The Doctrine of the Work of Art Itself

The doctrine states that the critical object is the work of art itself, nothing more, nothing less. It maintains that the work of art qua work of art—the proper critical object—comes complete and finished prior to the criticism that receives and examines it. Poems are chosen rather than, say, musical compositions, because they show to clearer advantage the first discomfort of asserting the doctrine of the work of art itself. Critics in implicit agreement on the proper terms of criticism lose nothing by packing into a work of art an entire complex of rules for dealing with works of art. The pudding-poem analogy has not been exhausted either in the defense or the criticism. Appreciative objects are taken for critical objects in a manner entirely appropriate for puddings, which fact implies considerably more than the truism that, to be artistically relevant, criticism must terminate in a difference for appreciation.