ON THE SUBLIME: DIONYSIUS LONGINUS (CRITICISM 4)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFeXS-vz_P0&t=10s

ON THE SUBLIME: DIONYSIUS LONGINUS

(CRITICISM 4)

 

          The exact date and authorship of the Greek Treatise ‘On the Sublime’ is unknown.  Two Longinuses are claimed to be the author of this treatise.  It was actually in 1554 that the Italian critic Robortello ascribed it to a rhetorician named Dionysius Longinus of the first century AD and this authorship was generally accepted up to the beginning of the 19^th century.  Then some critics pointed out that the work belonged to another Longinus who lived in the 3^rd century AD.  As we are told that the treatise was written to correct the faults of an essay on the same subject by one Caecilius, who is definitely known to have belonged to the 1^st century AD, we must accept the later half of the first century AD as the most likely date of its composition.  So, no doubt Dionysius Longinus is the author of this treatise.

          ‘On the Sublime’ is the most precious legacy of the Greco-Roman period and a critical record of great worth and significance.  Though one third of the original document is missing, it contains a lot to be considered as one of the best pieces of criticism that have come down to us from the antiquity.  The treatise is addressed to one Terentianus, a friend or a pupil of Longinus.  Longinus tells him of his purpose of correcting the faults of Caecilius’s essay on the ‘Sublime’ and makes some other preliminary observations.

          Sublimity is a certain loftiness and excellence in language.  It is only through sublimity that the greatest poets and prose writers of Greek and Latin have delivered their eminence and gained immortality.  Sublimity does not merely persuade.  It carries us away almost irresistibly.  Sublimity is a gift of nature.  It won’t come from the painstaking observance of the rules of rhetoric.  For the further explanation of the nature of the Sublime, Longinus compares the true Sublime with the false Sublime.  The false Sublime is characterized by bombast of language which is as great an evil as swellings in the body.  This ugly and parasitical growth in literature appears from the pursuit of novelty in the expression of ideas which may be regarded as the fashionable craze of the day.

          The true Sublime ‘Pleases all and pleases always’ as it arises from lofty ideas clothed in lofty language.  It gives us joy and exalts our spirits, as it expresses the thoughts of universal validity, the thoughts common to men of all ages and countries.  To acquire the true sublimity both nature and art are equally necessary.  He says “Fine writing needs the curb, as well as the spur”.  He complains Caecilius for his omitting some of the five sources of Sublimity.  Either he believed that Sublimity and emotion were one and the same thing and always existed and developed together or he thought that emotion had no contribution to make to Sublimity.  So, he was wrong.  In Longinus’s opinion there is nothing so productive of grandeur as noble emotion in the right place.

          According to Longinus the five principal sources of Sublime are, Grandeur of thought, passion, the uses of figures, diction and dignified composition.  Noble and lofty thoughts find their natural expression in lofty language.  Lofty thoughts itself is an echo of greatness of soul.  Such greatness and nobility of soul can be cultivated by nourishing the mind on thoughts that are elevating.  So, one who wants to attain this must feed his soul on the works of the great masters like Homer and Capture some of their greatness.

          The second source of the Sublime is vehement and inspired passion.  There should be genuine emotion.  Strong and powerful emotion would contribute more to loftiness of tone in writing.  The third source of attaining excellence of style is the use of figures.  Figures should not be used mechanically, rather, they must be rooted in genuine emotion.  Longinus does not deal with all figures, but only with those that give distinction to style.  The figures treated are the rhetorical question, Asyndeton or the omission of conjunction, hyperbaton or inversion, periphrases, a roundabout way of saying things by which the use of common place words is avoided and Apostrophe or address to abstract or inanimate objects.  These all will bring the expression a richer note and more tuneful rhythms.

        The fourth source of the Sublime is diction which includes choice and arrangement of words, as well as the use of metaphor and simile.  Both ordinary and striking words must be suitably chosen, for both are necessary for the formation of an impressive style.  Similarly metaphors are necessary to give elevation to style.  Along with metaphors he considers the use of hyperboles, which he says, must also rise from emotion.  The fifth source of Sublime is dignified and noble composition and arrangements.  By this he means a verbal order that is usually called rhythm.  Words must be harmoniously set.  Such harmonious combination of words appeals to the soul and enables the reader to share the emotions of the author.  The true Sublime uplifts the soul and fills the mind with joy.  As it overcomes the test of time, it remains memorable.  Here, Longinus quotes the lines of Iliad and proves the force and vigour of Homer that captures the desperate mood of Ajax in the mist and baffling night. 

Zeus, father, yet save tho'u Achaia's sons 

From beneath the gloom.  

And make clear day, and vouchsafe unto us with our eyes to see!

So, it be but in light, destroy us!

            Here, he doesn't plead for life as it will demean his stature.  Instead, he craves for death that is worthy of his bravery.  Thus he proves how Homer uses appropriate thought, emotion and dictum to suit the intensity of emotion that befits the situation.  This is what he says as sublimity. True sublimity has social implications because of its possessing inherent moral values. So, it is enjoyed by all, irrespective of time, place and age. So low and undignified vocabulary ill sounding words and vulgar idioms should be avoided.  Brevity is effective, but consciousness of expression will mar the Sublime.  These are the views of Longinus on the Sublime.

          Longinus is one of the greatest critics of antiquity.  Like Aristotle, he based his theories on existing Greek literature.  He likewise aimed at a rational explanation of literary phenomena.  So, his methods of theorizing are analytic, inductive, psychological and historical.  He is said to be a pioneer in the field of analytical criticism as he has applied the analytical method in his analysis of one of the important love lyrics of Sappho (570 BC – Greek Poetess).  He is also said to be the first romantic critic as he emphasizes on imagination and emotion.  A lot of similar things in the pages of Longinus’s ‘On the Sublime’ will never grow old and its freshness and light will continue to charm all ages.  That is why it remains towering among all other works of its class.

