132 ANALYSIS AND CRITICISM 



What Does a Critic Analyze? Internal and External Relations 



If it is granted that Taine's general theory of causation and 

 biological categories may still be valid, a new perspective on the 

 problem of external and internal relations, or 'extrinsic' and 

 'intrinsic' approaches, raised by the 'new criticism', may perhaps 

 be gained. Taine's chief categories have been shown to be bio- 

 logical (Chapter VII), cultural (Chapter VIII), and psycho- 

 logical (Chapter IX). How are these factors related to one an- 

 other, and what are their relative degrees of importance for 

 criticism? 



As has been shown, Taine's formula is roughly equivalent to 

 John Dewey's analysis of experience as the interactions (psycho- 

 logy) of organisms (biology) with their environments (culture). ^8 

 Now, to return to the question raised in the opening section of 

 this chapter, what is it that the critic in fact analyzes? We should 

 say, quite simply, his experience of the work of art, using that term, 

 however, with the richness of connotation it has, for example, in 

 Dewey's Art as Experience. Such a statement would not deny the 

 validity of the Wellek and Warren claim that ontologically the 

 work of art is 'a potential cause of experiences'. However, this 

 potentiality was equally true of the Venus de Milo statue, for 

 example, as a piece of marble, both before and after it was 

 excavated. What really counts for criticism is the experience of 

 that statue, in its excavated state, by a perceptive observer; 

 obviously, no one can criticize unwritten poems of 'mute in- 

 glorious Miltons', or poems he has not read. 



It is the vital experience, then, if anything, that is intrinsic to 

 criticism of a work of art, and that experience is a total product of 

 interactions between what Dewey has called 'The Live Creature' 

 and 'The Expressive Object'. ^9 Any factors which are relevant to a full 

 perception of any of the elements in that interaction must therefore be 

 relevant to criticism. Since art is neither created nor enjoyed in a 

 vacuum, what Dewey has, in another context, called the bio- 

 logical and cultural 'matrixes' ^o must be taken into consideration. 

 Whether or not Taine did so adequately is beside the point: his 

 attempt was proper and admirable, and needs to be amended and 

 expanded, not thrown into the discard. 



Nevertheless, the locus of criticism must be in the experience 

 itself, not in its matrixes, and surely the most significant way of 

 considering experience is as psychological. This would be a suffi- 



