Thy Literaria: October 2011

Arnold

Victorian Criticism:

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Important works in Criticism: Preface to poems, 1853, Essays in Criticism (2 very imp essays are The Function of criticism at the Present Time in the first series and The Study of Poetry in the second series), Culture and Anarchy

Main ideas/synopsis of The Function of criticism at the Present Time

Arnold’s idea of Criticism and its function

While criticism may be considered lower in rank to creation, the creation of great works of art is not always equally possible. The elements with which the creative power works are ideas, but the best and noble ideas may not be always current. That is why creative epochs in literature are so rare. For great creation, the power of the man and the power of the moment must concur, but the power of the moment may not be always available. Even the tremendous natural power of the romantics was partially crippled by the lack of intellectual life in the English society of the nineteenth century. It makes Byron empty of matter, Shelley incoherent and even Wordsworth wanting in completeness and variety. This is where criticism comes to play.

1) Criticism has the power to make the best ideas prevail. It is the business of criticism to know the best that is known and thought in the world and in its turn making this known to create a current of true and fresh ideas. It creates stir and growth which makes creation possible. That is why great creative epochs are preceded by great epochs of criticism.

2) In order to be successful, criticism must exercise curiosity, which is a desire to know the best, and which should not be taken as a term of disparagement.

3) Criticism must also be disinterested. It must keep aloof from the ‘practical view of things’. The critic must try to view an object with detachment to see it ‘as it really is’, without being stifled by practical/political considerations. Arnold is of the view that a critic’s judgment should never be swayed by the prejudices of the Barbarian, the Populace and the Philistines. A critic must shun provincialism, which may take the forms of excess, ignorance or bathos, and must endeavour to be ‘in contact with the main stream of human life’. In short, the critic must be disinterested in the sense that he should pursue only the ends of cultural perfection and should remain uninfluenced by the coarser appeals of the Philistine. A critic who is disinterested and who tries to see the thing as it really is in itself, is likely to be misunderstood, because in England ‘practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing’.

4) Next, it is the function of criticism to keep men away from self satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing. By shaking men out of their complacency, he makes their minds dwell on upon what is excellent in itself, the absolute beauty and fitness of things. But in England, criticism is not fulfilling this spiritual function because it has grown too controversial.

5) Judging is often spoken as the critic’s main business, but such judging has to be in a clear and fair mind, along with knowledge. Knowledge therefore should be the critic’s concern. So, in his search for the best that is known and thought in the world, the critic has to study literatures other than his own. He should have knowledge of Greek, Roman and eastern antiquity.

6) False standards of judgment-personal and historical must be avoided. The question that now arises is how is the critic to discover what is best and noble. Arnold says that the critic must possess tact which is the unfailing guide to the excellent. And next, he should free himself from false standards of judgment, namely the personal and historical standards. By personal standard, Arnold means the critic’s own likes and dislikes intruding in his judgment of literature. A real estimate of poetry rises above personal predilections and prejudices. Personal estimates result in the hysterical, eruptive and the aggressive manner in literature. The historic estimate is equally fallacious and misleading. By regarding a poet’s work as a stage in the course of the development of a nation’s language, thought and poetry, we may end up overrating a poet, and fail to see the value of his poetry ‘as it is in itself’.

7) The Right Method or the Touchstone Method: In order to guide the critic in his performance of his task, Arnold prescribes his well known ‘Touchstone method’. He says that a real estimate can be attained by learning to feel and enjoy the best work of a real classic and appreciate the wide difference between it and other lesser works. He further adds that high qualities lie both in the matter and substance, and in the manner and style of poetry. The Matter and substance will possess ‘truth and seriousness’, and this character is ‘inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement’ in style and manner. Arnold then suggest that it would do critics good if they always have in their minds lines and expressions of the great masters and apply them as touchstone to other poetry. This will help critics detect the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality. He then takes a few passages from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, and points out that they belong to the class of the truly excellent.

Arnold’s views on Poetry in his the Study of Poetry

Stress on Action: He begins his ‘Preface to Poems’ 1853, by saying that he dropped his poem Empedocles on Etna from the new collection, because it had very little action. The hero suffered and brooded over his suffering and committed suicide. Mere subjectivity, the inner gloom or melancholy of the poet to the neglect of action, can never result in true poetry. Poetry of the highest order requires suitable action an action sufficiently serious and weighty. Poetry is dedicated to joy and this joy results from the magnificence of its action (reminds of Aristotle’s stress on action as the soul of tragedy)

Subject of Poetry: Only those should be taken as subjects of poetry which can impart the highest pleasure. Arnold points out that it is not necessary for modern poets to choose modern subjects as in the modern age there is too much of philistinism and vulgarization of values. The poets should choose ancient subjects, those which were chosen by Homer and the other Greek Masters .In short, poets should choose actions that please always and please all. Actions that are of this nature ‘most powerfully appeal to those elementary feelings which are independent of time’ and hence are the fittest subjects for poetry. It is immaterial whether such subjects are ancient or modern so long as they fulfill this principle. But an age wanting in moral grandeur, says Arnold with reference to his age, can hardly supply such subjects, and so the poets must turn to ancient themes.

Manner and Style: Highest poetry and highest poetic pleasure result from the whole and not from separate parts, from the harmony of matter and manner and not from manner alone. No unworthy subject can be made delightful by an excellent treatment. Arnold says that with the Greeks the action was the first consideration, with us, attention is fixed mainly on the value of individual thoughts and images. They regarded the whole, we regard the parts. Greeks were also the highest model of expression, the masters of the grand style. That was because they kept the expression simple and subordinated to the action, and because they expression drew its force directly from the action.

The Ancients as safe models: Acc to Arnold, the ancients are the perfect guides or models to be followed by the poets. Shakespeare is not a safe guide, for although he has excellence of subject, he is unable to say a thing plainly even when the action demands direct expression. From the ancients, the poet will learn how superior is the effect of one moral impression left by a great action treated as a whole to the effect produced by the most striking single thought.

