Dr. Walid Qassab

I borrow this name from the American critic Stanley Edgar Hyman, and it is a description that this critic gave to the "integrative criticism approach". He said: "If we were able - and this is just a hypothesis - to create an ideal modern critic, his method would be nothing but a synthesis of all the practical methods and styles used by his living colleagues. And if he borrowed from all those conflicting and competing means, and synthesized from them a sound creation with no distortion in it, he would balance the deficiency in one side with exaggeration in another, and limit excess with its equivalent until equilibrium is achieved for him, and retain the appropriate elements to achieve his als.." (1),

Stanley Hyman summarizes in these words a acute crisis and a major shortcoming of modern Western criticism, which is "one-sidedness".

The proposed modern methods do not look at the text with a comprehensive view that gives all its elements their due estimation, and therefore it seems wrong to adopt one method in literary study, because this means standing at one side and neglecting the other sides, and in this there is a miniaturization of the literary text, and an impoverishment of its inputs. An approach that looks at the problem from only one angle cannot yield except one result or a close production that does not add new wealth to the literary study, nor reveal an unknown horizon. (2)

The integrative approach - as Stanley Hyman saw, and as many Western and Arab critics agreed with him - is the optimal approach; as it is the approach that does not narrow the horizon of the literary work as we mentioned, limiting its study to one aspect and neglecting other aspects. It benefits from the total sum of methods, leaning on them to identify and encompass all aspects of research or criticism in objective comprehensiveness.. (3) It benefits from all methods "using them combined and overlapping whenever criticism requires that. Based on this, it is a flexible approach, does not stand at certain limits, but rather takes from each approach what it sees as helping to issue integrated judgments on literary works from all their aspects.." (4)

The integrative approach is an approach that reconciles with all elements of the literary work, not detracting from the value of one at the expense of another. It also reconciles in the critical study with the three authorities over which modern criticism has long fought: the author's authority, the text's authority, and the reader's authority. It believes that the literary text is the outcome of these three sides, and it is not possible, or correct, for one of them to be unique to the literary work alone; it is therefore a call to pay attention to the inside and outside, meeting in its psychological, historical, social, and linguistic scope, and paying attention to the nature and function of literature.

Some may see that the integrative approach is the approach of non-approach, and this is correct if integration is not understood here as chaotic and undisciplined, but rather understood in terms of its lack of commitment to a specific approach that it does not deviate from. This integrative approach, so that it is disciplined and avoids the pitfall of chaos, requires a set of things: It requires the critic to be familiar with various old and modern methods of criticism, and familiar with their terminology and procedural tools; so that he selects what he selects from them with awareness, insight, and perception.

- It requires conscious selection from the proposed methods so that the literary study does not turn into a heap or a heterogeneous mixture of ideas that are not subject to any control or system, meaning it requires the consistency of the elements from which this approach will be composed. It is "a kind of synthesis that relies on creating a method of collection that is based on creation.. it is not a dead mechanical collection, but a vital collection pulsating with movement, overflowing with novelty, and creating from these results a new result that is not a summary of them, but a reaction from them, and not emanating from their apparent external proximity, but from their deep internal mixing.." (5)

This is also what Stanley Hyman expressed - while talking about this approach - saying: "And this ideal integration, from which we want to create a sublime critical method, is not done by throwing all the od elements into one pot, and mixing them however they happen, but it is a work like building, provided that it is done according to an organized plan with a base or a drawn structure.." (6)

- That the selection of what this critic selects from the methods be subject to the nature of the studied work, and be proportionate with it, and that he chooses what it requires of suitable procedural tools for it.

- That there be a philosophical or literary basis from which the integrated approach starts. Stanley Hyman pointed to this, mentioning that among the criteria for controlling the ideal critical approach - integrative - is the existence of this basis. He said: "The basis for ideal critical integration must be a literary or philosophical idea.. one of those foundations may be the 'organicism principle', that is, that the human self is an organic unit, which is Richards' principle in the continuity of experience.. and we may make one of those foundations 'social activity' that organizes various critical styles.." (7)

We add that among the intellectual and technical foundations on which the desired critical approach should be based is considering the peculiarity of the literature it studies, and the Islamic and Arab conception of the nature and function of literature..