 

------Thulasidharan V

 

F.R.Leavis – Hard Times: An analytic note (The Great tradition)

 

https://youtu.be/fPf7jPe9KOI?si=fC8CwBrulayUB2mY

F.R. Leavis – Hard Times: An analytic note

(The Great tradition)

 

          Frank Raymond Leavis (1895-1978) is one of the leaders of Cambridge critics, who had their major influence in English literary studies from the mid 1920s.  He was also Charismatic and undisputed leader of the critical world of England.  F.R. Leavis believed that literature should be closely related to criticism of life and that it is therefore a literary critic’s duty is to assess works according to the author’s and society's moral position.  In that way, he not merely inherited, but took upon himself the role of the torch bearer of the humanistic tradition earlier initiated by his spiritual predecessor Arnold.  So, F.R. Leavis is of the opinion that literature affords us examples of writers like Arnold, Ruskin, Conrad and Lawrence who showed what it is to lead an ideal life, a life not accessible to the one promoted by Science and technology.

          ‘The Great tradition’ (1948) of F.R. Leavis is a work in fictional poetics discussing the merits of Jane Austin, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad.  It was he who declared boldly that D.H. Lawrence belonged to the great tradition of novelists.  ‘Scrutiny’ is a journal that he published for twenty one years along with his wife Queenie Roth, a specialist in British fiction is his best contribution to English letters.  Though ‘Hard Times: An analytic note’ is included in ‘The great Tradition’, it does not form a part of the principal discussions of the book.  Leavis is of the opinion that Charles Dickens is primarily an entertainer, a caricaturist who cannot be considered significant as Henry James.  The great novelists, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad in the tradition identified by Leavis are pre-occupied with form for they are technically original and use their genius to frame uniquely appropriate methods and procedures in their art.

          According to Leavis, George Eliot’s novels are the creations from her personal experiences that are closely related to the middle and lower class of the rural England of the 19^th century.  Henry James is a genius who creates an ideal civilized sensibility and possesses the capacity to communicate by the finest means of implication. Joseph Conrad is also an innovator in form and method who takes serious interest in life.

However Leavis gives great importance to Dickens's 'Hard times'. The title ‘Hard Times’ is significant as it deals with the inhumanities of Victorian civilization.  Leavis considers ‘Hard Times’ a moral fable with a definite intention that exhibits satiric irony in the first two chapters.  The descriptiveness of the passages in Hard Times reveals the sensitivity of Dickens and from the employment of symbolism that emerges out of metaphor, the candid portrayal of the Victorian society stands apart.  Sissy’s symbolic significance shows the vitality of life that is resourceful and provides a stark contrast to the lifeless rigidity of utilitarian principle. While Sissy represents vitality, Bitzer is more unemotional and mechanical in approach.  This shows Dickens unique capacity to represent human spontaneity with skill and deftness.  The descriptions of the circus athletes, their agility, frivolousness and their movements are perfectly designed by Dickens.  The circus life represents the vital human impulse that is trampled under utilitarianism.  Through this Dickens expresses profound reaction to industrialism that has degraded life in the Victorian society. 

          Dickens observes life in the urban scene where the usual depiction of human kindness and essential virtues assert themselves in the midst of ugliness and banality of life.  Sissy Jupe functions to convey the artistic flexibility of Dickens that finds her confronting utilitarianism with great subtlety.  The irony of situation is effectively designed when Gradgrind’s daughter is married off to Bounderby.   Louisa’s development under Gradgrind shows inhibition of natural affection and her capacity for ‘disinterested devotion’ is in sharp contrast to the vitality and force of life as depicted by Sissy Jupe.  Here, Leavis praises Dickens for his revealing the pathos related to the mechanistic life with a poetic beauty.  So, he calls Dickens an imaginative genius, a poetic dramatist whose possibilities of concentration and flexibility in the interpretation of life can only be compared to a dramatist like Shakespeare.

 

-----Thulasidharan V

ARISTOTLE’S ‘POETICS’ CONCEPTS OF TRAGEDY, COMEDY, PLOT AND CATHARISIS (Criticism 3)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IowuLmEBNU8&t=5s

ARISTOTLE’S ‘POETICS’ -

CONCEPTS OF TRAGEDY, COMEDY, PLOT AND CATHARSIS -

(Criticism 3)

 

          Aristotle was born in 384 BC at Stagira.  He came to Athens at the age of Seventeen and became a disciple of Plato and stayed with Plato till his death in 347 BC.  In 342 BC he became the tutor of Prince Alexander of Macedon.  In 335 BC he founded the Peripatetic school.  Aristotle was a voluminous writer and wrote 400 volumes.  Dialogues, Rhetoric, Logic, Physics, Metaphysics, Politics and Poetics were the important works of him.  He died in 322 BC.

          Aristotle is considered as the first scientific literary critic and his literary criticism is largely embodied in the ‘Poetics’.  The Poetics is a short treatise of twenty six chapters in 45 pages.  It seems that the poetics is not complete as it has only the discussion of tragedy.  There must be a second part, that’s lost, in which the discussion of comedy and satire should be included. 

          The poetics is an important land mark in the literary criticism.  It is an attempt to arrive at the truth, rather than ascertaining of some preconceived notions.  As Aristotle’s methods are exploratory and tentative it contains so much that is of permanent and universal interest in it.  According to Aristotle imitation (mimesis) is the common basis of all the fine arts.  But they differ from each other in their medium, manner and objects of imitation.  Thus, poetry differs from painting and music in its medium of imitation.  Poetry itself is divisible into epic and dramatic on the basis of its manner of imitation.  Here the epics narrate while the dramatic represents through action.  The dramatic poetry itself is distinguished as tragic or comic on the basis of its objects of imitation.  Tragedy imitates a noble character whereas a comedy imitates a mean character.  Tragedy imitates men as better and the comedy as worse than they really are.  Thus, Aristotle differentiates tragedy from other kinds of poetry.

