Abstract

This paper mainly takes four schools of criticism into account to make clearer the concept of ‘form’ and ‘content’. No doubt, it had been debated too much from Plato onwards. Formalists (New Critics included) put premium on diction. In fact they exclusively hold that ‘form’ dictates ‘content’ as such ‘content’ is at the mercy of ‘form’. They examine especially poetry and its constitutive components; for instance, metre, rhyme scheme, rhythm, figures, syntax, motifs, styles, and conventions. Genre Critics or Chicago Critics unlike New Critics consider all genres and its sub-genres. They hold ‘form’ ‘shaping or constructive principle’. To them, the relation of ‘form’ and ‘content’ is in the manner of cause and effect. The cause is ‘content’ and effect is ‘form’. They are inseparable. Marxist concept of ‘form’ by and large is based on man’s relation to his society and the history of the society. This school altogether opposes all kinds of literary formalisms. This school seeks to observe cheerful dialectical relationship of ‘form’ and ‘content’. However in the long run prefer to give stress on ‘content’. The psychoanalytic approach mainly takes interest in the revelation of ‘latent content’. They divide ‘content’ into ‘manifest content’ and ‘latent content’. This school does not take much interest in style, form or technique. It simply analyses a work of art in the light of writer’s psychology. In effect, separability of any sort cannot be justified because in absence of any of them, an artistic whole is altogether impossible

Keywords: Form, content.