Literary Theory
Series 1; Handout #5
Big Ideas in “Theory” (and possible objections):
Politics is Pervasive
Language is Constitutive
Truth is Provisional
Meaning is Contingent
Human Nature is a Myth
“They’re called Muttonchops”
Matthew Arnold
(1822-1888): “founding father of modern criticism” (Norton 802). Civility and
Moderation; “a gentleman” (member of ruling class in
“The Function of Criticism at the Present Time” (1865;
delivered at
Defense of Criticism (akin to Art, “curiosity”); further, Literature/Art is subcategory of criticism: “Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful application of ideas to life,--to the question: How to live.”
Criticism as “Disinterested”; not a pawn of ideology, partisan interests, science, or commerce—the “practical view of things”; Criticism tries to “See the object as in itself it really is”; it pursues “Timeless Truths” with “inflexible honesty” (see 814-815).
Purpose of Criticism: Express dissatisfaction with works that fall “perpetually short of a high and perfect ideal”; “to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world”; “to create a current of true and fresh ideas”; seek “perfection” and “absolute beauty” (Note Western Religious background of this—the Fall, human imperfection, humility, idea of God); Calls for “Institutionalization” of literary studies and criticism.
“It’s no use trying to be
original”
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965): High-modernist eminence; American-born English subject; author of The Waste Land (1922). Olympian, aloof, erudite, a traditionalist trying to cope with modernity (not deny it). A bank clerk, an Anglophile, a bit snobby, wore suits with a vest. Not a populist. Liked Dante and Metaphysical Poets; hated Whitman.
“Tradition and the
Individual Talent” (1919)
“Impersonality” or Objectivity in Poetry: submersion of the artist’s personality in the technical process. Opposes romantic subjectivism and modernist call for originality. Poetry (and other arts) have forms that come before the artist’s individual self-expression.
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality.”
“What is to be insisted upon is that the poet must develop or procure the consciousness of the past and that he should continue to develop this consciousness throughout his career. What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.”
“the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates . . . the poet has, not a "personality" to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways. Impressions and experiences which are important for the man may take no place in the poetry, and those which become important in the poetry may play quite a negligible part in the man, the personality.”