Criticism and Theory

Criticism, the interpretation and evaluation of literature and the arts. There are several categories of criticism: theoretical, practical, textual, judicial, biographical, and impressionistic. However, as the American critic M. H. Abrams has pointed out in The Mirror and the Lamp all criticism, no matter what its form, type, or provenance, emphasizes one of four relationships: the mimetic, the work's connection to reality; the pragmatic, its effect on the audience; the expressive, its connection to the author; and the objective, the work as an independent, self-sufficient creation.