Theory and Criticism: From Plato to Segwick
Summarized and compiled by the members of English 449
at Lycoming College. Updated Fall 2007
Contributors: Gretchen Hause, Laura Koons, Elizabeth McNassor, Casey Spencer, Holly
Wendt, Samantha Volz
***All photos courtesy of www.nndb.com unless otherwise noted***
CLASSICAL CRITICISM
Plato (427-347 BC) Republic
The format of Plato’s Republic, set as a
dialogue between two men, stems from the
influence of Socrates on his work.
“Then the first thing will be to
establish a censorship of the
writers of fiction, and let the
censors receive any tale or fiction
which is good, and reject the bad;
and we will desire mothers and
nurses to tell their children the
authorised ones only.”
In Republic, Plato deals with the idea of
censorship in an organized and civilized State.
Poetry, he says, is a “divine madness,”
something that is natural and cannot be taught,
and should be used only as a moral tool. In Book
II, Plato’s Socrates advocates that children
should only hear moral tales. If they hear of other
people committing crimes or behaving immorally—for example, the behavior of gods
like Zeus—children will believe that proper behavior includes criminal or immoral
action.
“If they would only believe us we would tell them that quarrelling is
unholy, and that never up to this time has there been any quarrel between
citizens; this is what old men and old women should begin by telling
children; and when they grow up, the poets also should be told to compose
for them in a similar spirit.”
He stipulates certain laws that storytellers must follow when writing their tales.
 “God is not the author of all things, but of good only.”
 “The gods are not magicians who transform themselves, neither do
they deceive mankind in any way.”
In Book III, he says that the underworld and afterlife must be portrayed as
pleasant, or else the children will be full of fear and will never be truly brave warriors and
leaders.
“Then we must assume a control over the narrators of this class of tales as
well as over the others, and beg them not simply to revile, but rather to
commend the world below, intimating to them that their descriptions are
untrue, and will do harm to our future warriors”
All artists must be controlled by this type of censorship, especially those who
make music, which goes directly to the soul.
“..musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because
rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul…”
While he says that he does not advocate lies, he is unafraid to omit the truth for
the good of the State.
In Book X, he argues that all artists are only imitators, and are far from the truth,
since they are the third in the chain of making: from God, to the craftsman, to the artist.
Therefore artists—including poets—can never understand the ultimate truth of a subject,
and so cannot be trusted.
“Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things
because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an
image…the imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he
imitates.”
Because they are imitators and wish to be popular, Socrates says, they will imitate
rash and passionate behavior in their works in the name of being entertaining. However,
these behaviors appeal only to the inferior part of man’s soul, the part that is
undisciplined and uneducated, and so poets should be banned from any organized and
civilized state.
Aristotle (384-322 BC) Poetics, Rhetoric
Aristotle believed that people are basically
imitative. Through imitation, they learn lessons even
if the lesson is painful. The purpose of drama is to
arouse fear and pity in the audience and purge the
audience of these emotions, the result of which is
known as catharsis. He believed that this catharsis
made people emotionally stronger. He believed in
the three Unities (time, action, and place). The
Unity of Action mandates that there should be no
subplots and only one main lesson. The Unity of
Time suggests that everything should progress in
real world time. The Unity of Place says that the
action should happen in the same place, or very
close to it.
Horace (65-8 BCE) Ars Poetica
Horace viewed poetry as both an art and a
craft. Horace firmly believed that poetry ought to both
instruct and delight. He established some guidelines
for both poetry and drama. He thought that poetry
ought to have unity and consistency, and that it ought
to stick to a particular subject. He thought that meter
and language should fit both subject and character. He
felt that a poet ought to write what they know and
draw from his life experience. Horace said that a poet
should not try to impress, but rather inform and
entertain. He thought that so far as myths were
concerned, one ought either to follow tradition or
invent something new. Horace believed that a play
should put an audience directly into the action and
should not tell the entire story on stage. The play should consist of five acts. Horace
believed that one should not employ “deus ex machina” as a quick fix for conflict
resolution, solving conflicts by means of the gods. He also believed that the chorus
should play an important role in the play.
Longinus (first century CE) On Sublimity
Longinus’s On Sublimity discusses the idea of the sublime. He argues that
sublimity is not just lofty, elevated writing, but rather something that comes from an
inner genius or passion. He argues that there are five sources of sublimity, two from
natural sources, and two from artistic sources. He states that the sublime comes from the
power to conceive great thoughts (natural). He also thinks that the sublime comes from a
strong or inspired emotion (natural). Artistically, he thinks that the sublime comes from
certain figures of speech or thought. He also thinks that noble diction, use of metaphor,
and dignified or elevated word arrangement contribute to the sublime. Sublimity is a work
that implies that man can transcend the limits of the human condition, and a realization
that there is something more to life than the mundane.
~Photo courtesy of www.erraticimpact.com/~ancient/html/longinus.htm
Quintillian (30-100) Institutio Oratoria
Quintillian discusses tropes, which are
an “artistic alteration of a word or phrase from
its proper meaning to another.” He argues that
some of these tropes aid meaning, and some
are merely ornamental. He discusses the use of
metaphor, synecdoche (a figure of speech in
which part is used for a whole), and metonymy
(a figure of speech which replaces a word with
an object with which it is closely associated) to
create these tropes. He also discusses the use of
figures, which are different from tropes
because they “do not necessarily involve any
alteration of the order or strict sense of words.”
He discusses the figure of thought (a
conception in the mind), and the figure of
speech (an expression of thought which
includes words, diction, expression, style or
language). He says that irony can be associated
either with tropes or figures. He also believes that a poet’s work ought to be moral and
teach virtue.
MEDIEVAL CRITICISM
St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430) On
Christian Doctrine
St. Augustine’s primary concern was
biblical text. He compared the difference
between the figurative and literal interpretations
of the text and preferred the figurative. He
thought that things did not signify, but signs did.