- That the study gives sovereignty to a specific critical approach, making it a starting point for the study, which is the approach that is closest to the nature of the text, and most capable of its clarity, and showing its peculiarity, then using some other secondary methods to complete the picture of the study. Naeem Al-Yafi - may d have mercy on him - collected the pillars of this integrative approach in five foundations he named: Encyclopedism, Openness, Selectivity, Synthesis, The Appropriate Method for the Appropriate Corpus. (8) There is no doubt that observing these foundations that we have mentioned protects this approach from the charge of fabrication and contradiction with which some critics have labeled it.

Advocates of the Integrative "Synthetic" Approach:

The integrative approach in literary criticism has many advocates from Westerners and Arabs. Perhaps among the most prominent Westerners is Stanley Hyman who considers the criticism of this approach - as we mentioned - "ideal criticism" and calls its critic "the ideal critic". Stanley Hyman also pointed to a number of critics who adopted this approach, among them Blackmur of whom he says: "Blackmur is a critic who tends to unleash on every literary work the special critical means it requires, until he almost used - from time to time - all the critical methods we described in this book.. and he once said in his book 'Double Agent': Whoever reads Pond's poetry must know the 'classical and historical references' and whoever reads Eliot must recognize the ideas, beliefs and systems of feelings.." (9)

And among the critics of the integrative approach is Bayt. Stanley Hyman says of him: The critic Bayt admitted "that he draws from almost every contemporary English critic; starting from Murray and Read, up to Misses Sergien and Bodkin, and in the same way we see Blackmur has exploited every famous modern critic in all of England and America, and Bain Knight in the amount of rejection, filtering and modification of what he draws from.." (10)

Stanley Hyman also pointed to a number of major critics who took to synthesis between critical methods in their studies, such as Kenneth Burke; as "you find this critic has - from time to time - performed all the roles included in modern criticism, as he performed alongside them a number of other related things.." (11), He also pointed to Richards and Empson, and said of them: "These are the best of our critics, and integration in their works was a successful position.." (12) Reality testifies that many Arab and Western critics themselves were unable to be faithful to one approach only, and that they were alternating in their critical practices between more than one critical approach; for the practice of critical integration, or semi-integration, is practically achieved in more than one of the great critics. (13)

And as we say that the desired literary criticism approach is based on integration, and looks at all elements of the literary work, this does not mean that the critic is obliged in every applied literary study of a text to study it from all its aspects. The critic may stop at one aspect of the work, he may stop at its psychological, social, historical, or intellectual , and he may stop at artistic phenomena like words, or images, or intertextuality, or music, or this or that, but he does not ignore or let us ignore that this text he studies only became literature because it met the elements of the distinguished artistic form first, and for its deep convincing expression of significant thought, and that the absence or poverty of one does not excuse the other as some one-sided critical methods do, which depict literature as a brilliant linguistic formation deviating from the usual, and that the critic's job is to reveal this linguistic distinction regardless of the and ideas it involves, or as some other methods do that look at literature as they look at religion, sociology, philosophy, and history, and think that its function is like them, providing utilitarian in any style whatsoever.

Integrated criticism can handle any element of the text, as I mentioned; as it is difficult - on more than few occasions - to encompass all its elements, it is difficult to study it technically and in content, it is difficult to analyze, interpret and evaluate it, it is difficult to reveal all its emotional and social aspects, and link it to the personality of its author, and its reliance on what preceded of popular heritage, and placing the text in its framework among similar texts, and such of many aspects that defy counting. (14) Such an integrated study of a text may need a book, or an extensive deep research, and the integrated approach does not demand all of it, and it - while maintaining integration - can study one aspect of the text, and delve into it, but on the condition that it does not make us feel that it does not care about other aspects, or that they have no importance, or that they do not enter into the general judgment on the text and its evaluation, or that it is severed from it.