The Grand style: Arnold says that the ancients were the masters of the ‘grand style’. The grand style arises in poetry when ‘a noble nature, poetically gifted treats with simplicity or severity, a serious subject’. So, for the grand style, there must be 1) nobility of soul 2) subject or action chosen must be serious enough 3) the treatment should be severe or simple. Homer, Dante and Milton were masters of it, but most English poets lacked it. Modern poets like Keats do not have the shaping power, they have short passages of excellence but not the beauty of the whole. In Arnold’s view, only poetry modeled on the Ancients can serve as an antidote to philistinism .Arnold’s theory of poetry is to be understood as a counterblast to romantic individualism, subjectivity, and contempt of authority.

Function/definition of poetry: Arnold is confident that poetry has a great future. It is in poetry that our race will find an ever surer stay. Poetry acc to Arnold, is capable of higher uses, interpreting life for us, consoling us, and sustaining us, that is, poetry will replace religion and philosophy.

Arnold further declares that ‘poetry is a criticism of life under conditions fixed for such a criticism by laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our age will find…as time goes on, and other helps fail, its consolation and stay.’Poetry as a criticism of life: Arnold explains criticism of life as the application of noble and profound ideas to life, and ‘laws of poetic truth and beauty’ as ‘truth and seriousness of matter’ and ‘felicity and perfection of diction and manner’ Arnold believes that poetry does not represent life as it is, rather the poet adds something to it from his own noble nature and this contributes to his criticism of life. Poetry makes men moral, better and nobler, not by direct teaching but by appealing to the soul, to the whole of man.

Classical theory: Longinus

True sublimity in works of art arises from lofty ideas expressed in lofty language, and it pleases all and pleases always. The effect of this quality is not mere persuasion or pleasure, it ‘transports’ the reader. There are five principles or sources of the Sublime:

i) Greatness of thought: Lofty thought is an echo of the greatness of soul. Such greatness and nobility of soul can be cultivated by nourishing the mind on thoughts that are elevating. This can be done by reading the works of great masters as homer, and capture their greatness. However this is not mere copying, but a kind of an imaginative stimulus derived from great creative genius. Next, he says that the grandeur of conception must be made effective by a suitable treatment of the subject. The details must form an organic whole. (talks of the difference between amplification and sublimity: sublimity depends on elevation, amplification involves extension; sublimity may exist in a single thought whereas amplification cannot exist without a certain quantity and superfluity. Amplification is the accumulation of all the details of a given subject.)

ii) Strong and inspired passion and vigorous treatment of it: Longinus asserts that nothing contributes more to the loftiness of tone than genuine emotion.

iii) The use of figures –figures of thought and figures of expression: Figures must be rooted in genuine emotion, and used naturally they impart elevation to style. Longinus talks of the following figures: a) rhetorical question b)asyndeton or omission of conjunctions c) Hyperbaton or inversion d)periphrasis or a round way of saying things e) anaphora or repetition of words, e) Apostrophe or address to something or someone. These figures should be so used that they reproduce the effects of natural expression and thereby conceal the art in it.

iv) Noble diction: choice and arrangement of words and the use of metaphors and simile. Both ordinary and striking words must be suitably used, for both are necessary for an impressive style. He suggests no rules for the use of metaphors but says that passion gives rise to metaphors and also provides necessary control over their numbers. He next, talks of hyperbole and says that these should not be overdone, as an exaggerated hyperbole results not in elevation but in bathos.

v) Verbal order or Composition: by which he means rhythm. Words must be combined and harmoniously set as this not only persuades and pleases but is also an instrument of lofty emotion. He says that the dactylic hexameter is the most beautiful of all metres, and makes for the grandeur of utterance. On the other hand, weak and broken metres lower the dignity of a passage.

Formalism

The Formalist movement appeared in the Soviet Union in the 1910s and 1920s. Its leading theorists were Victor Shklovsky, Eikenbaum, and Murakofsky. The movement’s attentions were deliberately focused on the formal specificity of literary works. Victor Shklovsky said that literature has the ability to make us see the world anew, to make that which has become familiar, strange again. The Formalists wanted to know how literature works and how it achieves its defamiliarization effects. They sought to define literature’s distinct ‘literariness’ and found this in the devices that distinguished literary from ordinary language. For example, poetry achieves defamiliarisation by employing devices like repetition, rhyme, meter, stanzas etc, which ordinary language does not use.

What these devices have in common is that they always draw attention to themselves: they remind us that we are dealing with language and not the real world because they signal their own difference from the language that we use in the real world. Roman Jakobson said in 1921 that poetry is a form of language characterized by an orientation towards its own form. If a work of art draws attention to its own form, then that form becomes a part of its content: its form is part of what it communicates. Later, the Prague structuralists replaced defamiliarization with ‘foregrounding’. Jan Murakofsky, a Russian formalist said that poetic language is an effect of ‘foregrounding of utterance’.

Unlike defamiliarization, which would not seem to affect its immediate textual environment, foregrounding has the effect that it ‘automizes’ neighboring textual elements. It draws the reader’s attention to itself and obscures whatever else may be going on beside it. While defamiliarisation points to a contrastive, but static relationship between the defamiliarising element and the other elements, foregrounding points to the dynamism of the relationship: what one element gains through foregrounding is lost by other elements that constitute its background. In other words, foregrounding sees the text as a structure of interrelated elements.

(Foregrounding is structuralist in orientation)

A further enduring distinction introduced by formalism was in the field of narrative, between ‘syuzet’ and ‘fabula’. Vladimir Propp (not a formalist) developed on these ideas in his book ‘The Morphology of the Russian Folktale’. Here he tried to show how a hundred different tales are in fact variations or syuzhets of one and the same underlying formula or the fabula. He further illustrated how this structure works through ‘actants’ or ‘functions’ such as a helper in a tale.

Early Formalism looked at the study of literature as a ‘systematic science’, but there were still certain issues with its tenets. First, it saw a poem as a totality of its ‘devices’ that were not related in any way. Next, it assumed that the ‘literariness’ of literature was the product of the inherent qualities of those devices. These qualities and the resulting literariness can be pointed at. Moreover, the Formalists were interested in establishing general rules, and although one rule was that literariness is created by defamiliarising devices, it was impossible to establish rules with regard to these devices.

