This paper mainly takes four schools of criticism into account to make clear the concept of ‘form’ and ‘content’. No doubt it has been debated too much from Plato onwards. Formalists (New Critics included) put premium on diction. In fact, they exclusively hold that the ‘form’ dictates ‘content’ and as such ‘content’ is at the mercy of ‘form’. They examine especially poetry and its constitutive components; for instance, meter, rhyme scheme, rhythm, figures, syntax, motifs, styles, and conventions, etc. 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’ is by and large 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 they prefer to lay 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 doesn’t take much interest in style, form or technique. It simply analyzes 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.

This present paper is an attempt to focus on the chequered career of ‘form’ and ‘content’ and their relationship in literary criticism. It has been hot commodity in literary criticism since Plato down to Marxist literary criticism chiefly. Simply ‘content’ means what is said and ‘form’ the way it is said. M H Abrams writes that ‘form’ is not simply a fixed container, like a bottle, into which the ‘content’ or subject matter of a work is poured (Abrams, 2007). The observation implies that ‘form’ undergoes change according to the writer’s formal choice. By ‘formal choice’, I mean, choice of sonnet form, ballad form, etc., broadly, forms of novel, short story, drama, and poetry.

For instance, if a scholar wants to pour his content into a sonnet, he has to comply with certain rules of the sonnet form. This means that ‘form’ regulates ‘content’. It is fallacious. ‘Form’ no way should be allowed to overcome ‘content’; instead there should be architectonic relationship between ‘form and ‘content’. Both are inseparable.

English Studies Journal, Intra-Psychic Defense Mechanisms, Anita Desai, Humanistic Psychoanalyst, Neurotic Development, Familial Obligations, Biological Limitations, Psychological Limitations, Foreign Universities, English Governesses.