Signs could either be natural (which signify
without intending to, such as smoke signifying
fire), or conventional (where words convey
ideas). Conventional signs can be literal (such as
the word “ox” which signifies a four legged
farm animal), or figurative (which uses a
metaphor of an ox to represent something else).
Thought is the ideal form, followed by spoken
words, which signify ideas, and then the written
word which is a symbol of spoken word. Only
through signs and metaphors can we begin to
express the perfect idea (to St. Augustine, the
Word of God). We can’t describe all things, but
we can relate them to something for deeper
understanding.
Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) Summa
Theologica
Aquinas used a unique form of argument.
He would first pose a yes or no question, and then
offer possible arguments for the “no” position.
After that, he would pose his “yes” argument and
support it. He argued that figurative language
serves no function but to disguise the truth. He
struggled to understand why biblical texts used
this “murky” language. He thought all
interpretations of biblical texts ought to be literal.
Dante Aligheri (1265-1321) Il Convivio, The
Banquet
In Il Convivio, Dante was a proponent of
literature in the vernacular, or national, language. He
thought that poetic language was polysemous, open
to many interpretations. He adapted a four-step
exegesis interpretation to poetry and thought that all
interpretations could exist at once, but a literal
interpretation must always be first. He thought that
poetry must be a moral, instructive tool.
In The Banquet, Dante argues that there are
four ways to understand writing.
*Literal—“the sense which does not go beyond the
strict limits of the letter.” Understanding of writing
means taking every word at its face value only.
*Allegorical—“a truth hidden under a beautiful
fiction.” Understanding includes finding the truth
hidden under the fiction.
*Moral—“for which teachers ought to go as they go
through writings intently to watch for their own profit
and that of their hearers.” Meaning includes finding a
lesson that is taught through the words.
*Anagogic—“above the senses; and this occurs when a writing is
spiritually expounded…gives intimation of higher matters.” Writing
imitates spiritual matters.
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) Genealogy of the Gentile Gods
Boccaccio believed that poetry proceeded from the “bosom of God,” and that a
poet could not be created because poetry is innate. He thought that poets were not
necessarily liars, but they veiled the truth in fiction. Boccacio believed that poetry was
sublime in its effects. It is not the poet’s function to be easy to read or familiar.
Boccaccio believed that through working at poetry, a reader would appreciate it more.
~Photo courtesy of wings.buffalo.edu/litgloss/boccaccio/more.shtml
Christine de Pizan (1365-1429) The Book of the
City of Ladies
De Pizan prefigures many of the main
issues in feminism, which will appear several
centuries after her work. She discusses the
misogynist views of her day, and creates a society
where a person can be accepted for her ideas. She
believes that men should embrace the ideas of
intelligent women, and she does not think that
ignorance is an excuse for wrong ideas. She thinks
that arguments should be based in reason.
RENAISSANCE CRITICISM
Giambattista Giraldi (1504-1573) Discourse on the Composition of Romances
Giraldi was a proponent of the vernacular and national literature. He believed that
poetry should conform to the language it is written in; Tuscan poetry will not be the same
as Greek. He also believed that social conditions could change literature and the context
of criticism. A modern critic, Giraldi disliked excessive allegorizing and was skeptical of
the four-step exegesis interpretation. He was also an innovator of Renaissance Romance
and depicted the “obscene” (murder, etc.) on stage. In direct opposition to Aristotle, he
said that multiple plots in literature are like a well-proportioned body. He said that poetry
should be moral, beautiful - with emphasis on each part not only the whole--and follow
models already utilized in a particular genre.
Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560) The Defense
and Illustration of the French Language
Du Bellay asserts that all language has
one purpose: to signify the mind’s conceptions.
Some languages, however, aren’t as rich as
others. The French language isn’t as rich as the
Latin or Greek because of “the ignorance of our
ancestors.” The French left out the ornaments of
the classical languages; the language is like a
plant that has not yet flowered. He also believes
that translations are insufficient in portraying the
original. A translator may serve those who don’t
know the language, but the delivery or speech
cannot convey the emotion. He states that the
improvement of the French language cannot
happen without the doctrine that comes from the
Greek and Romans.
Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585) A Brief on the Art
of French Poetry
In this work, Ronsard gives instructions for
writing poetry and how the poet should live. He
states that poetry can’t be taught or learned by
rules; that poets are inspired by the divine. Poets
communicate with the divine and translate and
embellish it so others can understand. Ronsard
instructs poets to act kindly and honorably, study
the good poets, excuse no faults of their own,
converse with fellow poets of the day, know their
own language, and learn about other trades. He
states that the invention, or aim, of the poet is to
imitate, invent, and represent things, which are or
may be, in resemblance to truth. Poetry should be
better than the vulgar, but intelligible to everyone
else. A poet should have good disposition, or
“proper placing and ordering of the things
invented.” A poet should also use good elocution
(always using the appropriate word), and attend to invention rather than rhyme. The
skilled poet needs to ignore his audience; it is “better to be in the service of truth than in
the service of opinion.”
Giacopo Mazzoni (1548-1598) On the Defense of the Comedy of Dante
Mazzoni believed that there were three types of objects: the idea (art of
horsemanship - the ruling art), the work (art of bridle making - fabricating art), and the
idol (painting the bridle - imitative art). He placed poetry into the category of idolistic art.
He also said that poetry could be portrayed in two ways. Phantastic, or imaginary, poetry
was truth veiled with fiction. Icastic, or realistic, poetry dealt with the true actions of real
people in a credible manner. Finally, Mazzoni asserted that different types of art all have
their place; comic for the appetite, heroic for the spirit, and tragic for reason.
