Aspects Of John Updike's Literary Criticism

John Updike (1932-), one of the best-known contemporary writers in America, is a novelist as well as a critic. However, the research on Updike has often focused on his novels, leaving his critical writings unexplored. Till now, Updike has produced almost 4,000 pages of critical works (most of them are literary reviews) included in five volumes: Assorted Prose (1965), Picked-Up Pieces (1975), Hugging the Shore (1983), Odd Jobs (1991) and More Matter (1999). This thesis consists of an introduction, four chapters and conclusion. It discusses four aspects of his literary critical works. And the principal research method is text analysis.The introduction presents Updike's life, then discusses why his literary critical works lack serious investigation and why they are worthy of research.In chapter one, the thesis summarizes four characteristics of Updike's literary critical works and analyzes his uniqueness as a critic in the contemporary literary world. His literary criticism has four key features: he criticizes as a reader, he criticizes from an international literary standpoint, he criticizes with fairness and keen perception and he pens criticism in splendid prose.In chapter two, the thesis explores Updike's aesthetic theory in criticizing others' works. His aesthetic thoughts sums up as following: authors should strive to polish their writing skills and styles which in order to give their works eminent forms; they should ground their works on reality to endow them with social meaning; they should describe their ideas or emotions in a philosophical or ambiguous way to present the true chord of life; the ambiguity of their ideas or emotions should be conveyed through detailed, specific images to convey their ideas or emotions vividly.In chapter three, the thesis firstly presents some details in his critical works to prove Updike's high regard for religion and also points out a problem that arose during the research: there seems to be a contradiction in Updike's religious thoughts. Based on the analysis of his reviews on Kierkegaard and Karl Barth, the thesis then tries to find a reasonable explanation for such a contradiction. After analyzing the influence on Updike of Kierkegaard and Barth, this thesis points out the two causes of the contradiction. First, Updike wants to rebalance the sacred and the secular, only to find the two realms cannot be confused. Second, sharing the dialectical approach with Kierkegaard and Barth, he refuses to resolve different aspects of things resolving into a satisfying synthesis, but just presents them in sustained tension and ambiguity.In chapter four, the thesis explores Updike's philosophical thoughts reflected in literary criticism. It finds detailed evidence to prove that Updike's attitude is not pessimistic or nihilistic as many critics claim. Then it also discusses Updike's realism and points out that he holds to layered realism, not the traditional plain realism.The final part is conclusion. By discussing the four aspects of Updike's literary criticism, the author wants to draw more attention to his critical works which are of great research interest.