A Study Of George Steiner’s Criticism

George Steiner is a famous humanist literary critic in contemporary American history. His main thoughts involve three areas. The first is the tragedy themed at the relationship between people and the country. The second is the multiple essence of language and its development problems.The third is the relationship among art, philosophy and science, and their connection with Totalitarianism.These intertwined thoughts, well-written, have aroused the western academe’s attention, and led to a depth study in literary criticism, cultural criticism, in-depth research fields of comparative literature, translation studies, etc. The introduction of his works are also gradually increased in our country.The essay is divided into four sections.Chapter One:Firstly, focusing on the core of Humanism, it combs the ideological origin of George Steiner’s humanistic criticism from the perspective of humanism in Central Europe and Jewish survivors. Secondly, the essence of "old criticism" is a return to the traditional social and historical criticism. On the one hand, it is the absorption and criticism of the New Criticism. On the other hand, it inherits the tradition of Arnold and Lewis. Thirdly, it summarizes three characteristics of Old Criticism:classical, literary, philosophical.Chapter Two:It describes Steiner’s critical methods on Comparative Literature. Firstly, it combs Steiner’s path on Comparative Literature, finding the original cause that led him to the path. Secondly, according to his definition of "comparative literature", it summarizes three comparison methods:Geography Comparison, Interdisciplinary Comparison, Multiple Comparison. Chapter Three:It introduces Steiner’s multi-interactive criticism practice from three aspects:Language and translation, reception and influence of texts, similarities and differences of themes. These aspects constitute the multi-interaction of Steiner’s literary criticism practice, with their creative interaction.Chapter Four:It evaluates Steiner’s thought of literary criticism. Comparing with other humanist critics at the same time, Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling. It summarizes the significance and limitation of his literary criticism. Steiner’s literary criticism has a significant impact in the contemporary literary criticism of the West. Similarly, it has a reference value for the study of Chinese literary criticism as well.