~Photo courtesy of http://www.phil-fak.uniduesseldorf.de/philo/galerie/neuzeit/mazzon.htm
Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586) An Apology for
Poetry
Sidney is not interested in the rules or
rhetoric of poetry; he sees it as an art form. He
states that there is no better way to spend one’s
time then poetry because it teaches and moves the
best. He also stresses that poets are not liars
because the poet “affirms nothing and therefore
never lieth.” He believes that poetry does not
corrupt man, man corrupts poetry. Answering to
Plato’s objections to poetry, Sidney argues that
poets are makers, men who use their minds to
improve on what they see. Historians only concern
themselves with what is, and the ideas of
philosophers are obscure. Because poets write
what may and should be, they are closer to the
ideal forms than others.
ENLIGHTENMENT CRITICISM
John Dryden (1631-1700) An Essay of Dramatic
Poesy, Preface to Troilus and Cressida, and
Preface to Sylvae
Dryden believes the purpose of tragedy, which
comes from fear and pity, is to purge our emotions. To
“instruct delightfully” is the purpose of all poetry.
Through examples, tragedy does this and is thus
superior to philosophy and history. The poetic hero
must possess some “natural goodness.” In discussing
translations, Dryden says the translator’s job is to make
the author as charming as possible. He must understand
the mother language before he translates, or it won’t be
graceful.
Joseph Addison (1672-1719) The
Spectator, No. 62 & 412
In The Spectator, No. 62, Addison
discusses the idea of wit. Wit brings ideas
together, while judgment separates them.
Addison says wit must delight and surprise,
combining ideas dissimilar in nature.
Addison has a negative view of false wit, or
resemblance of words such as word play
and puns. He also mentions mixed wit,
which is part resemblance of ideas and part
resemblance of words - a pun in a larger
witty idea. In The Spectator, No. 412,
Addison is concerned with imagination and
beauty. He says that things outside
ourselves bring pleasure through the senses
and “new and uncommon” things break the
monotony of life. In discussing beauty,
Addison states “nothing…makes its way
more directly to the soul.” Beauty “strikes
the mind with an inward joy, and spreads a cheerfulness and delight.” Art can accomplish
this same effect by reminding the reader of an initial experience with beauty.
Alexander Pope (1688-1744) An Essay on Criticism
Pope states that criticism has strayed too far from
the Greek and Roman past; it should return to the classics.
Critics should use nature as a frame of judgment because
it is universal. Truth comes from reason and critics should
seek the truth in a work. Pope also says that a work
should be moral, and that for every work, there is a
“perfect” critic who will see all parts as they contribute to
the whole (not just parts and fragments).
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) The Rambler, No.
4 [On Fiction], Preface to Shakespeare,
Lives of the English Poets [On
Metaphysical Wit]
Johnson feels that fiction is a moral
learning tool. “Bad” characters should never be
presented and vice should always horrify and elicit
disgust. Familiar histories are more useful as
teaching tools than grander schemes and
metaphors. In Preface to Shakespeare, Johnson
says that nothing can be judged until it is
compared with like works. Shakespeare is the
“poet of nature,” using practical examples to
instruct by pleasing. He has no heroes, but fully
human characters; he approximates the remote and
familiarizes the wonderful. In Lives of the English
Poets, he says that wit must change with fashion.
Though ideas are often new, they are seldom natural. One cannot be born a metaphysical
poet--it is a man-made construct.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Critique of Judgment
Kant focused on beauty, both on what makes
something beautiful and the standards for recognizing
the beautiful. The beautiful mixes both the sensible
and non-sensible on an objective level, as opposed to
something which is “good” (useful) or “agreeable” (a
matter of personal preference). Kant states that beauty
brings together imagination (nature) and reason
(mind) and is therefore superior to the sublime
because beauty cannot be explained or reasoned; the
sublime separates, rather than unites, the mind and
nature. Also, because of beauty's superior nature, it
should always be moral and never tainted with
mundane purposes.
Edmund Burke (1729-1797) A Philosophical
Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of
the Sublime and Beautiful
Burke believed there should be a basic standard
of taste. Senses perceive things in the same way,
and imagination can only vary and interpret what
it is given by the senses. Therefore, natural taste
should be the same for everyone. It is acquired
taste that differs. Burke was also interested in the
philosophical and physical nature of the human
response to the exalted and fearful in both art and
nature. He felt the sublime was different from
beauty in that it produced the strongest emotion
in which the mind is capable of feeling, including
fear and terror. Beauty is small and finite,
whereas the sublime is intense and awe-inspiring.
Gotthold Ephraim
Lessing (1729-1781)
Laocoön
In Laocoön, Lessing examined the relationship between
painting and poetry, arriving at the conclusion that the two are
alike in aim and effect but different in means (visual vs. verbal).
Like Aristotle, Lessing agreed that poetry should draw on action,
not imitation of forms, as poetry is an art of time, not space, as is
painting. Painting can imitate action, but only through bodies;
poetry can imitate bodies, but only through action. He believed
truth to be greater than beauty, and realized that it was sometimes
necessary to sacrifice beauty in order to represent the truth more
clearly.
Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) On the
Aesthetic Education of Man
In the letters that comprise On the
Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller asks the
question of whether one can concern oneself
with art when politics are unstable. However, he
believed that politics could be righted by the
understanding of the beautiful (aesthetics). He
also questioned whether man was turning away
from Nature/Imagination to Reason, while
noting that the Moderns focus on one
specialized field and the Greeks considered the
whole and universal, not limiting one person to
one field of study. Finally, concerning the nature of art, Schiller proposed that art comes
from a better, higher place and is therefore “immune to human arbitrariness.” Because art
represents something of a higher power, it is therefore the artist’s duty to ignore the
opinion of the times and direct humanity toward good.
