LITERARY CRITICISM

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 111, 13 May 1939, Page 20

LITERARY CRITICISM

. The charge that literary critics to-' day lack the proper tools was made-! at a recent session of the Modern Language Association of America by Professors Theodore Spencer and Harry Slochwer. The Professors laid the blame for this upon the teachers, saying that they poorly prepared their students and that, as a result, literary criticism was "impoverished and rickety." "The criitic," they said, "should seek to raise the level of the reader's enjoyment and to bring but the different relationships surrounding the object he is studying and to comrriunicate to other individuals understanding, discrimination, and enjoyment." "In a period when literary criticism has come to mean little else than book reviews, such a pronouncement is welcome and pertinent," remarks the "Christian Science Monitor." ''Professors Spencer and Slochwer have reaffirmed the words of George Saintsbury that criticism is 'the. discovery and celebration of beautiful things.' The true critic is not merely a 'recounter'; he is a 're-creator,' Through his words a work of art takes on added, meaning and significance. Further than that, his is a duty to evaluate and judge so that in a world of change there remains some basis of form,,both for the artist and for the spectator."