Later, it was brought out that defamiliarisation works by way of contrast, of ‘difference’. The way/s in which literary language differed from ordinary language was only one step to study how literature worked. They later brought out that the process of familiarization is responsible for our relative blindness with regard to our environment, including language at work within literature itself. Familiarization worked at two levels: that of a single literary work and that of literature as a whole. Next, the Formalists started looking for defamiliarization within literary works themselves. They showed through examples from poetry that whether a certain poetic technique serves as a defamiliarising device depends on the larger background. So, the ability to defamiliarize our perception is not a quality that a technique inherently possesses, it is in fact a a matter of how that technique ‘functions’ within a given literary work, and that function can change from text to text. What counts is that way and the extent to which it differs from its environment.

Every literary technique then, can have either a familiarizing or a defamiliarising effect. Everything depends on the way it functions within a given text. Differentiation is the crucial factor. This led to a view of the literary work as a system that establishes a textual environment that is again and again made new with the help of defamiliarising techniques.

It is not only the individual literary work that can be seen as a system, as a structure, in which everything is interrelated and interdependent, but literature as a whole can and should be seen in those terms. The individual texts that that together constitute ‘literature’ first of all position themselves with reference to other individual texts, to the genre to which they belong, and then to the whole corpus of texts that we call literature.

Difference between new criticism and formalism

For the New critics, the formal aspects of literature were not unimportant because from their perspective, meaning was always bound up with form. They were interested in the form in which a poem presented itself, because a close scrutiny of its formal aspects would reveal the complex oppositions and tensions that constituted the poem’s real meaning. However, the formalist ignored literature’s referential function, the way it reflects the world in which we live, and gave it an autonomous status, in what Jakobson called ‘literariness’. Literary language always draws attention to itself. Whereas practical criticism and new criticism concentrated on the individual meaning of texts, Formalist wanted to discover general laws that make literature work.

Cultural Materialism

Cultural Materialism established itself permanently in the field of literary studies in the mid 1980s. Some imp books in this field are

1. Radical Tragedy: Jonathan Dollimore

2. The Subject of Tragedy: Catherine Belsey

3. Alternative Shakespeares

4. Political Shakespeare: Alan Sinfield

Some major assumptions of cultural materialism: (common with New Historicism)

All subjects live and work within the culture constructed by ideology, through discourses. The ideological constructions in which the authors live and have internalized, inevitably become a part of their work, and therefore their works are always political and always vehicle of power. For example, a play by Shakespeare is related to the context of its production-to the economic and political system of the Elizabethan and Jacobean England, and to the particular institutions of cultural production, e.g. church, patronage, theatre, education etc.

Since lit plays an active role in the creation and consolidation of power, a literary text does not merely reflect the culture in which it is produced, but also actively contributes to the constitution of that culture. Cultural materialism tries to bring to light how ideology and thus existing social order tries to maintain itself through literature without losing its grip. Since the status of lit is not essentially different from other texts (political, economic, religious,), in the sense that it has no special access to the transcendent truth, it merits no special treatment, but is read alongside a wide variety of non literary texts.

Points of departure for cultural materialism

a) Cultural materialists agree that at first sight, a literary text will seem supportive of the dominant/contemporary ideology, but they see that ideology as less pervasive than their contemporary new historicists. Cultural Materialists object to what they see as new historicism’s downplaying of subversion and dissent, and the dissent’s effectiveness.

b) They follow Foucault in their interest in the insane, the criminal, the exploited and all those who over the course of history have been marginalized. More than that, CMs follow Raymond Williams in his adaptation of Gramsci’s view of hegemony. For Williams, the dominant culture is never the only player in the cultural field, although it is the most powerful. There are always residual and emergent strains within a culture that offer alternatives to hegemony. In other words, the dominant culture is always under pressure from alternative views and beliefs.

c) So, the analyses of lit texts by CMs bring to light how these texts while being the instruments of the dominant socio cultural order, also demonstrate how the apparent coherence of that order is threatened from the inside, by inner contradictions and by tensions that it seeks to hide.

d) Focusing on the cracks in the ideological façade that texts offer, CM offers readings of dissidence that allow us to hear the socially marginalized and expose the cultural machinery that is responsible for their marginalization and exclusion.

e) They are also interested in the way in which the traditional reception of such texts has obscured the presence and operation of such ideologies. Ex: Dollimore’s Radical Tragedy argues that traditional interpretations of Jacobean tragedies have ignored how these plays undermine humanist assumptions because they focus on what fits the humanist framework.

f) CM sees such dissident readings of texts from the past as political interventions in the present, as political challenges to the conservative, humanistically oriented positions and critical practices that are very much evident among literary academics and among those that control educational institutions.

g) It not only tries to offer alternative understandings of the past, but also tries to effectuate political change in the present from a broadly socialist, and even feminist point of view. As Dollimore and Sinfield say, CM is committed to the transformation of the social order which exploits people on grounds of race, gender and class.

h) Where new historicists would be satisfied to bring to light hidden power relations in a cluster of Renaissance texts, Cultural materialists seek to find instances of dissidence, subversion and transgression that are relevant in the contemporary political struggles.

i) As such, the CMs are interested in the way in which lit from the past, say Shakespeare has been made to function in the later periods and in our contemporary culture. CMs for instance may ask, which plays we find within the university curricula, or which sonnets are standardly anthologised. In the performance of Shakespeare’s plays, they may question how is Shakespeare constructed and from what ideological position?

j) In one of the essays collected in Political Shakespeare, Sinfield concludes that in education, Shakespeare has been made to speak for the right.

k) As with Raymond Williams, for CMs ideology takes on a tangible, material form in institutions like the university, the museum, the army, the school, the labour union, the church and so on. And it becomes material in the way in which images from the past are deployed in the service of contemporary ideology.

New Historicism

Generally the origin of NH is situated in 1980, when Stephen Greenblatt published his book Renaissance Self Fashioning. The constructedness of culture and its annexation by literary studies are two central points in New Historicism, which is American in origin. It brought to the traditional study of Renaissance, esp., the works of Shakespeare a mixture of Marxixt, and poststructuralist orientations, esp. poststructuralist notions of the self, of discourse and of power. It leans more towards a Foucauldian notion of power, the discourses that serve as vehicles of power, on the construction of identity and so on.