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-1797) Vindication of the
Rights of Woman
In Chapter II, “The Prevailing Opinion of a
Sexual Character Discussed,” Wollstonecraft asserts
that women are taught that the only thing they need in
life is beauty so that a man will want to care for them.
However, she argues that because women are equal to
men in the fact that they have souls, they should also
be equal in their education. Like men, they should be
taught to achieve virtues, which can only be reached
through reason. Therefore, women must be educated
so that they can think, reason, and thus find virtue.
Wollstonecraft says that women are educated
the same way soldiers are. They receive very little
instruction, and then form their world views based on
their observations. The difference, she says, is that soldiers have the freedom to see more
of the world, and so women still come out at a disadvantage.
Wollstonecraft says that love is a great thing, but should not make a slave out of
women, nor should it make them forget their true goals. Learning only how to please
their husbands will eventually make the men bored, and they will stray. However,
learning respectability and reason will keep their husbands’ love.
Germaine Necker de Staël (1766-1817) On Literature
Considered in Its Relationship to Social Institutions
In the section called “On Women Writers,”
French writer de Staël says that women are so
repressed, men are more likely to forgive them for
shirking their womanly duties than for having a real
talent or virtue.
In monarchies, women writers have to fear
ridicule. An attempt to change their station in life is
seen as ridiculous. Publishing a work makes a woman
completely dependent on public opinion, and everyone
takes advantage of it.
In republics, women writers have to fear hatred.
After the French Revolution, the men of France tried to
limit women even more, leaving the women powerless
to perform even the most “natural” of womanly duties, like educating children. Keeping
women uneducated, de Staël argues, will not limit their passions, but will misdirect them.
They will lose the power they have to bring humanity and generosity to topics like
politics.
Instead of trying to keep women uneducated so they can’t see how bad their
station is, men should work to improve the stations. De Staël states that a famous woman
would be so feared that she would be blamed for everything wrong with the world. She
would have no virtue or good deeds to back her (because she was unable to perform any),
and men would openly attack her because she dared step outside her station.
ROMANTIC CRITICISM
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831)
Phenomenology of Spirit; Lectures on
Fine Art
In Hegel's Phenomenology, he used the
dialectic to arrive at truth through the
consideration of a thesis, development of an
antithesis, and a union of the two in a synthesis.
He concentrates on the idea of “self,” in which
we determine our “self-consciousness” by
meeting something that is “not-self,” i.e.
another person; it is only through relationships
with others do we have a “self.” Hegel
illustrates this with his Slave/Master
relationship: the Master demands recognition
from the Slave, but refuses to give recognition
to others. Since recognition is only valuable
when given freely, the Master feels doubt in his
“self-hood.” In reality, the Master's “self-hood”
is mediated by the Slave and the Slave is an
independent entity. This arrives at the synthesis
that each person is a self, and there must be
mutual recognition/acknowledgement to have
“self-hood.” In Lectures on Fine Art, Hegel also touches on consciousness, but here on
the consciousness of the “spirit,” which can only be reached by philosophy. Art gives this
“spirit” a concrete form. Art is divided into categories: symbolic art, which is tied to
nature but falls short of the sublime and therefore fails; classical art, which focuses on the
human form and fails because it defines “spirit” as something particular and human; and
Romantic art, which moves both artist and audience to an “inwardness of selfconsciousness” and therefore reaches sublimity and succeeds. Because of his focus on
art as the reflection of the inner spirit, Hegel is considered the champion of the
Romantics.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) Preface to
Lyrical Ballads
The major focus of Wordsworth revolved
around his view of poetry as “the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings.” Because of this,
poetry should break from rules in favor of
inspiration from emotions and refrain from being
technical; poets should write in the common
language instead of elevated speech, as prose with
meter. For subject matter, the poet should look to
the common man because the emotions of the
common man are more powerful- "raw simplicity."
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) A
Defence of Poetry
Shelley wrote his Defence of Poetry in
refutation of The Four Ages of Poetry by
Peacock. He believed that the poet, although
he transcends time, is judged by his
contemporaries; nonetheless, the poet should
not be a servant to politics/times but should
introduce new ideas arranged and ordered in a
beautiful way. By the same token, he
attributed poetry to divine inspiration (moral
tool), but because of the nature of language,
the full essence of the divinity can't be
transcribed onto paper. Poetry is infinite, of
many layers, and therefore poetry will endure.
Shelley also referred to the utility of poetry; it
produces both durable and transitory pleasure,
the former of which cannot be defined, yet
should be the kind produced by poetry.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) The
American Scholar, The Poet
In The American Scholar, Emerson
discusses the role of the books of the past, saying
that the spirit of the scholar is influenced by
works of the past; the best of those propel us
toward the truth, but books cannot convey truth.
Therefore, each age must write its own books to
propel society toward truth, which humans
naturally seek. However, he cautions that literary
works are not perfect and our love of our heroes
may be deluding. In The Poet, Emerson states
that the poet is representative of complete men, half as himself and half as expression. He
is a natural “sayer” (represents and delivers beauty to the people), and once that beauty is
expressed, it becomes a new and higher beauty. Symbols also express beauty, so we are
all essentially poets because we all use symbols. “We are symbols.” The poet can help us
get closer to the truth; ascension is the aim of poetry.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) The Poetic Principle, The
Philosophy of Composition
In The Poetic Principle, Poe sets down his
curriculum for a true poem.
“I hold that a long poem does not exist. I
maintain that the phrase, a long poem, is
simply a flat contradiction in terms.”
Poe asserts that poetry is defined by its ability to
elevate the soul, to provide the reader with a sense of
excitement. Therefore, to have a long poem, a writer
would have to keep the reader at a high level of
excitement all the way through. Since excitement is
temporary, Poe says, there is an “absolute impossibility of
maintaining for it, during perusal, the amount of
enthusiasm which that critical dictum would demand.”
