Date – 10th august.
Class – contemporary theory and criticism.
Dr. Ansari
Classical criticism believed in three literary theories.
a. Imitation theory.
b. Expressive theory.
c. Sublime theory.
Greek classical criticism believed in the imitation theory. It propagated poetry imitates and reflects the REALITY. Hence, Plato was against poets and poetry in his ‘Republic’. There were two attacks.
Plato:
a. Poetry is twice removed from reality because reality is an imitation of the ideal REAL and art is just an imitation of the imitated reality. Hence, he accuses poetry to be ‘twice removed from Reality’. To him reality is just a manifestation of the ‘Idea’ - That idea being the Real. Plato was hence called as an Idealist.
b. His second accusation was poetry excites passions. This excitation is due to an imitated illusion – a lie. Hence, he accuses poets as liars. He was against emotions in his republic. He wanted rationality and reason to rule his ‘republic’.
Aristotle:
Aristotle’s defense on poetry is a response to Plato’s accusations.
a. His first argument was poetry pierces into the ideal by tearing apart the veil of illusion. Hence art is much closer to the ideal Real.
b. As poetry does the function of ‘katharsis’ – purgation, it drains out the emotions and makes man devoid of emotion. Aristotle defended the poets and poetry.
New Criticism:
New criticism deviated from the basic premise that art is an imitation and meaning of art is not just a sublime ideal. It proposed the study of the existence of art independent of its creator and spectator. It called for an ontological study of literature. It proposed three different fallacies inherent in any art work.
a. the author’s ‘intentional fallacy’
b. the reader’s ‘affective fallacy’
c. meaning’s ‘mimetic fallacy’
Archibald mcliesh borrows a phrase from ‘ars poetica’ to define this philosophical standpoint – ‘a poem should not mean but must be’.
The new critics believed that poem is an icon – a replica. They termed it as a ‘well wrought urn’.
They believed in the close reading of a poem and in language of poetry. To them, the language of poetry is one of irony, paradox, ambiguity and tension.
The proponents were IA richards, cleanth brookes, empson,F.R.Leavis.
I.A Richards proposed two kinds of language - The cognitive, factual and the aesthetic, emotive theories of language use. They referred to either
A. Referential truth.
B. Aesthetical truth.
The Russian formalists believed that it is form that matters and proposed that form is the content thereby resolving the platonian - aristotlian debate in a sense.
They proposed that the work of art is a device and the language of poetry is one of estrangement, defamiliarization and distortion.
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