          Aristotle considers tragedy superior to epic, as all the parts of an epic are included in tragedy.  But, at the same time he argues that all that of tragedy are not found in epics.  Aristotle defines tragedy as “The imitation of an action, serious, complete and of a certain magnitude, in a language beautified in different parts, with different kinds of embellishments, through actions and not narrations and through scenes of pity and fear bringing about the catharsis of "emotions".

          According to Aristotle tragedy has six parts namely plot, characters, diction, reasoning, spectacles and song.  As tragedy imitates action, the action that imitates is plot.  So, the plot should consist of logical and inevitable sequence of events.  The action must have a beginning, middle and an end.  It must be long enough to permit an orderly development of an action to a catastrophe.  Aristotle divides the plots of tragedy mainly into two kinds, simple and complex.  In a tragedy with a simple plot, the change in the fortunes of the hero takes place without any Perepeteia and Anagnorisis.  An ideal tragic plot, according to Aristotle, must not be simple.  It must be complex, that is, it must have Peripeteia which means ‘reversal of intention, the opposite that are intended or ignorance of truth’, and Anagnorisis which means “recognition of truth or realization of truth”.

          The ideal tragedy is a story where an unexpected catastrophe or a calamity happens due to a false move blindly made by a friend, kinsman, or by the hero himself.  It is a tragedy brought about, not by the deliberate purpose of some evil agent, not by mere chance but by human error.  ‘Hamartia’ is the tragic error of the hero.  He may err innocently, unknowingly, without any evil intention at all.  The miscalculation of the hero causes a chain of incidents that result in the change from good fortune to bad fortune.  Thus, ‘Hamartia’ becomes an inevitable one to the tragic plot.  Similarly both Peripeteia and Anagnorisis are incidents and so they too become parts of the plot.  They are actually bringing a change from friendship to hostility and vice versa.  The ignorance and the recognition of some truth can be caused by separate incidents.  They may be easily combined in some incidents.  Aristotle considers this combined form to be the most effective.  Here, Aristotle cites Oedipus as the best example of this combined ‘Reversal-recognition’ one.  (Sophecles's Oedipus Rex (430 BC)-Oedipus killed his father Laius and became the king of Thebes and married his mother Jocasta.  Having realized the truth gorged out his eyes and banished himself).  He also talks about a third kind of plot, that depends on the incidents of suffering and depicts murder, torture and death.  He rates it very low and says that it indicates a deficiency in the art of the poet.

          According to Aristotle, as tragedy idealizes, it imitates men as better and as comedy caricatures, it shows men as worse. Aristotle does not consider poetic Justice, the rewards and punishments to the good and evil as necessary for the tragedy as the suffering is far in excess of the fault or error of the hero..But, he regards it more keeping with the spirit of comedy.  He rules out plots with a double end, that is, the plots in which there is happiness for some of the characters and misery for others. Such double ending weakens the tragic effect and hence it must be avoided.  Thus, Aristotle declares that he is against Tragic-Comedy.

          Aristotle also opines that perfectly good as well as utterly wicked persons are not suitable to be heroes of tragedies.  So, an ideal tragic hero is a man who stands midway between the two extremes.  His misfortune is brought upon him by some fault of his own.  The Greek word ‘Hamartia’ means ‘missing the mark’ or ‘miscalculation’.  This error may arise from any of the three ways: ignorance, hasty or careless view of anything, by mistake.  In our sympathy for this sufferer on the stage, we forget our own troubles and worries.  Fear is the impulse to withdraw and pity is the impulse to approach.  Both these impulses are harmonized and blended in tragedy and this balance brings relief and repose.

          The function of a tragedy is to arouse the emotion of pity and fear in the minds of the viewers and in this way affecting the chatharsis of the emotions.  The Greek word ‘Catharsis’ has actually three meanings.  It means purgation, purification and clarification.  In the tragedy the spectator sees that it is the tragic error or Hamartia of the hero which results in suffering, and so he learns something about the universal relation between character and destiny.  So, there is some ‘purgation and purification’.  As it leads to an enhanced understanding of the universal law it is intellectual.  So, there is some clarifications too.

          ‘The Poetics’ is a comprehensive treatise on the art of writing plays.  It is a text book of practical instruction and guidance immediately useful for would be poets and dramatists.  It tells us clearly the real aim of drama and the ways and means by which the aim of drama can be achieved.  Aristotle’s theory regarding the nature of poetic imitation and the peculiar pleasure of Tragedy has been the basis of all subsequent discussions of these topics up to date.  As Aristotle was a man of universal intelligence, in whatever sphere he worked, he looked solely and steadfastly at the object.  That is why even today ‘The Poetics’ continues to be studied and prescribed as text book in schools and colleges all over the world.

-----Thulasidharan V

POST-STRUCTURALISM

 

POST-STRUCTURALISM

 

          A love-hate relationship with structuralism developed in the 1960s among many leading French thinkers.  In 1966 Jacques Derrida delivered a lecture on the title ‘Structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences’.  That event decentered the former intellectual cosmos.  A year later Roland Bathes’s ‘The death of the author’ argued that the literary text has multiple meanings and that the author was not the prime source of the work’s semantic content.  Thus, the birth of the reader became the source of the proliferation of the meanings of the text.  In this way Post Structuralism appeared as not only a continuation and development of structuralism but as a form of rebellion also to it.  The Post-Structuralists began to accuse structuralists for their not following through the implications of the views about languages on which their intellectual system is based. Moreover, one of the structuralistic views is the notion that language doesn’t just reflect or record the world; rather it shapes it.  So, to them, how we see it is what we see.  As we enter a universe of radical uncertainty, we cannot access to any fixed landmark and we cannot have any standard to measure.  So, all the concepts of the structuralism are to be deconstructed.  So, the scholars like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault became Post-structuralists.

