Moralist

Group 2
 Good day everyone!
We are the Group 2
We are here to discuss and explain things that has something to do with
Moralist Approach to Literary Criticism.

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Moralist Approach to
Literary Criticism
 ✣ A tendency—rather than a
recognized school—within
literary criticism to judge literary
works according to moral rather
than formal principles.

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✣ Judging literary works by their ethical
teachings and by their effects on
readers.

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✣ Literature that is ethically sound
and encourages virtue is praised.

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✣ Literature that misguides and
corrupts is condemned.

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✣ The moral/intellectual critical approach is concerned with
content and values. The approach is as old as literature itself,
for literature is a traditional mode of imparting morality,
philosophy, and religion. The concern in moral/intellectual
criticism is not only to discover meaning but also to determine
whether works of literature are both true and significant.

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✣ Moral criticism is also concerned with the ‘seriousness’ of a
work and whether its purpose is worthy of its means—it is
from this perspective than one speaks of such things as
‘gratuitous’ sex in a novel, or nudity in a film, when it isn't
seen to serve the moral purpose of the narrative.

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 Moral Critics
Plato Horace Sir Philip Sidney
✣Banished poets from ✣Studied how Poetry ✣Praised the role of the
Republic for fear that he could be used to promote poet in purifying the
might spread immorality morality in his Ars imagination, which the
and destabilize the Poetica. historian and the
country. philosopher were capable
of.

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 Moral Critics
Dr. Johnson Matthew Arnold D. H. Lawrence
✣Was a stern upholder of ✣Great poetry is marked ✣Position was pagan,
morality and attacked by high seriousness and and extolled the virtue of
Shakespeare for his slip true criticism pays ‘life’ as a force to be
shod treatment of moral attention to what a poem nourished through
values. says than to how it says. literature.

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 Moral Critics
T. S Eliot
✣Was Christian, and judged
works in terms of their ability to
clarify life, and give it meaning
F. R. Leavis
✣Thought literature should be
‘improving’, that by reading it one
should become a better person.

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How to do it?
Questions to consider when
approaching a text with Moral
Criticism
1. Maturity, sincerity, honesty, sensitivity, and/or courage
become important criteria in determining the worth of
literature and art. Is the author and his/her treatment of
subject (both character and theme) mature, sincere, honest,
sensitive, or courageous? How so, and how does knowing
this help us approach the text in a meaningful way?

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2. Does the text seek to corrupt or negatively influence the
reader? How so and/or why?

3. What moral lesson or ethical teaching is the author

presenting in the text/or through character, plot, or theme?

4. How do characters, settings, and plot events represent or

allegorize moral or ethical principles?

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5. Does the work in question pose a pragmatic or moral lesson
or philosophical idea?

6. What ideas does the work contain? How strongly does the
work bring forth its ideas?

7. What application do the ideas have to the work’s characters

and situations?

8. How may the ideas be evaluated intellectually? Morally?

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Discussions based on such questions do not imply that literature
is primarily a medium of moral and intellectual exhortation.
Ideally, moral/intellectual criticism should differ from
sermonizing to the degree that readers should always be left with
their own decisions about whether to assimilate the ideas of a
work and about whether the ideas—and values—are personally
or morally acceptable.

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Sophisticated critics have sometimes demeaned the
moral/intellectual approach on the grounds that “message
hunting” reduces a work’s artistic value by treating it like a
sermon or political speech; but the approach will be valuable as
long as readers expect literature to be applicable to their own
lives.

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 Evolution of Moral Criticism
Post Modern Moral Criticism (Neo-Humanist)
•Asks how the reader is affected, American Philosophy that evaluates
morality. Response to Naturalism and Romanticism.

Moral Criticism Christian Humanism

•Determine the worth of literature by
•After WWII Neo-Humanism was replaced with
seeing if it encourages good out of the
Christian Humanism, same goal but uses
reader.
Christian beliefs and teachings of morality as its
basis.

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Morality is rooted in the
purity of our hearts.
- Mohandas K. Gandhi

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Thank you for listening!

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 Members
John Paul Tamayo
Mikias Harold Wagayen
Jeriniel Bumacod
Kyerene Nicole Datuin
Margareth Anorma
Jomari Vallejo

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