Cultural Criticism and the Text Literariness: A Study in Criticism of Criticism

Abstract

The literary text carries aesthetic values that lie within the components of literary art: structure, style, rhythm, imagery, and poetic language. These components are instrumental in granting the text its uniqueness and artistic beauty. Critical engagement with the text is thus grounded in normative criteria through which the literary text is evaluated in terms of the quality of its composition and structure, originality, innovation, and adherence to the principles of literary art. However, the emergence of cultural criticism has reshaped the relationship between literature and society, greatly expanding the scope of critical reading at the expense of the literariness and aesthetic value of the text. This study focuses on the dilemma of cultural criticism regarding textual aesthetics and its negligence or marginalization of literary centrality in its treatment of texts. It is divided into two sections: the first provides a brief overview of the concept of cultural criticism, its origins, and the main objections raised against it; and the second examines cultural criticism in relation to the aesthetic values within the literary text, highlighting its manifestations, causes, and what should be done in response. The study reaches several key findings. First, for cultural criticism to remain logically situated within its current disciplinary domain (the field of literary or linguistic textual criticism), it must adopt a balanced approach that integrates both dimensions: uncovering cultural patterns and attending to the aesthetic and literary normative values of the text. Second, in its current form, cultural criticism should be separated from the domain of literary text–oriented critical approaches and should not be considered one of the disciplines of literature, language, or linguistics; rather, it should be treated similarly to fields such as history or sociology. Third, Arabic scholarship must re-examine the tools and methodology of cultural criticism, localize the theory within the Arabic context, and benefit from the Western experience without resorting to excessive imitation. The study uses the descriptive method, as it is the most appropriate for its nature.