Therefore, a long poem simply doesn’t exist.
He uses the example of Milton’s Paradise Lost to
prove his point. If a reader tries to read all of Paradise
Lost as one continuous poem, he alternates feeling the excitement inherent in great poetry
with a depressed disappointment at times. However, if a reader takes the epic to be a
series of good, small poems connected by passages that are merely mediocre, it is more
satisfying. In terms of Homer’s epic The Iliad, Poe says that it’s easy to make the
assumption that it was meant to be told as a series of small, lyrical poems.
“If, at any time, any very long poem were popular in reality, which I
doubt, it is at least clear that no very long poem will ever be popular
again.”
Poe states that poetry should be judged based on its true quality, on the
impression it makes on the reader, not on its length or the time and effort the author put
into it.
“If, by ‘sustained effort,’ any little gentleman has accomplished an epic,
let us frankly commend him for the effort—if this indeed be a thing
commendable—but let us forbear praising the epic on the effort’s
account.”
While there’s no such thing as a long poem, Poe warns against making poetry too
short.
“A very short poem, while now and then producing a brilliant or vivid,
never produces a profound or enduring effect.”
He likens poetry to a stamp. Pushing a stamp down briefly on wax will leave only
a superficial mark. If it is pushed in for a while, however, the imprint is long-lasting and
truly meaningful. A poem must be a stamp to public attention, and last long enough to
make an impression.
Poe faults the idea that ultimate goal of poetry is truth, and that poetry for poetry’s
sake is a weak way of writing.
“…would we permit ourselves to look into our own souls, we should
immediately there discover that under the sun there neither exists nor can
exist any work more thoroughly dignified—more supremely noble than
this very poem—this poem per se—this poem which is a poem and
nothing more—this poem written solely for poem’s sake.”
Above all, Poe says, mankind has an inherent need to look for the beautiful, both
in the regular world and in terms of higher, more spiritual beauty. While poetry can serve
other purposes, such as morality, truth, or duty, the ultimate source of all poetry is man’s
search for true beauty.
“I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of
beauty.”
Similarly, while poetry can deal with any theme, true, pure, spiritual love is its
ultimate theme.
For Poe in The Philosophy of Composition, the overall effect of a poem is of the
utmost importance, and similarly, beauty is not a quality of a work, but an effect of the
whole. In his search for the ideal poem, Poe set out some guidelines: 1) the appropriate
work can be read in one sitting, about 108 lines 2) the use of a refrain and the monotone
are good things to utilize in poetry 3) the sounds of “o” and “r” are the most agreeable 4)
a sad tone is the most beautiful kind, and the death of a beautiful woman is both the most
poetic and beautiful subject for a poem, and, finally, 5) the poet should compose his
ending first so that he knows where he is going with the poem.
VICTORIAN CRITICISM
Karl Marx (1818-1883) and Frederich Engels (1820-1895)
Marx and Engels did not directly deal with literary theory or criticism; their work
was more a social comment that led to Marxist Criticism (among other things). They
argue against a capitalist society and examine the condition of the people caught in its
clutches. They are concerned with the materialistic state of society. They talk about the
danger of symbolic wealth (money) becoming more valuable than goods. In pre-industrial
times, people bartered goods to get food and other goods, and everyone made their goods
themselves. In that society, symbolic wealth was not very important. With
industrialization, the bartering system broke down. Symbolic wealth caused huge
differences between the upper and lower classes. People started working in factories on
assembly lines only making part of a good. They could not even hold up a manufactured
item and say that they made it. Workers were oppressed, and Marx and Engels
sympathized with their condition. They argued that for every luxury the bourgeoisie
enjoys, another human suffers.
Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) The Salon of 1859, The
Painter of Modern Life
In Part III, “The Queen of Faculties,” Baudelaire deals
with the idea of reality versus imagination. He says that people
who are great at analysis and summarizing tasks often lack
imagination.
“It is imagination that has taught man the moral
meaning of color, of outline, of sound, and of
perfume. In the beginning of the world it created
analogy and metaphor…it creates a new world,
it produces the sensation of new.”
Even diplomats, Baudelaire says, benefit from imagination in order to picture the
future. Virtue itself is fed from imagination.
“Imagination is the queen of truth, and the possible is one of the provinces
of truth. It has a definite relationship with the infinite.”
In Part IV, “The Rule of Imagination,” Baudelaire says that nature is only a
dictionary. It helps artists to put together their works, but it is imagination that truly glues
things together. People without imagination, he says, are banal and ordinary.
“Through too much looking, they forget to feel and think…The whole
visible universe is but a storehouse of images and signs to which
imagination will give a relative place and value; it is a sort of food which
the imagination must digest and transform.”
In The Painter of Modern Life, the painter’s concern is the present and not the
past. Beauty is a double composition. It is made of the eternal element that is hard to
label and the relative/circumstantial element, consisting of the age (current religion,
culture, fashion). Beauty must contain these two elements. “Genius is recovered
childhood at will.” This artist (the “anonymous” Guys) sees everything in a state of
newness. This man is a spectator of life--and searching for modernity. The body doesn’t
mirror the soul; dress your subjects in garments of the present. The dandy is positive
because he is an item of the times--a distinct person searching for personal originality.
Cosmetics are also good. Nature gives us both positive and negative instincts, so we have
reason to guard against some of nature’s negative instincts. Thus, religion and nature are
artificial, just like make-up. Face painting represents life.
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) The Function of
Criticism at the Present Time, Culture and
Anarchy
Matthew Arnold believed foremost that the
critic should "see the object as in itself it really is,"
and do so in a disinterested (objective) way in
order to know and spread the best ideas and
thoughts throughout the world. This included
refuting all existing religious works in order to
reach for the ideal, not accepting less than
perfection. Arnold placed the creative process as
the highest function of man, but criticism fills in
when creative works are not possible; atmosphere
influences the creative process immensely
(Elizabethan England, Pericles' Athens). In
Culture and Anarchy, Arnold examines the idea of
culture as the study of perfection, focusing on a
harmony over all beauty and human worth without
emphasizing one thing over another.
