PROBLEMS OF ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 125 



First for the critics. A revolt against the kind of 'historicism' 

 represented by Taine has been the chief negative characteristic 

 of an influential movement commonly referred to as the 'new 

 criticism'; positively, this movement has been characterized by 

 intense and subtle concentration of attention on the work of litera- 

 ture or art itself, rather than on the historical and psychological 

 conditions of its production. ^ There is evidence that the 'new 

 criticism', having performed its necessary function, has lost some 

 of its original force, at least in its more extreme and rebellious 

 form'*: indicative of a more balanced view is such a study as the 

 Theory of Literature^ by Rene Wellek and Austin Warren, which 

 might be considered an attempt to blend the best elements of the 

 'new' and the 'old' criticism, from the point of view of the 'new'. 

 Both authors have laid claim to 'a similar pattern of development, 

 passing through historical research and work in the "history of 

 ideas", to the position that literary study should he specifically literary. 

 Both believed that "scholarship" and "criticism" were com- 

 patible. . . .'5 



This work crystallizes a major accusation which has been 

 levelled at Taine's method, by including most of his categories in a 

 section headed 'The Extrinsic Approach to the Study of Litera- 

 ture' and labelling attempts at 'causal' explanation as examples 

 of the 'fallacy of origins'. ^ In their stead, it advocates 'The 

 Intrinsic Study of Literature', beginning with 'The Analysis of the 

 Literary Work of Art'. Taine's approach to criticism, especially 

 in the pictorial arts, was indeed consciously 'extrinsic', as has 

 already been pointed out (Chapter VI) '7; but though that word 

 does unfortunately carry connotations of inferiority (such as 

 would be conveyed by the phrase 'merely extrinsic'), its use does 

 not in itself settle the issues of the relations between external and 

 internal considerations (to use less prejudicial words) and of the 

 value of the external approach for criticism. 



That Taine was aware of the issue, and made his choice of 

 method deliberately, is evident from his clear distinction between 

 re-creative and philosophical criticism, and his defence of the 

 latter, in answer to Sainte-Beuve's criticisms. ^ The contrast 

 between these two emphases was thus not a discovery of the 

 twentieth century: among Taine's contemporaries, for example, 

 Eugene Fromentin, author of The Old Masters of Belgium and 

 Holland (1875), was one 'whose persistent critical concentration 

 on the aesthetic' provided something of a corrective to Taine's 



