Study On20th Century Shakespearean Criticism

20th century Shakespearean criticism not only inherited the highly importantposition in western literary study, but also reflected of the development of20th centurywestern literary criticism. In the20th century, there are several groups of critics ofShakespeare that are worthy to be noticed. They used approaches to analyze texts ofShakespeare, including character analysis and psychoanalysis, historical criticism,formalist criticism etc. After1970s, political cultural approaches became popular. Thisstudy focuses on these critics of Shakespearean criticism.PrefaceThis part illustrates the value of thesis, current research status, methodology andmethods.20th century Shakespeare criticism not only can help us to get a deeperunderstanding of Shakespeare, it also reflects the trajectory of the Western literarycriticism. However, the current researches at home and abroad are not very prosperous.This study hopes to inspect and analyze Shakespearean criticism through importantcritics of Shakespeare.Chapter1Study of the Mind: Character Analysis and PsychoanalysisAt the beginning of the century, Shakespearean criticism was dominated by themethod of Bradley and Freud and his disciples Jones, both of which can be seen assome kind of psychological analysis. Bradley’s approach is character analysis, it isdelicate and moving, with proper attention to textual details. Meanwhile, Bradley alsonoticed Shakespeare’s imagery, atmosphere and other formal elements. In thebeginning of the century, Bradley was the peak of Shakespearean criticism.But almost at the same time, coming from the German-speaking world,psychoanalysis began to affect literary criticism. Freud and his disciples Jones usedOedipus complex to interpret Shakespeare’s Hamlet. And it became the model of theapplication of the psychoanalytic method in Shakespeare. In this regard, the psychoanalytic method well explained Hamlet’s character and psychology, and it had ahuge impact on later criticism.Chapter2Historical Criticism: Shakespeare and Elizabethan EraAfter Bradley, Shakespearean criticism has divided into two camps, which are thehistorical criticism and the formalist criticism. Historical criticism comes fromShakespeare scholarship and academic study of Shakespeare, historians are dissatisfiedwith the character analysis and criticized the methods of Bradley and Freud is a kind ofanachronism. From solid historical research and interpretation of Shakespeare, forexample, Stoll and Schücking tried to put Shakespeare back in the Elizabethantheatrical tradition, and they studied how Shakespeare created characters, and pointedout that the true meaning of the Shakespeare is what he meant originally. The historicalcritics then studied the Elizabethan political, ideological, cultural and other aspects ofthe historical background, trying to restore Shakespeare to his own era to understandthe ideas and concepts of Shakespeare himself. They believed thus the understandingof the dramatist is the true understanding.Chapter3Formalism: imagery, symbolism, archetypeWith the rise of modern poetics and modern literary criticism, formalismShakespeare began to emerge in the1930s, and was rapidly expanding. CarolineSpurgeon began in the early1930s to sort Shakespeare’s images, her work had atremendous impact on later formalist criticism and can be considered a pioneer in theformalism of Shakespeare criticism. Almost at the same time, L. C. Knights began topromote the idea that Shakespeare’s works are poetry, every word of it need to bestudied purposely. Similarly, G. Wilson Knight noticed Shakespeare’s "spatial" elementand the dramatic atmosphere. In addition, Cleanth Brooks also demonstrated anapproach of New Criticism by analyzing "Macbeth" in his famous book The WellWrought Urn. Finally, when the New Criticism gradually declined, Northrop Fryeallowed us to see another aspect of formalism. He started the mythical archetype andstructural analysis of Shakespeare.Chapter4Political and Cultural criticism: from margin to centerAfter1970s, under the influence of Marxism and deconstruction theory, Shakespearean criticism has been changed largely. New historicism, culturalmaterialism, feminism emerged to treat Shakespeare politically and culturally. Thesenew generation of critics were represented by Greenblatt and Dollimore. They werenot like the formalists as to focus within the text, also unlike the old historicism toconsider history as a transparent prism, they used of a new method of criticism to diginto both the text and history, analyzing their changing relationships.Epilogue20th century Shakespearean criticism was far more complicate than what we aretreating here, what we can do is selecting the most representative Shakespearean critics.By doing so, we hope to solve some specific problems, meanwhile to grasp the overalltrends of the development. Of course, this study cannot examine all valuable Westerncriticism on Shakespeare, but we hope it can serve as a catalyst for more in-depthstudies of Shakespeare in the future.