ABSTRACT
Telugu literature has walked hand in hand with the parallel movements giving rise to a continuous dialogue between writers, readers and ideologies. One such influence is the Marxist influence on Telugu literature and literary criticism. This essay by N. Venugopal, an active member of the Revolutionary Writers Association, insightfully introduces the literary criticism in Telugu with reference to the major writers and critics in Telugu. Also, he uses a contemporary political perspective to analyse the social, cultural and economic factors that have tremendously impacted and shaped literary criticism in Telugu. He mentions that the Marxist ideas entered Telugu literary field during the mid-1930s and that so far there are at least a hundred books as well as about six thousand pages of essays in various journals considered to be Marxist literary criticism in Telugu. However, he observes, Telugu literary field has not yet developed a clear answer to the question as to what constitutes Marxist literary criticism. He attempts to identify the major aspects, at least five, which can define Marxist literary criticism in Telugu, that is theory of Marxist literary criticism, methodology of Marxist literary criticism, an understanding of relation between society and literature, discussion on form and content and related analysis and consciousness of short-term and long-term goals of literature.
