00122--Write a note on the Moralist Critic of the Mid Twentieth Century.

            There emerged a School of Moralist Critics in the mid-twentieth assumed century.   George Watson says: "Most English Critics before  Arnold and Ruskin assumed that  all good poetry is morally edifying, and that it is always a writer's duty to make the world better.  But there is a tradition in twentieth century criticism stemming from Arnold which is distinct from all previous moral theories of literature.  The difference may be simply stated:  Johnson like other Renaissance and eighteenth-century critics took it for granted that everyone is more or less agreed about the difference between right and wrong, and that the moral duty of the poet lies simply in observing a recognized code.  Justice is a virtue independent of time and place.  Modern moralism by contrast, is more often aganostic, exploratory, and self-consciously elitist.  Its toe is more often embittered.  Its very dogmatism is based upon the uncertainty of its dogma and the difficult of finding an audience".

            John Middleton proclaimed that criticism depended on values a delineation of what is good for man.  Geroge Orwell and F.R. Leavis offer and unusually pure example of critical moralism.  The cast school of Shakespearean criticism inspire by Wilson Knight has enthusiastically interpreted dramatic characters as if they were typical philosophers.  The critic's business is to assert what the morally best poems are.

            The moralists are the prophetic figures in modern criticism.  They must readily excite discipleship.  Their influence may even extend to matters of conduct; in some cares the critical interest is a late extension of some wider moral purpose.  George Orwall may be taken us a model of model of modern English moralist.  Raymon Williams's culture and society and its sequel The Long Revolution are both scholarly and prophetic.  Hoggart belongs to the tradition of Arnold.  Thus we see that moralism is as common today as ever before, but it is less sharp than in the past.