THE MORAL APTHE MORAL APPROACH TO LITERARY CRITICISMPROACH TO LITERARY CRITICISM

Abstract

Encouraging good values is important for societal peace, sustainable development and progress.

Morality is a judgment of not trust the belief but the practice of acceptable values in relation to good or bad. The paper begins with an introduction to literary criticism. It opines that literary criticism should be guided by relevant theories for appropriate interpretation of a text. It highlights five approaches to literary criticism as outlived by Wilbur Scott, and focuses on the moralistic approaches for the purpose of the presentation. It discusses literature and morals, historical background of moral criticism including developmental transitions and major proponents relationship of moral approach to other approaches, advantages and disadvantages of the moralistic approach, and applications of moral approach to selected text such as: Soul Errand by Water Raleigh, Everyman, The Gods are not to blame by Ola Rotimi, Tess of the Dubeivilles by Thomas Hardy, Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. It brings out important themes from character flaws such as: anger, greedy, selfish ambition, disobedience, and drunkenness, lie, immoral life styles, the Vanity of human life without God and associated repercussions. It also uses literary characters to bring out vicissitudes of life, the importance of time, danger of delay in telling the truth, and seeking solace in earthly humans that disappoint when time extensions are not granted. It concludes that literature has a humanizing and civilizing mission and that the major goal of a moral Critic is to examine the composition of a literary work in view  of elevating the falling standards of man and society.