It rejects both the autonomy and individual genius of the author and the autonomy of the individual work and sees texts as absolutely inseparable from their historical context. The author’s role is to a large extent determined by historical circumstances. As prominent historicist critic Stephen Greenblatt said, the literary text is always part and parcel of a much wider cultural, political, social, and economic dispensation.

The literary text is a time and place bound verbal construction and is in one way or other always political. Because it is inevitably involved with a discourse or an ideology it cannot help being a vehicle of power. As a consequence, literature, like any other text, not only reflects relations of power but actively participates in the consolidation and/ or construction of discourses and ideologies. It functions as an instrument in the construction of identities, not only at the individual level but also the group, or the national state. Literature is not simply a product of history, it also actively makes history. Culture according to NH is a construct and they are even willing to grant their own assumptions must also be constructed, and may therefore be deconstructed.

In his book, ‘Renaissance Self- Fashioning’, Greenblatt says that in the 16th century there appeared to be an increased self consciousness about the fashioning the human identity as a manipulable, artful process. An increased awareness of the ways in which the self can be fashioned leads to an increased awareness of how the self is subject to power relations and how it always functions within larger structures that may control such fashioning. This relates to the Poststructuralist notion that the self is always a construction, that our identity is never given, but always the product of an interaction between the way we want to represent ourselves (thru the stories we tell) and our actual presentations, and the power relations we are part of.

So it can be said in the words of John Brannigan that NH is a mode of critical interpretation which privileges power relations as the most important context for all texts. Power works through discourses and like ideology gives the subject the impression that that to comply with its dictates is the most natural thing to do. The NH sees literature as involved in the making of history through its active participation in discursive practices. One example: NH studies autobiography, travel lit, Shakespeare’s plays to examine how the representations of Queen Elizabeth I contribute to the cult of the ‘virgin queen’

NH also shows how power has worked to suppress or marginalize rival stories and discourses. A historical period is seen as a remote culture whose various manifestations – the texts of all kinds- need detailed study to so that power relations and forces operating in that culture may be brought to light. In this way New historicism rejects the traditional distinction between the text and the context.

NH seeks to read literary texts alongside or against other generally neglected contemporary documentary or imaginative texts (eg: to read Hamlet in terms of contemporary law on divorce and inheritance or records of suicide in young women)

Gist: This school, influenced by structuralist and post-structuralist theories, seeks to reconnect a work with the time period in which it was produced and identify it with the cultural and political movements of the time (Michel Foucault's concept of épistème). New Historicism assumes that every work is a product of the historic moment that created it. Specifically, New Historicism is "...a practice that has developed out of contemporary theory, particularly the structuralist realization that all human systems are symbolic and subject to the rules of language, and the deconstructive realization that there is no way of positioning oneself as an observer outside the closed circle of textuality" (Richter 1205).

A helpful way of considering New Historical theory, Tyson explains, is to think about the retelling of history itself: "...questions asked by traditional historians and by new historicists are quite different...traditional historians ask, 'What happened?' and 'What does the event tell us about history?' In contrast, new historicists ask, 'How has the event been interpreted?' and 'What do the interpretations tell us about the interpreters?'" (278). So New Historicism resists the notion that "...history is a series of events that have a linear, causal relationship: event A caused event B; event B caused event C; and so on" (Tyson 278).

New historicists do not believe that we can look at history objectively, but rather that we interpret events as products of our time and culture and that "...we don't have clear access to any but the most basic facts of history...our understanding of what such facts mean...is...strictly a matter of interpretation, not fact" (279). Moreover, New Historicism holds that we are hopelessly subjective interpreters of what we observe.

New Historicism (some more points)

(sometimes referred to as Cultural Poetics) emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, largely in reaction to the lingering effects of New Criticism and its ahistorical approach. "New" Historicism's adjectival emphasis highlights its opposition to the old historical-biographical criticism prevalent before the advent of New Criticism. In the earlier historical-biographical criticism, literature was seen as a (mimetic) reflection of the historical world in which it was produced. Further, history was viewed as stable, linear, and recoverable--a narrative of fact. In contrast, New Historicism views history skeptically (historical narrative is inherently subjective), but also more broadly; history includes all of the cultural, social, political, anthropological discourses at work in any given age, and these various "texts" are unranked - any text may yield information valuable in understanding a particular milieu. Rather than forming a backdrop, the many discourses at work at any given time affect both an author and his/her text; both are inescapably part of a social construct. Stephen Greenblatt was an early important figure, and Michel Foucault's intertextual methods focusing especially on issues such as power and knowledge proved very influential. Other major figures include Clifford Geertz, Louis Montrose, Catherine Gallagher, Jonathan Dollimore, and Jerome McCann.

Key Terms:

Discourse - [from Wolfreys - see General Resources below] - "defined by Michel Foucault as language practice: that is, language as it is used by various constituencies (the law, medicine, the church, for example) for purposes to do with power relationships between people"

Episteme - [from Wolfreys - see General Resources below] - "Michel Foucault employs the idea of episteme to indicate a particular group of knowledges and discourses which operate in concert as the dominant discourses in any given historical period. He also identifies epistemic breaks, radical shifts in the varieties and deployments of knowledge for ideological purposes, which take place from period to period"

Power - [from Wolfreys - see General Resources below] - "in the work of Michel Foucault, power constitutes one of the three axes constitutive of subjectification, the other two being ethics and truth. For Foucault, power implies knowledge, even while knowledge is, concomitantly, constitutive of power: knowledge gives one power, but one has the power in given circumstances to constitute bodies of knowledge, discourses and so on as valid or invalid, truthful or untruthful. Power serves in making the world both knowable and controllable. Yet, in the nature of power, as Foucault suggests in the first volume of his History of Sexuality, is essentially proscriptive, concerned more with imposing limits on its subjects."

Self-positioning - [from Lois Tyson - see General Resources below] - "new historicism's claim that historical analysis is unavoidably subjective is not an attempt to legitimize a self-indulgent, 'anything goes' attitude toward the writing of history. Rather, the inevitability of personal bias makes it imperative that new historicists be aware of and as forthright as possible about their own psychological and ideological positions relative to the material they analyze so that their readers can have some idea of the human 'lens' through which they are viewing the historical issues at hand."