Walter Pater (1839-1894) Studies in the History
of the Renaissance
Pater coined the phrase “art for art's sake.”
He thought that the most important quality a critic
must have is not to posses some abstract
definition of beauty, but to posses the power of
being deeply moved by beautiful things. The
function of the aesthetic critic is to determine
what virtue something has that makes it beautiful
and under what conditions that beauty is
experienced. Renaissance art was an “outbreak of
human spirit,” and the artists of this era did not
live isolated lives but “breathed common air, and
caught light and heat from each other's thoughts.”
Theories should not take away the enjoyment of
art; we should always be seeking the beautiful.
Stephane Mallarmé (1842-1898) Crisis in Poetry
Mallarmé believed that literature was in a time of
crisis. Poetry and prose is the same thing: “There is verse
as soon as diction is stressed; there is rhythm as soon as
style is emphasized.” Poetry goes through periods of
“gleaming” and “fading” and is constantly changing, or
“recasting.” Beauty of traditional forms is still valid on
“important occasions.” Language is imperfect and the
sound of words does not always match the meaning.
Poetry is “an attempt to make up for the failure of
language.” Realism cannot fully express reality; speech is
allusion. You must divorce the author from work.
Henry James (1843-1916) The Art of Fiction
James believed that art, both the fiction and author,
should never apologize for itself. Art should never concede
that it is fictitious because the aim of fiction is to represent
life. “Literature should be either instructive or amusing.”
The novel ought to be “good” but it is impossible to define
“good” in the moral sense. We can only demand that
literature be interesting and not morally edifying. The only
way to create good art is to give it complete freedom.
Characters should be realistic. The writer should work from
experience as much as possible.
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) On Truth and Lying in a NonMoral Sense
Human intellect is purposeless within nature; it is only
important to humans. Truth is a way of designating that something is
the same everywhere. Language allows people to perform this
manipulation and to lie. Humans desire only the pleasant
consequences of truth, not truth itself. Language is a mere copy of
nervous stimulations and sounds and is arbitrary--it cannot express
true forms. For example: What is the meaning of the word leaf? All
leaves are different; the word and concept of leaf is made by
dropping the differences between them. Therefore, a word can never
fully express reality. Truths are illusions.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Preface to The Picture of
Dorian Gray, The Critic As Artist
The artist creates beautiful things. There is “no
such thing as a moral or immoral book.” All art is
useless. In The Critic as Artist, Wilde said that criticism
breeds new forms, or creation “repeats itself.” It is NOT
easier to talk about something than to do something.
Criticism is an art, both creative and independent. The
critic “works with new materials and puts them into a
form that is at once new and delightful.” Criticism is not
expressible, but impressive. The critic can bring to
beauty whatever he likes, and each art has a critic
(music, acting, etc.). People will turn to criticism rather
than art.
Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) Course in General Linguistics
De Saussure's theory rested in language, divided into three parts: 1) le language,
or “body language,” 2) la langue, or the specific name given to a language (the English
language), 3) la parole, or speech. Language as we know it can only exist as part of a
“social contract,” otherwise the signifiers (words) represent different signifies (object) to
each person, or mean nothing at all. Because of this, language or linguistic signs must be
studied independently of speaking because language can be classified as human
phenomena. The linguistic sign (signifier) is NOT Adamic, simply giving names to
things, nor does it resemble the thing it signifies. It unites a concept and sound-image.
Because words represent concepts, only language can give shape/order to thought, and
only by using words can thought be coherent. De Saussure also touched on the idea of
synonyms in that they limit each other to specific shades of meaning. However, de
Saussure’s main point is that in languages there are only differences.
~Photo courtesy of www.jezykoznawcy.uksw.edu.pl/saussure.html
Sigmund Freud (1865-1939) The
Interpretation of Dreams, The “Uncanny”,
Fetishism
As children we love one parent and
hate another (Oedipus complex). Oedipus is a
tragedy of destiny because its perseverance as
a drama exists in our recognition of the force
of destiny--in other words, we each relate to
Oedipus. Our dreams convince us this is true;
we have the same desire/hate has Oedipus.
Freud analyzes Hamlet's procrastination as an
Oedipus complex. The meaning of dreams is
found in the latent content (dream meaning)
and not manifest content (dream action).
Within our dreams, condensation,
displacement and representation occurs,
which all act to repress the latent content or
true meaning. “Uncanny” means homely or
familiar or concealed/secret. Freud associates
this with repression. Freud uses this definition
to analyze “The Sandman,” a story in which a
young man, Nathaniel, is told his eyes will be
stolen in the night if he doesn't sleep. Freud claims that Nathaniel actually has a
castration complex. Fetishism results from representation. Some men cannot accept that
their mother does not have a penis, so they will create “representatives”--hair, fingers-which function as a sexual organ.
WEB DuBois (1868-1963) Criteria of Negro Art
DuBois did not “care a damn for any art
that is not used for propaganda.” He believed that
the main purpose of art was propaganda. He
believed that an artist should use beauty as a way to
expose truth to set the world right, and the eternal
and perfect beauty was above truth. He believed
that the world was distorted away from beauty, and
that the variety and possibility of beauty was
endless. He gave four very different examples of
what is beautiful (architecture, art, nature, and
music); suggesting that beauty can be seen in all
things, and therefore, everything has the possibility
of being art. He says that the “artist's tools” are
truth and goodness. He calls truth the “highest handmaid of imagination,” and argues
(like Shelley) that it is the greatest vehicle of understanding. He says that goodness leads
to justice, honor, and what is “right.” He says that it should be used to gain sympathy of
human interest, not just integration of races, but a fuller understanding of the condition of
fellow man.
