Origin, Development and the Scope of Psychoanalytic Criticism

This article, which begins with a critique of psychoanalytic criticism, attempts to compare the traditional criticism of literature and art, with psychoanalytic criticism. The former one, originated from Plato and Aristotle, was founded base on the master- subject relationship between philosophy and literature and was absolutely dominant until nineteenth century; the latter one, on the other hand, tries to subvert this relationsship. This article is to study this relationship and to study the background and the major developments of psychoanalytic criticism as a pluralistic method of interpretation which mainly aims at analyzing literary and artistic works.