          Deconstruction, a form of semiotic analysis (signs and symbols) of Jacques Derrida (1930-2009), the French philosopher, is a theory that has actually given shape to Post-structuralism.  It argues that language in its concepts of certainty, indentity and truth is unfortunately complex, unstable and sometimes impossible to determine.  Since the systems are always changing, it is impossible to describe a complete system, like one’s insisting on the association of darkness with evil and vice versa.  As words have no absolute meaning like this, any text is open to an unlimited range of interpretations.  So, to have a better and clearer understanding of the text, we should go beyond the structuralistic theories that imply a rigid inner logic to relationships that describe any aspect of social reality.  Thus deconstruction mainly focuses its attention on the slipperiness of language.  It makes the reader reject the traditional readings and seek out contradictory view points and analyses to decipher a new meaning.

          According to Jacques Derrida, as texts have more than one interpretation, a ‘deconstructive reading’ must always aims at certain relationship by the writer between what he commands and what he doesn’t command’.  Barbara Johnson also clarifies it by saying, ‘Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction’.  But it is much closer to ‘analysis’ which etymologically means ‘undo’ or ‘to deconstruct’.  So, deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.  Thus, deconstruction that owes much to Jacques Derrida’s grammatology defined a new kind of reading practice that has become a key application of Post-structuralism.

          Peter Barry is also of the opinion that Deconstruction has to be divided into three parts namely verbal, textual and linguistic.  According to him verbal stage is close reading, where one looks for paradoxes and contradictions.  In the textual stage, a critic looks for shifts or breaks in the continuity of the poem.  In the linguistic stage, the critic looks for the implicit and explicit reference to the unreliability or unworthiness of the language.

          Moreover, Derrida doesn’t agree with the strucuralists, especially in their langue and parole concept where they establish the traditional ‘hierarchy’ of speech over writing.  She argues that as speech and writing are forms of the same science of language, grammatology, speech is also subject to the same instability of writing.  Apart from this, she also criticizes the entire tradition of western philosophy’s search for discovering the essential structure of knowledge and reality.  It’s actually their futile attempt of confronting the limits of human thought.  They want to establish a logo centrism that is stable.  But, when a novel is read again after twenty years with the deconstructive reading, it will have definitely different meaning then.  This happens because the logocentric thought won’t have a fixed meaning.  Moreover, their logocentric theories are all based on binary oppositions and hierarchical dualisms, where presence and absence, reality and appearance, male and female, have their roles to play.  Here, unfortunately the first element is regarded as stronger and thus becomes true and a preferable one.  But, in a deconstructive reading, this assumed centre, unconscious point is revealed.  Thus, the binary structure upon which the text rests is imploded (collapsed). Here, what appears to be logical is revealed to be illogical and paradoxical.

          Aporia, a philosophical term that describes a contradiction, paradox or logical impasse in a text is also considered as an effective one in Post Structuralism.  As it is a rhetorical device in which the speaker expresses uncertainty or doubt about something, often pretended one, it is to persuade the others.  In an Aporia, the writer expresses doubt about the current topic that he is dealing with.  So, there is a possibility to have an unlimited range of interpretations.  Then, Derrida also coined the term, ‘Differance’ meaning both difference and an act of ‘deferring’.  The meaning of a word is created not given.  Each word actually depends for its meaning on the meanings of other words.  The meaning is endlessly ‘deferred’ in an infinitely long chain of meanings.  These are all identified in a deconstructive reading and so it helps us to have a better and clearer understanding of the text.

          Thus, Post-structuralists have pushed language to the extreme and have concluded that truth, meaning and understanding are impossible.  So, as words have no absolute meaning, any text is open to an unlimited range of interpretations.  Apart from Derrida there are many Post-structuralists like Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, who had their sizable contributions to Post-structuralism.  Moreover, it is not that much easy to distinguish Post-structuralism from Structuralism as both theories are based on the concepts of Saussure and Strauss.  But, the Post structuralists have applied their insights to a wider range of topics and radicalize some of the premises of the Structuralists.

----Thulasidharan V

STRUCTURALISM

 

STRUCTURALISM

 

            Structuralism is an intellectual movement by the influence of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), that began in France in the 1950s.  It was first seen in the works of the anthropologist Claude Levi Strauss (1908 -2009) and the literary critic Roland Barthes (1915-1980).  It designates the practice of analyzing and evaluating a work of art on the explicit model of Structuralist linguistics.  It is based on the concept that things cannot be fully understood in isolation.  They have to be seen in the context of larger structures they are part of.  So, structuralism is a method of interpreting and analyzing literature that focuses on contrasting ideas and elements of structure and attempts to show how they relate to the whole structure.

          According to Ferdinand de Saussure, who moved away from the then present historical and philological study of language to the study of structures, patterns and functions of language, language is not a naming process by which things get associated with a word or name.  It is a process where the linguistic sign is made of the union of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’.  The ‘signifier’ is what we call ‘something’.  It is the sign’s physical form.  The sound, image and the printed word are signifiers.  The word, ‘tree’ for tree.  The ‘signified’ is the meaning, idea and concept expressed by a sign.  It is the sign’s conceptual aspect.  By the word tree what we mean is ‘signified’.