Carl Jung (1875-1961) On the Relation of Analytical
Psychology to Poetry
The practice of art is a psychological activity and
can be approached from the psychological angle. Only the
artistic process, not the outcome, can be analyzed in this
way. Poetry is currently interpreted on an elementary
level. For example, just because a poet writes about his
personal relationships does not mean we understand all of
his poetry. Jung claims that Freud’s technique is based
only on what we repress, but Jung believes repression is
normal and Freud incorrectly calls clues pointing to the
unconscious symbols. The symbol is an intuitive idea--an
expression. A symbol is always a challenge. When the
poet is controlled by the unconscious, symbols are denser.
The source of art is the “collective unconscious,”--the
“inborn possibility of ideas.”
Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) Literature and
Revolution
Trotsky believed that art was not selfcontained, or separate from politics--art is a matter of
ideology. He commented against formalism and
futurism. He criticized formalists for being narrow
and superficial. He argued that futurists are
disconnected from the social aspects of the time. He
thought it is important that new cultural movements
should not reject history and the culture of the past,
but that they must use it to grow in tradition. He
believed that through Marxism we can gain an
explanation of the origins of trends and developments in the arts. His biggest contribution
to Marxism is his idea of “permanent revolution.” The idea behind this is that in order for
a revolution to succeed, it cannot occur in only one country, but must “spill over” to other
nations as well.
MODERNIST CRITICISM
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) A Room of One's Own
What if Shakespeare had a gifted sister? Woolf
explains that she wouldn't be allowed to use her talent
and would eventually kill herself. Women who were
probably creative geniuses were considered possessed
or witches. Women in literature are seen through their
relationships with/to men. This “impoverish[es]
literature.” Most of the great works would be
impossible if men were seen only through their
relationship with/to women. There are “two sexes in the
mind corresponding to the two sexes in the body.” A
normal state of being is when these two sexes exist
comfortable together in the mind. Men typically only
write with the “male side.” Poetry should have a
“mother and as well as a father.”
Gyorgy Lukács (1885-1971) Realism in Balance
Lukács was a Marxist aesthetic. He was critical of capitalism; he believed
capitalism drove social elements apart toward independence. Expressionism and
Impressionism focus only on “immediate sense of perceptions” and have become a
“passive depiction of alimentation under capitalism.” Literature should work to bring to
light social problems and possible solutions--realist literature does this. Literature should
create representative, “type” characters. Great realist authors (i.e. Shakespeare) should be
accessible to everyone.
~Photo courtesy of www.answers.com
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) Tradition and the Individual Talent;
The Metaphysical Poets
In Tradition, Eliot emphasizes that tradition is NOT
static, but that things that have worked, been proven, need to
be remade in a fresh way. Tradition also encompasses the
“historical sense,” or a perception of the “pastness of the
past,” in which a writer must write with all of the ages in the
back of his mind; however, the writer's own times must also
play a part in his work. Art must change with social
conditions, yet cannot exist alone; it must always be judged in
comparison with all works previously done. Art for Elliot is
the “extinction of personality.” In The Metaphysical Poets,
Eliot spends much of his time refuting Johnson's claim that
the metaphysics yoke together ideas that are simply too
incongruous to be poetic, stating that though Johnson may be
right at times, much of the metaphysical poetry is clear and elegant. Eliot especially
praises Donne and Racine for looking into “the heart, cerebral cortex, nervous system,
etc,” (they dug deep). However, Eliot does respect Johnson's era, stating that Johnson's
critiques stand as part of Johnson's time and context.
John Crowe Ransom (1888-1974) Criticism, Inc.
There are three “trained performers” who have what the
critic needs. First, the artist is able to recognize “good art” and
his understanding is intuitive. Second, the philosopher must be
able to understand the function of arts. Third, the university
professor will lead critical activity. Crowe emphasized “the text
itself!” Critics must eliminate five things from their criticism:
personal registrations, synopsis and paraphrase, historical
studies, linguistic studies, and moral studies.
Judith Butler (b. 1956) Imitation and Gender Insubordination
“The prospect of being anything, even for pay,
has always produced in me a certain anxiety, for
‘to be’ gay, ‘to be’ lesbian seems to be more
than a simple injunction to become who or what
I already am.”
Butler was asked to give a presentation at Yale
University in 1989 about being a lesbian and a gay theorist.
She spends the first part of her essay discussing the problem of
theorizing as a lesbian. At first, she is reluctant to even accept
the title of “gay theorist.”
“…identity categories tend to be instruments of
regulatory regimes, whether as the normalizing
categories of oppressive structures or as the
rallying points for a liberatory contestation of that very oppression.”
What does it mean to be a lesbian theorist? Is she any different than other
theorists? Does her theory somehow change when someone discovers that she is a
lesbian? And what is a lesbian, anyway?
“It is precisely the pleasure produced by the instability of those categories
(gay and lesbian) which sustains the various erotic practices that make me
a candidate for the category to begin with.”
Butler next deals with the idea of “coming out.” She questions what is hidden and
what is revealed in the process of coming out of the closet.
“Who or what is it that is ‘out,’ made manifest and fully disclosed, when
and if I reveal myself as a lesbian?...Can sexuality even remain sexuality
once it submits to a criterion of transparency and disclosure, or does it
perhaps cease to be sexuality precisely when the semblance of full
explicitness is achieved?...Sexuality is never fully ‘expressed’ in a
performance or practice…Part of what constitutes sexuality is precisely
that which does not appear and that which, to some degree, can never
appear.”
When a homosexual officially comes out of the closet, Butler says, he or she
enters a new closet in order to keep within the expectations of being “out.” She continues
to questions the true definition of hetero- and homosexual.
