Classical Criticism

Classical criticism refers to a conception of the nature and function of poetry and of verbal art generally whose principles were first theorized by the sophists in 5th-century bce Greece. In contrast to traditional views, they held that eloquence was no less a product of conscious design than a house or a sculpture, and that skillful speech was an art (τέχνη) that could be learned. The expertise they claimed centered on style rather than content, and the qualities they valued tended to be formal ones: clarity, orderliness, and balance, with a sense of decorum governing all elements. Their project was repudiated by Plato in a series of searching critiques, but after being refined by Isocrates and systematized by Aristotle, the study of rhetoric—which encompassed the study of poetry in an ancillary role—constituted the backbone of higher education in the liberal arts. Classical principles determined which works would be “canonized” in the Hellenistic libraries, where literary scholars began to call themselves “critics” or judges; after Greek literary culture was imported into Rome, the exemplary authors came to be called “classic” or “of the first rank.” Classical criticism retained a central place in European education and culture that would not be undermined until the 18th century. Although Romanticism rejected 18th-century classicism as excessively rationalistic and narrowly formal, its basic concepts and terms continue to be useful because of deep dialectical tensions built into them at the time of their formation.