Applying the integrated critical approach is not without difficulty, and it may seem - if understood as handling everything in the text - (merely verbal lorrhea) as Stanley Hyman says. (15) But some link between the most prominent elements of the literary work, especially form and content, is possible, and this is what Stanley Hyman also expressed in his saying: Let us return to the world of facts and the field of scientific possibilities that are within the power of an individual human being, and we only want an integrated method. Let us say that a large od portion of integration is possible. And it is within the power of one person to use a number of methods and schools.. as Kenneth Burke did.. and to a lesser degree Richards, Empson, and Blackmur.. and these are the best of our critics... (16)

Some critics called this approach "the synthetic approach" on the basis that it is synthesized from several methods as we mentioned, and not restricted to a specific approach. Shukri Faisal - may d have mercy on him - says of it: "Arabic literature itself requires this synthetic approach; that is because it does not allow different methods to conflict in it, nor allows them to quarrel around it, but rather wants them to cooperate for its sake, and to converge on its al, and for all of them to end in their results they reach to its great al.." (17)

Not a few contemporary Arab critics have called for this approach; due to their feeling of the inability of one approach to contain the horizons of the literary experience as we explained. Perhaps among the oldest critics who adopted this approach, and called for it, was Shukri Faisal. Many followed him after that, such as: Shawqi Deif, Muhammad Al-Sadiq Afifi, Muhammad Mustafa Haddara, Hossam El-Din Al-Khatib, Ahmed Heikal, Ahmed Kamal Zaki, Abdel Aziz Atiq, Naeem Al-Yafi, Sami Suwaydan, Al-Arabi Hassan Darwish, and Yusuf Waghlisi. (18) A group of these critics tried to set some controls and conditions for applying this approach, and giving it a systematic and disciplined character.

This integrative approach was also adopted by a number of researchers in the applied studies they carried out; as they did not rely on a specific method, but combined different currents to form or synthesize a flexible method that provides important insights into the text, among them: Shukri Ayyad. In his judgment on these critical methods and his dealing with them, he was "not extremist, nor biased to one over the other, and hence he became a free critic capable of moving between them as he wished, and that brings him closer to the integrative approach.." (19)

Among them also: Samar Rouhi Al-Faisal, Abdullah Abu Haifa, Nidal Al-Saleh, Jihad Atta Nafisa, Ahmed Al-Nassaj, Abdel Mohsen Taha Badr, Ziyad Al-Zoubi, Boushusha Boujemaa, Kamal Al-Riyahi, and others. (20) Perhaps Saeed Yaqtin was pointing to this approach by saying: "Wherever I find what helps me approach the text, I employ it.." (21),. Perhaps I will have another opportunity to talk about the advantages of this critical school from which a number of researchers have become repelled, and have lost interest in it.

Footnotes:

(1), Literary Criticism and its Modern Schools: Stanley Hyman, translated by Ihsan Abbas and Muhammad Yusuf Najm, Dar al-Thaqafa, Beirut: 1960, 2/245. (2) Methods of Literary Study in Arabic Literature, Shukri Faisal, Arab Library, Damascus: 1385 AH / 1965 AD, p. 225. (3) Methods of Literary Research: An Analytical and Applied Study, Saad Zhalam, Nahdet Misr Library, Cairo: 1996 AD, p. 232. (4) In Literary Criticism: Abdel Aziz Atiq, Dar al-Nahda al-Arabiya, Beirut: 1972 AD, p. 308. (5) Methods of Literary Study: p. 226. (6) Literary Criticism and its Modern Schools: 2/248. (7) Ibid: 2/250. (8) Flashes of Modernity, Naeem Al-Yafi, Arab Writers Union, Damascus: 1992 AD, 136. (9) Literary Criticism and its Modern Schools: 2/9. (10) Ibid: 2/26. (11), Ibid: 2/255. (12) Ibid. (13) See Muhammad Azzam's words on some critics mixing between a number of methods in his book "Analysis of Literary Discourse in Light of Modern Critical Methods" p. 8. (14) See some of these aspects in "Literary Criticism and its Modern Schools" by Stanley Hyman: 2/251. (15) Ibid: 2/254. (16) Ibid: 2/255. (17) Methods of Literary Study: 227. (18) Article "Integrative Approach in Literary Criticism / Possible and Impossible" Yusuf Waghlisi, Kuwaiti Al-Bayan magazine, Issue 425, December: 2005 AD, p. 10-18. (19) See "Shukri Ayyad" Jamal Muqabala, Egyptian General Book Organization, Literary Critics Series, Cairo: 1997 AD, p. 67. (20) See article "Integrative Approach / Applied Study on the M-poem of Al-Muraqish Al-Asghar" by Munther Kaffafi, Al-Aqiq magazine, Medina Literary Club, Issues/65-66, 1429 AH- 2008 AD, p. 25-48. (21), See the interview with him in Al-Quds newspaper, Issue 2926, Wednesday / 7 October: 1998 AD, 10.