Marxist literary criticism
Marxist literary criticism,a critical tradition that seeks to understand literature from the perspective of the ‘historical materialism’ developed by Marx and Engels ; that is, as a changing form of material production that participates in and illuminates the processes of history. Marx himself was deeply versed in world literature, and drew upon his favourite authors ( Aeschylus , Shakespeare , Goethe ) even in his economic writings. Neither he nor Engels, though, bequeathed a critical or aesthetic theory, but they suggested that authors such as Balzac who held conservative political views could nonetheless, as artists, reveal the true tendencies of history, and more convincingly than socialist writers of a propagandist type; and further, that art is not tied directly to phases of economic development but has a certain autonomy. These principles are upheld in ‘classical’ Marxism, by G. Plekhanov ( 1856 – 1918 ),...
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