise of judgment on prevails of literature, or it can be said that criticism is the play of headspring to observe the merits and defects on the work of literature. A critic , therefore, is a somebody who expresses judgment on whole works of literature or poetry or the art of an artist or a painter. The critic is also defined as a person who is possessed of the knowledge necessary to enable him to pronounce right judgments upon the merits or worth of such works as come within its province.However, the inquire that is always asked, does the critic has the right to judge or not ? Indeed, no one has the right to judge the state because of two reasons. Firstly, to judge the people is something subjective in other words, when a critic respect a literary work he is judge based on or influenced by his personal feelings, tastes, or opinions. Second, when a critic judge and evaluate a literary work , he eliminates the readers mind and deactivate his faculty of thinking and analysis.Its known that the target chemical group of the critics is the public reader, so what do they want from the reader and what is the ultimate accusing of criticism?. Actually, the modern consciousness of criticism is regarded as having two contrary functions which helps to achieve the main purposes of criticism.The Modern Understanding of CriticismCriticism is the handle of analysis and description and interpretation of literary works for the purpose of change magnitude understanding and raising appreciation.  This means that the critic should penetrate to the heart of the literary work to analyze and formulate its meaning , to disengage and describe its qualities of indicant and beauty , and to elucidate by direct examination the artistic and good principles which, whether the writer himself was conscious of them or not , have actually steer and controlled his lab ors, and then to pronounce a right evaluation of a literary work.Its worth to realize that criticism does not depend on a critics views or his opinions , but it depends on scientific basis which is Critical Theories. As a result, criticisms are completely various depending on the theory that the critic uses.Thus, the objective of literary criticism is to look into the artistic values, poetic beauty, or the features being regarded as inadequate exist in the works of literature in order to 1- parcel the reader to get along a give out understanding of nature and value of literature, and a better appreciation of the pleasure proper to literature, then to form an evaluation of his own. 2- Helping the writer to improve his skills and facilitate to achieve the merits while allowing him to overcome the flaws if any. At this stage, it would be appropriate to say that criticism is not just fault- finding , but helping the writer or poets or artists in achieving the morality in th eir works and leading the reader to a better understanding and appreciation. At this point , the saying of T.S Eilot is worth mentioning, The end of criticism is the miniature of works of art and to correction of taste.