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‘Was Juvenal a Structuralist?‘ a Look at Anachronisms in Literary Criticism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Extract
Oliver Goldsmith once wrote that the cultural history of a civilization can be divided into three periods: ‘its commencement, or the age of poets; its maturity, or the age of philosophers; and its decline, or the age of critics.’ Goldsmith went on to argue that the increase of critics is a natural result of the spread of learning, but, at the same time, invariably contributes to its decline. This is because critics represent a lower common denominator in literary taste than the poet or the philosopher, and because they approach culture in a more mechanical or hidebound manner. Goldsmith defines critics as ‘all such as judge by rule, and not by feelings’. He looks back to the days of King William and Queen Anne, and suggests that the decline in letters evident in his own day is partly attributable to the prevalence of criticism:
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References
Notes
1. ‘An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe’ (1759), in Collected Works of Oliver Goldsmith, Vol. I, ed. Friedman, Arthur (Oxford, 1966), p. 269Google Scholar.
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3. Ibid., p. 317.
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