Our Mind's Frontier

"No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them. The existing order is complete before the new work arrives; for order to persist after the supervention of novelty, the whole existing order must be, if ever so slightly, altered; and so the relations, proportions, values of each work of art toward the whole are readjust; and this is conformity between the old and the new. Whoever has approved this idea of order, of the form of European, of English literature will not find it preposterous that the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past. And the poet who is aware of this will be aware of great difficulties and responsibilities."- T.S. Eliot

Based upon this paragraph, an intellectual who knows their works of art and literature can agree with the passage. If not, a strong defense is in order. The old works and styles of art and literature exist for their modification, hence the birth of new styles for literature and art. Let us focus on art, for instance, in the field of architecture: the Romanesque styles of churches were later modified artistically and architecturally into Gothic. Now in paint-wise, Minoan frescoes were modified into Greek frescoes which then the Romans modified the Greek style into the Roman style. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Catholic Church (founded and influenced by the Roman culture) modified those Roman-styled paintings (the Byzantine Empire also modified Roman frescoes into their own style) into vast generations of styles of paintings, from illuminated manuscripts to Renaissance art, beginning with the help of masters from that era, such as Giotto and Masaccio. Renaissance art slowly evolved from over five hundred years into different, new styles like Rococo, Realism, Impressionism, Expressionism, Pop Art and finally to the latest modification of art- the art done in our time.
However, a counter example lies in art against the words of the author who wrote the passage. This happens to be Renaissance sculpture, having to have matched the style of Greco-Roman sculpture. Therefore, they were not modified, but rather revived, hence the meaning of the word Renaissance being “rebirth”. Rebirth indeed it was.
In literature, modification occurs as if it were evolution; as civilization advanced, styles modified. Literature transformed into different styles, from epic poems during Greco-Roman to Medieval to Renaissance when it changed to plainly-written stories (such as Geoffrey Chaucer) and onwards to Colonial literature (like Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography), Revolutionary literature, Romantic (Lord Byron or Edgar Allan Poe), Victorian (the acclaimed works of Charles Dickens, like Oliver Twist and Great Expectations), Modernism (Ernest Hemingway, Henry Miller, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, etc.) and Post-Modernism, which continues on as of now. In literature, there are the schools of critical thoughts. This list encompasses most of the modern forms:
Deconstruction: Analysis in which the textual meaning is found by difference: a closer look at the literary work, with a message hidden inside.
Formalism: Diction-based literary analysis, thus focusing on certain words within the work. Gender Studies: Literary analysis based on the role of gender within the literary work.
Historicism: Relation and connection of literary works to historical occurrences or figures. A reliance on historical precedents in the practice of art, architecture, music, etc.
Marxism: Literary analysis of comparison between the selected work and Marxist principles.
Psychoanalysis: Psychoanalytical approach of interpreting a literary work, based loosely on the works of Freud and Jung.
Racial Studies: Literary analysis based on the role of race in the written work.
Reader’s Response: A self interpretational analysis of a literary work.
Structuralism: Text-based literary analysis, focusing only on the syntax of the written work.
These schools of thoughts can be applied to any one of these styles of literature, as long as they’re well-analyzed and supported through the text. Styles in literature are nothing more than reports of how life was during the times from when the work was written; when times change, so does literature; literature modifies itself automatically, just like art, as daily reports on lifestyles in the past. The following essays are examples to help you understand and know the use of analytical school of critical thought, as well as thematic analysis.