          Apart from these ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ concept, Saussure’s langue and parole concept too influenced the structuralists.  Langue (language) referred to the rules behind the way the language is arranged and used.  Parole (speech) referred to the actual utterance of language, both spoken and written.  The structuralists began to illustrate with the help of narratology how a story’s meaning developed from its overall structure (langue) rather than from each individual story’s isolated theme (Parole).  The structuralists used the semiotic theory of Saussure too in their critical analysis.  As all the signs in the sign system of language are cultural constructs, they have taken on their meaning through repeated, learned and collective use.  So, they are arbitrary and relational.  The paradigmatic chain in hovel-Shed-hut-house-mansion-palace, shows that the meaning of each is dependent upon its position in the chain.        

          Similarly, Binary opposition is also an important concept of Structuralism.  It is actually the fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture and language.  According to Saussure, though binary opposition is actually the presence – absence dichotomy, it is not a contradictory relation but a structural and a complementary one.  It can easily be understood with an example of good and evil.  We cannot conceive of ‘good’ if we don’t understand ‘evil’.

          Structuralism was the first school of psychology that tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection.  Edward. B. Tichener talks about the three elementary stages of consciousness, which are actually the three components of structuralism.  They are sensations (sights, sounds and tastes), images (components of thoughts) and affections (components of emotions).  So, meaning is always an attribute of things.  The meanings are attributed to the things by the human mind, not contained within them.

          When we are confronted with Donne’s ‘Good Morrow’, it can only be understood if we have a clear notion of the genre it belongs to.  That is the ‘alba’ or ‘dawn song’, a poetic form dating from the 12^th century in which the lovers lament the approach of day break because it means that they must part.  To understand ‘alba’ well, we should know the concept of courtly love too.  Thus, the structuralist approach, makes the reader move away from the interpretation of the individual literary work and have a parallel drive towards understanding the larger, abstract structures that contain them.

Roland Barthes’ ‘Mythologies’, Jonathan Culler’s ‘Structuralist Poetics’ and Robert Scholes’s ‘Structuralism in literature’, attracted worldwide attention.  However, by the late 60s, many of the structuralistic concepts attacked by Jacques Derrida, Louis Althusser and even by Roland Barthes.  Though the elements of their works were all related to structuralism, they began to consider themselves as Post Structuralists.

------Thulasidharan V

 

RUSSIAN FORMALISM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=We5gheHWB4s&t=18s

          Russian formalism is the critical practice of strict adherence to prescribed forms as in religion and giving attention to arrangement, style and artistic means, free from its background, period and even the author.  So, to the formalists, the literary study should deal not with the author, the reader or the historical context but with the specific text at hand.  It emerged in Russia and Poland in 1910s.  The Moscow linguistic circle and the society for the study of poetic language (opojaz) reacted against the methods of literary theories of, 19^th and early 20^th century.  Formalists viewed literature as a distinct and separate entity, unconnected to historical or social causes or effects.  They gave greater importance to metaphor and other linguistic devices.  So, they can be said to be the fore runners of structuralists.

          The important formalists are Roman Jacobson, Viktor Shklovsky and Boris Eikhenbaum.  In 1921 Jacobson declared that ‘literariness’ that makes given work, a literary work.  Literature is really ‘foregrounding the utterances’, a feature that distinguishes literature from other human creations, which is made of certain artistic techniques or devices employed in literary works such as metaphor, rhyme and other patterns of sound and repetition.  The sum total of all the stylistic devices employed in it is to be taken into account.  Actually, these devices became the primary object of the formalist analysis.  It is to focus on ‘form’ of literary work and not on the content.  To the formalists the form is device and the content is material.

          Boris Eikhenbaum in his ‘Theory of formal Method’, (1926) surveys formalists’ history and their central theoretical concepts, he emphasizes Viktor Shklovsky’s role as the intellectual leader of the formalist movement and his most influential concept ‘defamiliarization’.  Defamiliarization is one of the important devices of the formalists.  According to Victor Shklovsky (1893-1984) defamiliarization is a typical device of all literature and art that presents a familiar phenomenon in an uncommon fashion for the purpose of renewed and prolonged aesthetic perception.  It is a literary device where ordinary and familiar objects are made to look different.  The Russian formalists believed that how something is said is more important than what is said.  No doubt, this concept has influenced the post modernism and epic theatre later in the 20^th century.  Shklovsky illustrates defamiliarization through Tolstoy’s ‘Kholstomer’, where the story is narrated by a horse at its point of view.  Thus the content of the story becomes unfamiliar.  The purpose of defamiliarization is making the reader question their perception of reality and as a result ultimately redefine it.  It helps them to see the strange aspects in the familiar and the unusual in the ordinary things of life.

          However, in 1920s, due to the Stalinist pressure the Russian Formalists had to accept the notions of literary evolution. Literary change and evolution was explained by them that the modifications of literary tradition, the development of art forms are all related to the aspects of culture, which brought gradual shifts in the laws of literary process.  Thus formalists skillfully examined the notion of literary history and pointed out the mechanics of continuity in the development of literature.  But the Russian Formalists were attacked by Russian Marxists, who saw literature as an integral, not a separate part of social forces.  So, by 1930, the formalist in Russia had been silenced. Though the formalists talked about the aesthetic function of poetic language and had a detailed study of sound and its role in poetry, their emphasis on form at the expense of thematic content was not well received after the Russian Revolution of 1917.  Moreover the Russian Formalism could not survive because of its neglecting the social world with which the human beings who wrote and read literature were brought up. So the Russian  formalism had to get absorbed in other systems of thought and lost its identity as a separate literary movement.

