Geoffrey Hartman's Literary Criticism Theory

In Geoffry Hartman's literary criticism theory, literary criticism has three characteristics:critical spirit, indetermination and intermediation. Critical spirit is opposed to Logocentrism, which blindly admired rationality and led to abstract classification of culture and cultural hegemony. Indetermination agrees of subject spirit in literary criticism, and pulls in the concept of self- consciousness. Self-consciousness is the knowledge of self and the reflection of the fate of mankind in the interaction between nature and man. Self- consciousness is not still, but supervening and flowing. Self- consciousness has three phases:surmise, imagination and fantasy. Surmise flows in the realm of nature, and led by nature. Imagination is self-consciousness at its highest pitch, and retains momentarily a separate existence of nature. In the phase of imagination, self- consciousness has its independence and autonomy of nature. Fantasy leads natural to supernatural, finite to infinite, in which self-consciousness admits that it itself is limited and faces the mystery of the unknown. With the concept of self- consciousness, on one hand, literary criticism is as creative as literature, on the other hand, literary criticism is faithful to the original text. Intermediation makes literary criticism the mediation of literature, art, philosophy and religion. Thus literary criticism related to these different areas can be applied to history and culture studies.