A. Discussion of Critical Approaches: Historical

This traditional approach stresses the relationship of literature to its historical period, and for its reason it has had a long life. Although much literature may be applicable to many places and times, much of it also directly reflects the intellectual and social words of the authors. When was the work written? What were the circumstances that produced it? What major issues does it deal with? How does it fit into the author’s career? Keats’s poem “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer,” for example, is his excited response to his reading of one of the major literary works of Western civilization. Hardy's "Chanel Firing" is an acerbic response to continued armament and preparation for war during the twentieth century.
The topical/historical approach investigates relationships of this sort including the elucidation of words and concepts that today's readers may not immediately understand. Obviously, the approach requires the assistance of footnotes, dictionaries, histories, and handbooks.
A common criticism of the topical/historical approach is that in the extreme it deals with background knowledge rather than with literature itself. tis possible, for example, for a topical/historical critic to describe a writer's life, the period of the writer's work, and the social and intellectual ideas of the time, all without ever considering the meaning, importance, and value of the work itself.

Categories: Discussion of Critical Approaches