Thick description - a term developed by Clifford Geertz; [from Charles Bressler - see General Resources below]: a "term used to describe the seemingly insignificant details present in any cultural practice. By focusing on these details, one can then reveal the inherent contradictory forces at work within culture. "

On Psychoanalysis: Freud

Psychoanalytic criticism is based on the premises and procedures established by Sigmund Freud. In this form of criticism, a literary work is viewed as a disguised form of libidinal wish-fulfillment of the author or of a character. According to this mode of criticism, a literary work is like a dream and consists of the imagined or fantasized fulfillment of wishes that are either denied by reality or are prohibited by social standards of morality. In the unconsciousness of the author, these desires, mainly libidinal or sexual desires come in conflict with the ‘censor’ (or the standards of society internalized by the individual) and are repressed by it. However, it is through literature that these desires find their expression, however, in a distorted form to disguise their real motives from the conscious mind.

The conscious mind does this through the processes of concentration, displacement and symbolism. This is known as dream work. The critic analyzes the language and symbolism of such a text to reverse the process of the dream work and arrive at the underlying latent or hidden thoughts. Eg Hamlet and Oedipus. Although such criticism tends to be reductive, explaining away the ambiguities of works of literature by reference to established psychoanalytic doctrine, some other imp approaches developed from this. For example, the Jungian criticism with itsmythocriticism and archetype analysis. Then, Lacan’s theories which apply Freud and Saussure, and says that the unconscious is structured like a language.

Among modern critical uses of psychoanalysis is the development of "ego psychology" in the work of Norman Holland, who concentrates on the relations between reader and text - as with reader response criticism. 'Holland's experiments in reader response theory suggest that we all read literature selectively, unconsciously projecting our own fantasies into it'. Like all forms of literary criticism, psychoanalytic criticism can yield useful clues to the sometime baffling symbols, actions, and settings in a literary work.

Biographia Literaria

Compare and contrast the views of Wordsworth and Coleridge on imagination.

“It is a word of higher import, denoting operations of the human mind upon those objects and processes of creation or composition, governed by certain fixed laws."It is through imagination that the poet realizes his kinship with the eternal. Imagination works upon the raw material of sense impressions to illustrate the working of external truths. It makes the poet perceive the essential unity of “man, God and Nature” while “the meddling intellect” of the scientist multiplies diversities.

In order to understand Wordsworth's view on imagination, we have to go to his poems, and to his letter. In ‘The Preface’, the word occur first when Wordsworth tells us that his purpose has been to select incidents and situations from humble and common life and make them look uncommon and unusual by throwing over them a coloring of imagination. This clarifies that imagination is a transforming and transfiguring power which presents the usual in an unusual light. The poet does not merely present “image of men and nature” but he also shapes, modifies and transfigures that image by the power of his imagination. Thus imagination is creative; it is a shaping or ‘plastic’ power. The poet is half the creator; he is not a mere mechanical reproducer of outward reality, but a specially gifted individual, who, like God, is a creator or maker as he adds something to nature and reality. It is the imagination of the poet which imparts to nature, the ‘glory and freshness of a dream’, the light that never was on land and sea.

In making the poet’s imagination a creative power, Wordsworth goes counter to the ‘associationist’ theories of David Hartley who had considerable influences on the poet. Hartley and other associationist psychologist thought that the human mind receives impressions from the external words, which are therein associated together to form images. In this way, the mind merely reflects the external world. But according to Wordsworth the mind does not merely reflect passively, it actively creates. At least, it is half the creator. Imagination is the active, creative faculty of the mind. As Florence Marsh points out, for Wordsworth imagination is a mental power which alters the external world creatively.

Again, he tells that the poet is a man who thinks long and deeply, and so he can treat things which are absent as if they were present. In other words, the poet contemplates in tranquility the emotions which he had experienced in the past and through imagination can visualize the objects which gave rise to those emotions initially. Imagination is the mind’s eye through which the poet sees into the ‘heart of things’ as well as into the past, the remote, and the unknown. It is imagination which enables the poet to render emotional experience, which he has not personally experienced, as if, they were personally felt emotions.

The power of imagination enables the poet to universalize the particular and the personal, and arrives at universal truths. Henry Crabbe Robinson describes the process in the following words:

“The poet first conceives the essential nature of his object, and then strips it of all casualties and accidental individual dress, and in this he is a philosopher; … he re-clothes his idea in an individual dress which expresses the essential quality and has also the spirit and life of a sensual object. And this transmutes the philosophic into a poetic exhibition.”

Stressing the importance which Wordsworth attached to the role of imagination in the process of poetic creation, C M. Bowra writes:

“For him, the imagination was the most important gift that a poet can have, and his arrangement of his own poems shows what he meant by it.”

The section which he calls, ‘Poems of the Imagination’, contains poems in which he united creative power and a special visionary insight. He agreed with Coleridge that this activity resembles that of God. It is the divinecapacity of the child who fashions his own little world:

For feeling has to him imparted power

That through the growing faculties of sense

Doth like an agent of the one great Mind

Create, creator and receiver both,

Working but in alliance with the works

Which it beholds.

The poet keeps this faculty in his maturity, and through it he is what he is. But Wordsworth was full aware that mere creation is not enough, that it must be accompanied by a special insight. So he explains that the imagination,

Is but another name for absolute power

And clearest insight, amplitude of mind,

And Reason in her most exalted mood.

“Wordsworth did to go so far as the other Romantics in relegating reason to an inferior position. He preferred to give a new dignity to the word and to insist that inspired insight is itself rational.”

It should be noticed that here Wordsworth calls imagination, “reason in her most exalted mood”. It is a higher reason than mere reason. It is that faculty which transforms sense perceptions and makes the poet conscious of human immortality. It makes him have visions of the divine.