----Thulasidharan V

NEW CRITICISM

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4bu4eQBsQo

The new critics of 1930s insisted on the intrinsic values of a work of art and focused their attention on the individual work alone as an independent unit of meaning. They never considered the biological, sociological, and historical background of the work of art for the interpretation of the work. I.A. Richards (1893-1979) is a staunch advocate of a close textual and verbal study and analysis of a work of art. In order to ascertain the responses of fairly cultured readers, he distributed among his Cambridge students, printed sheets containing twelve poems and invited their comments. The names of the poets and all other information about them were carefully with-held. Having analysed their comments, he also gave his comments, interpretations, and conclusions. They were all included in the third part of his book, ‘The Practical Criticism’. That book became a landmark in the history of literary criticism. Thus, I.A. Richards has made literary criticism factual, scientific, and complete. Actually, these factual and scientific methods of critical analysis influenced a lot of the new critics on both sides of the Atlantic.

A poet wants to communicate and so he writes. The language he uses is the means of that communication. Language is made of words and hence a study of words is all important to understand the work of art. According to I.A. Richards, words carry four kinds of meaning. They are sense, feeling, tone and intention. By sense is meant something that is communicated by the plain literal meaning of the words. ‘Feeling’ refers to emotions, emotional attitude, will, desire, pleasure, unpleasure and the like. By ‘tone’ is meant the writer’s attitude to his reader. Actually, ‘feeling’ is only a state of mind. It won’t imply an object. But ‘intention’ has an object. It is actually, the writer’s aim which may be conscious or unconscious. It refers to the effect the writer wants to produce. Really this purpose modifies the expression. It draws attention to something of importance.

Though I. A. Richards, William Empson and T. S. Eliot had their contributions to this critical approach, it was John Crowe Ransom’s ‘The New Criticism’ gave the name to it. Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren too had their contributions to it. The new critics set out to define and formalize the qualities of poetic thought and language. They utilize the technique of close reading with special emphasis on the connotative and associative values of words. They also focused on the multiple functions of figurative language like symbol, metaphor, and image in the work. They are also of the opinion that the poetic form and content should not be separated, since the experience of reading the particular words of a poem, including its unresolved tensions, is the poem’s ‘meaning’.

Though T.S. Eliot sneered at the ‘verbal analysis’ as ‘lemon squeezing, many new critics including John Crowe Ransom and William Empson used this tool and techniques on an extensive scale. Moreover, William Empson came out with his book ‘Seven Types of Ambiguity’ in 1930, where he identified seven different types of verbal difficulty (ambiguity) in poetry and gave, examples of them with work analysis.

According to Cleanth Brooks, ‘The language of poetry is the language of Paradox’. So, the paradox is also a central concern of many new critics. It is actually used by almost all poets. Though it seems to be self-contradictory, it turns out to have a valid meaning. It is evident that the paradoxical utterance ‘Death’s death’ of John Donne in his ‘Death, be not proud’ has made the poem unique. It happened only when the new critics came out with their new approach. Metaphysical poets were totally neglected earlier. Similarly, irony, ambiguity, tension, affective fallacy and intentional fallacy are all having their inevitable contribution to poetry. They were all excellently identified and interpreted by the new critics between 1930 and 1970, in which period the practical criticism or the new criticism had a dominant role to play both in Britain and America.

--Thulasidharan V

 

 

PLATO’S CONCEPT OF ART AND HIS CRITICISM OF DRAMA AND POETRY (Criticism 2)

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5bQLfCyR0A

      Though Homer (8th century BC) and Aristophanes (5thC BC) had several passages of penetrating critical inquiry here and there in their works, it was only with Plato that criticism became a vital force in the ancient world.  Plato was the first conscious literary critic who has put his ideas in a systematic way in his ‘Dialogues’. Plato is recognised as a master of the dialogue form and as one of the greatest prose stylists of the Greek language. 

Plato was born in 427 BC.  Plato was introduced to Socrates when he was a young boy.  He first started writing poems but destroyed them under the influence of Socrates and developed interest in philosophy and mathematics.  He founded his ‘Academy’ in 387 BC and taught his pupils philosophy, mathematics, natural science, Juris prudence and practical legislations.  He wrote his great books then, The Dialogues, Ion, Symposium and The Republic.  He died in 347 BC.

Though Plato’s views on art and literature are scattered all over his ‘Ion’ and ‘Republic’ they are of at length and forceful.  His views on ‘Poetic Inspiration’, ‘Imitation’ and ‘Condemnation of poetry are also of great historical significance.  Many of his utterances are of a challenging nature and thus he gave a stimulus to literary criticism.  His glowing fancy, his idealism, the subtle irony and humour of his style are beyond praise.

Plato was an idealist.  He believed that the phenomenal world (usual, known through senses) is but an objectification of the ideal world.  The ideal world is real; the phenomenal world is but a shadow of this ideal reality.  So, it is fleeting and unreal.

Plato describes poet as ‘a light and winged and holy thing’ and the poetic inspiration as something that happens in poet ‘by power divine’.  God takes away the minds of poets and uses them as his ministers as he also uses diviners and holy prophets.  So, we who hear the priceless words of the poets, in a state of unconsciousness, hear the words of God.  As the poet speaks divine truth, poetry is not a craft which can be learned and practiced at will.  This is the most elaborate presentation in the ancient world of the notion of poetry that survives even today with modifications.

As Plato was an idealist, he believed that ideas alone are true.  According to him all the earthly things like beauty goodness and justice are mere types of copies of the ideal beauty, goodness and justice which exists in heaven.  He regards “imitation’ as mere mimesis (copy) or representation of these ideal forms and not expression, which is creative.  The reality lies not in individual objects but in general ideas or forms.  A painter only imitates what he sees.  He does not know how to make or to use what he sees.  He can paint a bed but can't make one.  Similarly, the poets imitate reality without necessarily understanding it. 