“Is it not possible to maintain pursue heterosexual identifications and aims
within homosexual practice, and homosexual identifications and aims
within heterosexual practices?...there is no necessarily common element
among lesbians, except perhaps that we all know something about how
homophobia works against women…”
Butler also deals with how much being a lesbian defines her. Repetitively trying
to define her “I” as a lesbian makes it even more unstable, she says.
“…does or can the ‘I’ ever repeat itself, cite itself faithfully, or is there
always a displacement from its former moment that establishes the
permanently non-self-identical status of that ‘I’ or it’s ‘being lesbian’?”
How can she be the exact same person at different times? How much does “being
a lesbian” really effect who she is as a whole? She also argues that the identity of gay and
lesbian is partly defined by the heterosexual community through its attempts to obliterate
the groups.
“Ought such threats of obliteration dictate the terms of the political
resistance to them, and if they do, do such homophobic efforts to that
extent win the battle from the start?”
There is a difference, however, between the way the heterosexual community
oppresses gays and the way they treat lesbians. There is an overt oppression and
attempted obliteration of gays; however, they exclude lesbians as a whole.
“With contemporary U.S. politics, there are a vast number of ways in
which lesbianism in particular is understood as precisely that which cannot
or dare not be…in a sense, the lesbian is not even produced within this
discourse as a prohibited object….Can the exclusion from ontology itself
become a rallying point for resistance?”
Heterosexuality, she says, sets itself as the true original of human sexuality, and
so homosexuality is seen as some sort of bad mocking of the original product. However,
Butler argues that heterosexuality spends so much time imitating itself in an attempt at
reaffirmation that it fails to stand for anything true at all.
“…compulsory heterosexual identities, those ontologically consolidated
phantasms of ‘man’ and ‘woman,’ are theatrically produced effects that
posture as grounds, origins, the normative measure of the real.”
Heterosexuality, she says, assumes the existence of homosexuality, and so in
order for the former to know of the latter, doesn’t homosexuality have to be the original?
How could the original know of the existence of the copy?
“…(the) imitative effect of gay identities works neither to copy nor to
emulate heterosexuality, but rather, to expose heterosexuality as an
incessant and panicked imitation of its own naturalized idealization…That
it (heterosexuality) can never eradicated that risk (homosexuality) attests
to its profound dependency upon the homosexuality that it seeks fully to
eradicated and never can or that it seeks to make second, but which is
always already there as a prior possibility.”
The insistence of repetition in heterosexuality, as well as the hetero obsession
with trying to destroy homosexuality, only affirms the power and necessity of
homosexuality, and proves that one cannot live without the other, she says.
Butler next tackles the idea of where attachment comes from. She defines
“psychic mimes” as attachment to people who have been loved and lost. On the other
hand, “primary mimetism” is forming attachments based on the possibility of the loss
love.
“…the self only becomes the self on the condition that is has suffered a
separation…a loss which is suspended and provisionally resolved through
a melancholic incorporation of some ‘Other’.”
Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (b. 1950) Epistemology of the Closet
“…an understanding of virtually any aspect of modern Western culture
must be, not merely incomplete, but damaged in its central substance to
the degree that it does not incorporate a critical analysis of modern
homo/heterosexual definition…”
Sedgwick defines two views of homosexual studies: “minoritizing view,” which
assumes that such study is an issue only for “a small, distinct, relatively fixed
homosexual minority;” and “universalizing view,” which says that the studies effect the
lives of people across all sexualities. Views on sexuality as a whole, she says, changed at
around the turn into the twentieth century.
“What was new from the turn of the century was the world-mapping by
which every given person, just as he or she was necessarily assignable to a
male or a female gender, was now considered necessarily assignable as
well to a homo- or a hetero-sexuality, a binarized identity that was full of
implications, however confusing, for even the ostensibly least sexual
aspects of personal existence.”
The idea of coming out of the closet, Sedgwick says, are almost exclusively
related to speech acts that can be revealing and explicit.
“’Closetedness’ itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act
of a silence…The speech acts that coming out, in turn, can comprise are as
strangely specific. And they may have nothing to do with the acquisition
of new information.”
In dealing with homosexual studies, she says, ignorance is even more powerful
than knowledge.
“…the fact that silence is rendered as pointed and performative as speech,
in relations around the closet, depends on and highlights more broadly the
fact that ignorance is as potent and as multiple a thing there is as
knowledge.”
The lack of understanding people have of sexuality and other topics, such as
AIDS and rape, leads to immediate but powerful discrimination and stereotyping of those
involved. It is a type of satisfaction, she says, that the enemy gains his power from
ignorance instead of knowledge, but it still does not change their control.
“It is a rather amazing fact that, of the very many dimensions along which
the genital activity of one person can be differentiated from that of another
(dimensions that include preference for certain acts, certain zones or
sensations, certain physical types, a certain frequency, certain symbolic
investments, certain relations of age or power, a certain species, a certain
number of participants, etc. etc. etc.), precisely one, the gender of the
object choice, emerged from the turn of the century, and has remained as
the dimension denoted by the now ubiquitous category of “’sexual
orientation’.”
The strong lines drawn between homosexual and heterosexual people, she says,
have basically formed a line dividing two species of human beings. Pressure has been
gathering to destroy or discredit one of the two choices, and so has led to the conflict
between them. However, Sedgwick argues that the two are completely inseparable; they
rely on one another in order to continue to exists: neither is superior, but by trying to
make the other inferior, it gains credential. Neither side is fully and clearly defined, so the
battle rages on.
“…contests for discursive power can be specified as competitions for the
material or the rhetorical leverage required to se the terms of, and to profit
in some way from, the operations of such an incoherence of definition.”
~Photo courtesy of proxy.arts.uci.edu