Wordsworth deals with imagination at much greater length in his Preface to the 1815 edition of the Lyrical Ballads. There he draws a distinction between Fancy and Imagination. Wordsworth’s distinction between Fancy and Imagination is not so subtle and penetrating as that of Coleridge. According to Wordsworth, both Imagination and Fancy, “evoke and combine, aggregate and associate”. But the material which they evoke and combine is different, and their purpose in evoking and combining is different. They differ not in their natures but in their purpose, and in the material on which they work. The material on which Fancy works is not so susceptible to change or so pliant as the material on which imagination works. Fancy makes things exact and definite, while Imagination leaves everything vague and indefinite.

Rene Wellek’s comment in this respect is illuminating and interesting: “Both Wordsworth and Coleridge make the distinction between Fancy, a faculty which, handles, ‘fixities and definites, and Imagination, a faculty which deals with the ‘plastic, the pliant and the indefinite’. The only important difference between Wordsworth and Coleridge is that Wordsworth does not clearly see Coleridge’s distinction between imagination as a ‘holistic’ and fancy as an ‘associative’ power and does not draw the sharp distinction between transcendentalism and associationism which Coleridge wanted to establish.”

Coleridge

Critical works: Biographia Literaria, Lectures on Shakespeare

Acc to Coleridge, Imagination has two forms primary and secondary.

In the 13th chapter of Biographia Literaria, C talks of fancy n imagination.

Primary imagination is merely the power of receiving impressions of the external world through the senses, it perceives objects both in their parts and as a whole. It is an involuntary act of the mind: the human mind receives impressions and sensations from the outside world unconsciously and involuntarily it imposes some sort of order on those impressions, reducesthem to shape and size, so that the mind is able to form a clear image of the outside world. It is in this way that clear and coherent perception becomes possible.

Secondary Imagination: The primary imagination is universal and is possessed by all. TheSecondary imagination makes artistic creation possible. It requires an effort of the will and conscious effort. It works upon what is perceived by the primary imagination: its raw material is the sensations and impressions supplied to it by the primary imagination. It selects and orders the raw material, and reshapes and remodels it into objects of beauty. It is ‘ensemplastic’ and it‘dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to create’. The Secondary Imagination is at the root of all poetic activity. It is the power which harmonizes and reconciles opposites, and Coleridge calls it a magical synthetic power. It fuses the various faculties of the soul-the subjective with the objective, the human mind with external nature, the spiritual with the physical or material.

The primary and secondary imaginations do not differ from each other in kind. The difference is only of degree. The SI is more active, more as a result of volition, more conscious and more voluntary than the primary one.

Fancy: Imagination and fancy differ in kind. Fancy is not a creative power at all, but is a mechanical process which receives the elementary images which come to it ready made, and without altering these, fancy reassembles them into a different order from that in which it was received. It only combines what it perceives into beautiful shapes, but does not fuse and unify. It is a kind of memory that arbitrarily brings together images, and even when brought together, these images continue to retain their separate and individual properties. They receive no colouring and or modification from the mind.

Willing suspension of disbelief: During the perusal of a poem or the witnessing of a play, there is neither belief nor disbelief, but a mere suspension of disbelief.

Organic wholeness of a poem: Coleridge established that the poem is an organic whole, and that its form is determined by its content and is essential to that content. Thus metre and rhyme are not merely ‘pleasure super-added’, not something superfluous which can be dispensed with, not mere decoration, but essential to that pleasure which is true poetic pleasure.

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads

Wordsworth Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 1800, 1802, 1815.

The chief aim in the composition of poems in the Lyrical Ballads has been to choose ‘incidents and situations from common life’ and to relate them in a selection of language really used by men, and at the same time throw over them a colouring of imagination, whereby the ordinary things would be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect. WW insists that if the subject is properly chosen, it will naturally lead the poet to feelings whose appropriate expression will have dignity, beauty and metaphorical vitality.

He has chosen ‘incidents and situations from common life’ as subjects of his poetry for the following reasons: in humble and rustic life feelings are freely and frankly expressed for these are simple, the manners of the rustics are not sophisticated and hence are more conducive to an understanding of human nature, in rustic life, human passions are connected to nature and so they are more noble and permanent.

He has used the language of the rustics because such men hourly communicate with the best objects of nature from which the best part of language is derived, and because of their low rank in society, they are less under the influence of social vanity. They convey their feelings in a simple and unelaborated language. Such language is far more philosophical than the arbitrary language used by the poets of the day.

The theme which dominates most of Wordsworth’s criticism, and which he pursues most consistently is his argument against poetic diction. The immediate object of his attack was the ‘gaudiness and inane phraseology’ and the ‘vague, glossy and unfeeling language’ of contemporary poets. Wordsworth is arguing against the idea of ‘poetic diction’ current throughout the 18th c, the idea that some modes of diction were best avoided in poetry, but that other modes were especially suitable. He argues that to separate poetry from ordinary speech is to separate it from human life. Poets confer honour neither on themselves or their works by using a sophisticated diction. In fact it alienates human sympathy. Simple rural people are less restrained and artificial in their feelings and their utterance, and those feelings are at one with their environment. Expanding his apologia for his rejection of poetic diction, he says that there neither is, nor be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition, and repeats that the language of poetry should as far as possible be ‘a selection of the language really spoken by men’. If true taste and feeling are applied to the process of selection then what results will be firmly distinguished from the ‘vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life’ and if meter is ‘superadded’ then it will be even better. Acc to WW, metre is not essential to poetry, but it is an additional source of pleasure.

What is a poet? Acc to WW, a poet is a man speaking to men. He is endowed with more lively sensibility

has greater knowledge of human nature a more comprehensive soul greater zest for life, greater powers of communication

A poet communicates not only personally felt emotions but also emotions he has not directly experienced. Role of Poetry: Poetry is not a matter of mere amusement and idle pleasure; it is a much noble and higher pleasure. It is the most philosophic of all writings: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general and operative. It is the image of man and nature. For Ww, the poet’s specialty is the interaction between man and his environment, the complexities of pleasures and pain that arise therefrom, and the deep sympathies by which they are interrelated. Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge…It is by virtue of this sublime concept of the poet that WW decries verbal artifices and vague ornamentation in poetic expressions.

Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquility. In WW’s poems, feelings are more important than action and situation.