Plato was a teacher and had his own ‘Academy’.  So, his ideal was to turn out young men of well-formed personalities fit to be the leaders and rulers of an ideal State.  His literary criticism is frankly Utilitarian (more good to more people) that of educating the youth and forming them into good citizens of his ideal State.  It is from this practical point of view that he judges poetry.  So, he had no other way except attacking poets and poetry.  Education was in a sorry state in Athens, then.  The epics of Homer formed an essential part of the school curriculum.  They were venerated by the Greeks almost like the bible.  But in Homer there are many stories which represent the Gods in an unfavourable light.  Allegorical interpretations of these stories were considered unconvincing and difficult to understand.  Moreover, the wonderful flowering time of Greek art and literature was over, and the creative impulse had practically died away.  So, there was a degradation.  As a result, philosophers and orators were regarded as superior to poets and artists.  So, much of his criticism is thus in the nature is governed by the social and political conditions of his age.

Plato’s published writings consist of some, twenty-six dramatic dialogues on philosophical and related themes.  In, almost all the dialogues Socrates is the main and Plato's mouthpiece, but Plato's Socrates is not the historical Socrates. Plato's dialogue does not always present a straightforward argument. The questions of Plato's Socrates towards his interlocutors Adeimantus in book two and Glaucon in book three of 'The Republic', revolve round the role that literature should play in the education meant for the 'Guardians', the future rulers. Thus, it becomes a discussion on the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. Actually, 'Ion' examines poetry as a kind of divine madness.  Whereas in Republic he argues for an ideal, well-regulated community in which the educational curriculum should promote respect for law, reason, authority, self-discipline and piety.  To him literature should teach goodness and grace.

Though Plato’s Socrates loves and regularly cites Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, he calls for the censorship of many passages in these works that represent sacrilegious, sentimental unlawful and irrational behaviour.  Actually, many of the stories of Greek Gods were thought by Xenophanes (570-480BC) the pre-Socratic philosopher, to be possibly lies. So, here Plato's Socrates mentions the story of Uranus who hated his children and kept them packed in their mother Earth's womb. And how the mother Earth made one of her children Cronus Castrate his father and became the Lord of creation and how later his son Zeus, with the help of his mother over-threw Cronus and established himself as the king of all Gods.  Plato’s Socrates also says that similarly the story of horrific kidnap of Helen by Theseus and Pirithous, who were respectively the sons of Poseidon and Zeus is unbelievable and intolerable.  Such stories fail to teach goodness and grace.  He also insists that the Gods are not shape shifting wizards and do not mislead the people by lying in what they say or do, as they are presented in many of the stories.

According to Plato as the epic, lyric or tragedy, the literature that he has mentioned through Socrates are fictional and made up, they are dangerous.  Since they are too inferior to be accepted as a Mimesis, a copy of a copy, he insists everyone should be aware of what in literature should be allowed and what should be censored.  According to him good literature, cultural studies should lead the younger generation to become ideal men and women.  It must represent a world in which virtue is rewarded and even the punishment of evil serves virtuous ends. 

Plato condemns poetry in Republic X (book 10), that they feed and water the passions instead of drying them up and let them rule instead of ruling them.  The poets with their emotional frenzies and lack of moral restraint can afford no safe moral and intellectual guidance.  Thus, Plato attacks poetry on intellectual, emotional, utilitarian and moral grounds and demonstrates its uselessness and its corrupting influences.  He also condemns the ridiculous mixture of tragic and comic effects that were a feature of contemporary drama.  He emphasises for the first time that organic unity is essential for success in all arts. 

He ends his charges against poetry by saying that in an ideal state, “no poetry should be admitted, save hymns to the Gods and panegyrics on famous men”.  According to him the poets are to be honoured but they are to be banished from his ideal state.

 

----Thulasidharan V

Nature and functions of Literary Criticism (Criticism1) / Understanding The Idea of Criticism

      Etymologically the word criticism is derived from the Greek word ‘krinein’ meaning judgement and hence criticism is the exercise of judgement and literary criticism is the exercise of judgement on works of literature.  Criticism is the play of the mind on work of literature and its function is examining its excellencies and defects and finally to evaluate its artistic worth.

          Criticism is the art of estimating the quality and character of a work of art and the function or work of a critic - New English dictionary. 

To set up as a critic is to set up as a judge of values – I. A. Richards.

 Criticism is a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world – Mathew Arnold.

The sole task of criticism is to answer the three questions:

What has the artist tried to express?

How has he succeeded in expressing it?

Was it worth expressing? – Spingarn

The view of criticism is varied from critic to critic and age to age.  There are as many theories of criticism as there are critics. The view of criticism is directly related to the critic's own intellectual preoccupation and his philosophy or out look of life. So, a critic with moral and religious bias would be of the view that the function of criticism is to examine the moral worth and significance of a work of literature.  On the contrary, one with an artistic bent of mind would be of the view that the function of criticism would revolve around the aesthetic appreciation.

Moreover, the idea of criticism varies in accordance with the idea of literature.  So, the neo-classical criticism is built upon neo-classical theory of literature whereas the Romantic criticism is built upon individualism and impressionistic view.  Besides, the critical views of the critics echo the intellectual and moral environment where they live.  Thus, the development in social and behavioural sciences have brought psychological, and sociological approaches to criticism.

Since Plato (427-347 BC) condemned poetry as immoral and untruthful, Aristotle (384-327 BC) and Horace (65-8 BC) established dogmatic ‘rules’ and writers were advised to follow them strictly.  The Augustans were of the view that the chief end of criticism was to devise rules and regulations for the guidance of writers and then to judge a work on the basis of these rules.  However, with the rise of romantic individualism, Wordsworth and Coleridge came out with impressionistic criticism.  Thus, the romantic poet critics made minute and subtle studies of the poetic execution and tried to formulate principles of poetic composition.  But the wayward and unbalanced impressionistic criticism was neglected by Victorians.  They decided to discipline the personal likes and dislikes, prejudices and pridelections of the critics.  That was why Mathew Arnold designed criticism as the disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world.

