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Is a Critique Personal Criticism?

"To offer a critique, is not necessarily criticism. To be a critic does not necessarily infer or offer disagreement. "
Throughout the ages, writers have been criticized with much attention, vigour and attitude. Critiques are bitterly received at times. As dreamers, storytellers, poets, providers of ideas, recorders of history, or even carriers of the torch of change, it is virtually guaranteed that a majority of writers can expect to have their works critiqued directly, or even receive personal criticism precipitated by their works.

Being critiqued should hardly then be a surprise to a mature writer. As any original thinker will similarly do, a writer, when commenting upon society, exposing human foibles, demanding change, or even offering subtle but positive suggestion, will draw comment and criticism. New ideas and tinkering with the status quo, successfully or not, may incite substantial wrath, fear, and anxiety, or even disbelief, the latter strangely mixed at times with respect and admiration. Writers are not alone. Consider that critics themselves are similarly criticized.

Other than the inevitability and sometimes misplaced, disjointed, and oft-times arrogant extremism of a minority of professional literary critics railing about whining, self-centred writers and the reaction of those individuals to the well-earned diatribes, the majority of writers quietly and bravely persist.
Writers continue to effect change in civilization by tiny increments, merely by instinctively doing what they feel they must do. Their critics, in turn, reciprocate by doing what they do best, acting as a counter-balance, pointing out errata or flawed premise, suggesting alternative approaches, and invariably adding commentary. Hopefully, the overall result is the improvement in the quality of the writing community via the building of a sensible, logical critique of the written word.

A simple critique honestly offered may evaluate in a detailed, analytical way the writing style, the appropriate use of language, the comprehension of the subject premise, and may also contest or offer comments on the societal value of the written article.
A more complicated literary 'critique' by it's very nature should really include an arms-length evaluation of the premise itself and test the validity of the work. A critique may also be a convoluted analysis covering many different aspects of an article, but not comment upon any facet of authorship or test the validity

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