Views on metre: WW justifies the use of meter. Metre is regular and uniform, while poetic diction is arbitrary and capricious. The rules of metre are fixed, while there are no rules for poetic diction. WW has used metre for the following reasons: it is an additional source of pleasure, in using metre he has followed tradition, metre has restraining and tempering effect on the flow of emotion and passion, it softens the painful and pathetic, it has a distancing effect, it imparts grace and dignity to the lighter emotions, provides an element of contrast, and the perception of similarity in dissimilarity.

Poetic process; four stages through which poetic composition takes place a) observation, b) recollection, c) contemplation, d) imaginative excitement of the emotions which were experienced earlier.

Criticism of WW’s ideas by Coleridge

Language so selected and purified will no longer be rustic language. WW permits the use of metre, and this means a particular order and arrangement of words. If metre is to be used in poetry it will be not same as the language of prose. The use of metre is as artificial as poetic diction, if one is allowed why not the other? Coleridge objects to the use of the word ‘real’- every man’s language differs according to his individuality and the class to which he belongs. In that case can one language be less real than the other. As man advances from the primitive stage, his thoughts and expressions have also advanced, he has acquired new ideas and concepts, these cannot be adequately expressed in rustic language.

Preface to Shakespeare

Shakespeare’s characters are a just representation of human nature as they deal with passions and principles which are common to humanity. They are also true to the age, sex, profession to which they belong and hence the speech of one cannot be put in the mouth of another. His characters are not exaggerated. Even when the agency is supernatural, the dialogue is level with life.

Shakespeare’s plays are a storehouse of practical wisdom and from them can be formulated a philosophy of life. Moreover, his plays represent the different passions and not love alone. In this, his plays mirror life.
Shakespeare’s use of tragic comedy: Shakespeare has been much criticized for mixing tragedy and comedy, but Johnson defends him in this. Johnson says that in mixing tragedy and comedy, Shakespeare has been true to nature, because even in real life there is a mingling of good and evil, joy and sorrow, tears and smiles etc. this may be against the classical rules, but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. Moreover, tragic-comedy being nearer to life combines within itself the pleasure and instruction of both tragedy and comedy.

Shakespeare’s use of tragi-comedy does not weaken the effect of a tragedy because it does not interrupt the progress of passions. In fact, Shakespeare knew that pleasure consisted in variety. Continued melancholy or grief is often not pleasing. Shakespeare had the power to move, whether to tears or laughter.

Shakespeare’s comic genius: Johnson says that comedy came natural to Shakespeare. He seems to produce his comic scenes without much labour, and these scenes are durable and hence their popularity has not suffered with the passing of time. The language of his comic scenes is the language of real life which is neither gross nor over refined, and hence it has not grown obsolete.

Shakespeare writes tragedies with great appearance of toil and study, but there is always something wanting in his tragic scenes. His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy instinct.

Johnson’s defence of Shakespeare’s use of unities: Shakespeare’s histories are neither tragedy nor comedy and hence he is not required to follow classical rules of unities. The only unity he needs to maintain in his histories is the consistency and naturalness in his characters and this he does so faithfully. In his other works, he has well maintained the unity of action. His plots have the variety and complexity of nature, but have a beginning, middle and an end, and one event is logically connected with another, and the plot makes gradual advancement towards the denouement.

Shakespeare shows no regard for the unities of Time and place, and acc to Johnson, these have troubled the poet more than it has pleased his audience. The observance of these unities is considered necessary to provide credibility to the drama. But, any fiction can never be real, and the audience knows this. If a spectator can imagine the stage to be Alexandria and the actors to be Antony and Cleopatra, he can surely imagine much more. Drama is a delusion, and delusion has no limits. Therefore, there is no absurdity in showing different actions in different places.

As regards the unity of Time, Shakespeare says that a drama imitates successive actions, and just as they may be represented at successive places, so also they may be represented at different period, separated by several days. The only condition is that the events must be connected with each other.

Johnson further says that drama moves us not because we think it is real, but because it makes us feel that the evils represented may happen to ourselves. Imitations produce pleasure or pain, not because they are mistaken for reality, but because they bring realities to mind.

Therefore, unity of Action alone is sufficient, and the other two unities arise from false assumptions. Hence it is good that Shakespeare violates them.

Faults of Shakespeare: Shakespeare writes without moral purpose and is more careful to please than to instruct. There is no poetic justice in his plays. This fault cannot be excused by the barbarity of his age for justice is a virtue independent of time and place.

Next, his plots are loosely formed, and only a little attention would have improved them. He neglects opportunities of instruction that his plots offer, in fact, he very often neglects the later parts of his plays and so his catastrophes often seem forced and improbable.

There are many faults of chronology and many anachronisms in his play.
His jokes are often gross and licentious. In his narration, there is much pomp of diction and circumlocution. Narration in his dramas is often tedious. His set speeches are cold and weak. They are often verbose and too large for thought. Trivial ideas are clothed in sonorous epithets. He is too fond of puns and quibbles which engulf him in mire. For a pun, he sacrifices reason, propriety and truth.He often fails at moments of great excellence. Some contemptible conceit spoils the effect of his pathetic and tragic scenes.

Merits of Shakespeare:
He perfected the blank verse, imparted to it diversity and flexibility and brought it nearer to the language of prose.

An Apologie for Poetry

An Apologie for Poetry/A Defence of Poetry

1. Definition and function of poetry: is an act of imitation, a representation, a speaking picture, with the aim of instructing and delighting. Poetry moves man to virtuous action as it conveys universal lessons in a delightful manner. Poetry has the transporting power and hence teaches more perfectly than History and Philosophy.

2. Superiority to History and Philosophy: Poetry is superior to all the other branches of sciences, as poetry serves true knowledge which is self knowledge. In this respect, poetry is superior to Philosophy and History. Philosophy deals with abstract percepts which cannot be understood by the young, and History deals with concrete facts from which the readers may have difficulty to derive universal truths. Poetry combines both these advantages, and presents universal truths like philosophy through concrete examples like History.

3. Sidney’s views on Rhyme: Rhyme is not the essence of poetry, and poetry is not mere rhyming and versification. It is used to polish speech. Rhyme regulates verbal harmony and imparts order and proportion; moreover it adds a sensuous and emotional quality to poetry and also is an aid to memory.