The Modern age has widened the function of literary criticism.  It created two kinds of criticism.  The extrinsic criticism takes the cultural, sociological and psychological concepts into consideration and relates a work of literature closely to the life and age of its writer.  But, on the other hand the ‘new critic’ of the Ontological criticism examines the studies the work of literature word by word and line by line without any reference to any other extrinsic considerations.  Thus gets a better and clearer understanding of the work. 

The new critics of the 20th century began to look for paradox, ambiguity, irony and tension to have a better interpretation of the text, whereas the contemporary critics deal with all that belong to the present and occur in the present.  Because, the 21^st century literature deals with current theme or issues and reflects a technological culture.  Authors from diverse cultures and back grounds gain more recognition.  This has enriched the global literary landscape too.  Moreover, they are data-rich and Media-driven too.  Since the 21^st century learners have command over the digital and informational world, the writers too have to equip themselves with the same.  So, the writings have also become learner-centered.  However, Derrida’s Deconstructive approach and Foucault’s discourse theory have influenced the literary criticism of the 21^st century to some extent.

 Thus contrary to the everyday sense of criticism as 'fault finding', the much modern criticism, especially the academic kind, analyses whether the works it discusses are valuable. Here, the functions of judgement and analysis having to some extent become divided between the market world that reviews, whether it is worth and the educational world asks why this is so good.  Thus, by using different theoretical lenses, it reveals the hidden layers and changes our perspectives with an active investigation.

Since the functions of literary criticism are evaluations, interpretations and elucidations, the critic should be aware of the three principles of criticism – the principle of truth, principle of symmetry (balance of size, form, shape) and the principle of idealism.  A critic should be a man of sound common sense, understanding and clear thinking.  A critic must be a man widely read not only in the literature of his own language, but in that of as many languages as possible.  He must have proper training and technical skill in the different branches of literature.  He must rise above all personal, religious, national, political and literary prejudices and pridelections.  He must have imaginative sympathy too.  Above all he must posses a sound knowledge of human psychology.  He must also have a thorough knowledge of human life and nature.  Apart from all these qualities he must be able to put his responses before his reader effectively, clearly and lucidly. 

https://youtu.be/oh9oVBPoFb8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rbnxyHEXd0

----Thulasidharan V Thillaiakathu

CHANDRAN ALIYAN

 

CHANDRAN ALIYAN

 

 For the past fifteen months covid-19 has swallowed the lives of millions of people throughout the world.  Though it shows the symptoms of disappearance now and then actually it becomes stronger day by day.  Its ruthless life hunting continues.  The biggest problem that all the countries throughout the world except china (it is a wonder – how? Why?) have been facing after the Second World war is no doubt by this Covid.  The gnawing pain on our seeing the picture of a covid victim’s body carried by his wife and daughters will remain till the end of our life. That will echo the covid 19 tragedy in the days to come.....

 

Similarly unexpected covid death of many political leaders, scholars, writers, doctors, teachers, policemen, artists like SPB whom we loved and enjoyed have wounded us badly. Doubtlessly all deaths and departures are painful.  Still the icy hands of covid are mercilessly being extended towards our loving and loveable people.  As its atrocity has become inevitable, we are helpless.  I too had a similar thunder struck shock last week.

 

Our Chandran Aliyan (Aliyan in Malayalam means brother-in-law, the husband of one’s sister) has also become a victim of this covid-19.  My cousin Indira Bhai’s husband, who got retired from H.M.T Ltd, Kalamassery, Kochi.  A charming character, who has won the love and respect of all his friends and relatives with his infallible dealings of love and care, even in his 70s. 

 

When I look back, in 1980s he was always with me then with his helping hands to get employed at various establishments like La Bella finances, Our College and Harrisons Malayalam Ltd.  Similarly in 1990s, he was inevitable on my finding a life partner and on my getting fixed to a permanent employment too. In fact, after the departure of my parents, to some extent, he has occupied that place.  He never missed to call me and know the well being of me and my family even when I missed to call him due to my so called tight work schedule.

 

In fact, he tried his maximum to save himself from Covid-19 by following all the instructions given. He even escaped from an unexpected heart attack in March.  Unfortunately, covid-19 trapped him in the second week of May 2021.  After a few days of home quarantine, on 14^th as it became severe, he was taken to the Medical College, Kalamassery.  As he had a slight improvement, he was shifted to a covid care centre then. 

 

There the ruthless Covid-19 took away his life on it finding a favourable moment (a cursed moment to all of us).  However, there were angels like volunteers who took the body and cremated and collected and handed over the ash remaining of him in an earthen pot.  Now it is kept and preserved at the southern end of the house outside, waiting to be taken to the riverbanks of Periyar near Aluva Advaidha Ashramam for the further ceremony, when the lock down is over.

 

The only thing that can be done now is praying for the Moksha Prapti of his soul, consoling the bereaving family, turning the pages of the memory where he lives and feeling the painful enjoyment.

 

On reading this I know very well that you all have in your mind one or more faces of your loving and loveable ones who have also become victims to Covid-19.  Let us pray for them.  Let us pray for the rest and peace of their souls.  This too will p ass.  Yes, time and patience will cure all the wounds.  Let us also pray the Almighty to help us to get relieved from the cruel clutches of Covid-19 and save ourselves and our loving and loveable along with the entire human race.

 

-----Thulasidharan