4. Different kinds of Poetry: Religious poetry, Philosophical Poetry and The Right Kind of Poetry. This last kind of poetry can be further subdivided into:

Heroic: heroic and moral goodness is portrayed, about heroic men in action, inspires men to noble action

Lyric: praise of men and God; enkindles virtue and courage

Tragic: reveals wickedness of men and shows their downfall, brings out the uncertainty of life

Comic: ridicules the common errors; effective in warning men of such follies

Satire: laughs folly out of court

Elegiac poetry: arouses sympathy for the suffering and miserable

Pastoral: arouses sympathy and admiration for simple life

5. Sidney’s reply to the charges against poetry:

Poetry is useless and a waste of time, there are more fruitful knowledge a man may spend his efforts on. Reply: Poetry is conducive to virtuous action and this has been amply demonstrated.

Poetry is the mother of lies.

Reply: the poet affirms nothing, and therefore he never lies. Poetry does not deal with what is, but what should or should not be, so there is no question of lying.

Poetry has a corrupting influence, makes men effeminate and fills men’s minds with pestilent desires. Reply: Love is not bad for it shows an appreciation of Beauty. Many martial men have admired poets. Poetry has always moved men to heroic action.

Plato banished poets from the Republic.

Reply: Plato was not against poetry, but the abuse of poetry. Plato himself was a born poet and a large part of his dialogues is poetic. In fact he talks of Poetry as divine inspiration.

6. Reasons for the general decline of Poetry and Drama:

Peaceful years have bred a tame and sluggish generation devoid of the spirits necessary for poetic creation

Genius was lacking in the age

idespread ignorance of poetic art

7. Faults of contemporary tragedy:

The Senecan drama and the Aristotelian percepts were the basis of Sidney’s criticism.

Condemns the tragedy of his age for the incongruous mingling of the comic and the tragic, and the violation of the unities. Praises only ‘Gorbuduc’. The ideal tragedy should be imitation of a noble action which stirs ‘admiration and commiseration’, and teaches the uncertainty of the world.

8. Faults of contemporary comedy: condemns the contemporary farcical comedy, and is in favour of a more intellectual comedy. He distinguishes between laughter and delight, and says that delight is permanent while laughter is merely scornful tickling. He points out that comedy should not portray painful deformity and things evil and vicious, for these may cause laughter but cannot give delight. The proper materials of comedy are the weaknesses, follies and foibles of mankind.

9. Contemporary love poetry is degenerate, cold and unmoving. Its style is ornate and not suitable for the expression of passions.

10. Diction of contemporary poets: use far-fetched words and images, fond of pun and word play, write in ornate pompous style which confuses the reader, their work neither convince nor persuade.

English versification: The English language is superior to other continental languages because it fits both the classical and contemporary system of versification they have the caesura or the breathing space in the middle which the French and the Italian do not have English is capable of three kinds of rhyme.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)

Criticism has the power to make the best ideas prevail. It is the business of criticism to know the best that is known and thought in the world and in its turn making this known to create a current of true and fresh ideas. It creates stir and growth which makes creation possible. That is why great creative epochs are preceded by great epochs of criticism.

In order to be successful, criticism must exercise curiosity, which is a desire to know the best, and which should not be taken as a term of disparagement.

Criticism must also be disinterested. It must keep aloof from the ‘practical view of things’. The critic must try to view an object with detachment to see it ‘as it really is’, without being stifled by practical/political considerations. Arnold is of the view that a critic’s judgment should never be swayed by the prejudices of the Barbarian, the Populace and the Philistines. A critic must shun provincialism, which may take the forms of excess, ignorance or bathos, and must endeavour to be ‘in contact with the main stream of human life’. In short, the critic must be disinterested in the sense that he should pursue only the ends of cultural perfection and should remain uninfluenced by the coarser appeals of the Philistine. A critic who is disinterested and who tries to see the thing as it really is in itself, is likely to be misunderstood, because in England ‘practice is everything, a free play of the mind is nothing’.

Next, it is the function of criticism to keep men away from self satisfaction which is retarding and vulgarizing. By shaking men out of their complacency, he makes their minds dwell on upon what is excellent in itself, the absolute beauty and fitness of things. But in England, criticism is not fulfilling this spiritual function because it has grown too controversial.

Judging is often spoken as the critic’s main business, but such judging has to be in a clear and fair mind, along with knowledge. Knowledge therefore should be the critic’s concern. So, in his search for the best that is known and thought in the world, the critic has to study literatures other than his own. He should have knowledge of Greek, Roman and eastern antiquity.

False standards of judgment-personal and historical must be avoided. The question that now arises is how is the critic to discover what is best and noble. Arnold says that the critic must possess tact which is the unfailing guide to the excellent. And next, he should free himself from false standards of judgment, namely the personal and historical standards. By personal standard, Arnold means the critic’s own likes and dislikes intruding in his judgment of literature. A real estimate of poetry rises above personal predilections and prejudices. Personal estimates result in the hysterical, eruptive and the aggressive manner in literature. The historic estimate is equally fallacious and misleading. By regarding a poet’s work as a stage in the course of the development of a nation’s language, thought and poetry, we may end up overrating a poet, and fail to see the value of his poetry ‘as it is in itself’.

The Right Method or the Touchstone Method: In order to guide the critic in his performance of his task, Arnold prescribes his well known ‘Touchstone method’. He says that a real estimate can be attained by learning to feel and enjoy the best work of a real classic and appreciate the wide difference between it and other lesser works. He further adds that high qualities lie both in the matter and substance, and in the manner and style of poetry. The Matter and substance will possess ‘truth and seriousness’, and this character is ‘inseparable from the superiority of diction and movement’ in style and manner. Arnold then suggest that it would do critics good if they always have in their minds lines and expressions of the great masters and apply them as touchstone to other poetry. This will help critics detect the presence or absence of high poetic quality, and also the degree of this quality. He then takes a few passages from Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and Milton, and points out that they belong to the class of the truly excellent.

Arnold’s views on Poetry in his the Study of Poetry