Term
| “There is a divinity moving you, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet. . . . In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended, who take the inspiration. For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “For in this way God would seem to demonstrate to us and not allow us to doubt that these beautiful poems are not human, nor the work of man, but divine and the work of God.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Do you know that the spectator is the last of the rings which, as I am saying, receive the power of the original magnet from one another? The rhapsode like yourself and the actor are intermediate links, and the poet himself is the first of them. Through all these God sways the souls of men in any direction which He pleases, causing each link to communicate the power to the next |
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Definition
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Term
“Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting designed to be—an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear—of appearance or reality?
Of appearance, he said.
Then the imitator is a long way off the truth, and can reproduce all things because he lightly touches on a small par of them, and that part an image.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Can you imagine, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind—if he had been capable of knowledge and not been a mere imitator—can you imagine, I say, that he would not have attracted many followers, and been honoured and loved by them?” |
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Definition
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Term
| “The imitative poet who aims at being popular . . . his creations have an inferior degree of truth . . . and this is enough to show that we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a State which is to be well ordered . . . [the imitative poet] indulges the irrational nature. . . . he is an imitator of images and is very far removed from the truth.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “And the same may be said of lust and anger and all the other affections, of deisire and pain and pleasure, which are held to be inseparable from every action—in all of them poetry has a like effect; it feeds and waters the passions instead of drying them up; she lets them rule, although they ought to be controlled if mankind are ever to increase in happiness and virtue.” |
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Definition
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Term
| • Two foundational human instincts: imitation (mimesis) and harmony (also rhythm) |
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Definition
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Term
| The unity of time, place, and action |
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Definition
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Term
| “Sophocles is an imitator of the same kind as Homer—for both imitate higher types of character; from another point of view, of the same kind as Aristophanes—for both imitate persons acting and doing.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament, the several kinds being found in separate parts of the play; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Character is that which reveals moral purpose, showing what kind of things a man chooses or avoids.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “A complex action is one in which the change is accompanied by such Reversal, or by Recognition, or by both.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “There is another art which imitates by means of language alone, and that either in prose or verse—which verse, again, may either combine different metres or consist of but one kind—but this has hitherto been without a name.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Fear and pity may be aroused by spectacular means; but they may also result from the inner structure of the piece, which is the better way, and indicates a superior poet.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “There remains, then, the character between these two extremes,--that of a man who is not eminently good and just, yet whose misfortune is brought about not by vice or depravity, but my some error or frailty. He must be one who is highly renowned and prosperous,--a personage like Oedipus, Theyestes, or other illustrious men of such families.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “For it is not to persuasion but to ecstasy that passages of extraordinary genius carry the hearer: now the marvelous, with its power to amaze, is always and necessarily stronger than that which seeks to persuade and to please.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “Sublimity is always and eminence and excellence in language and that from this, and this alone, the greatest poets and writers of prose have attained the first place and have clothed their fame with immorality.” |
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Definition
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Term
| Romantic aspect of the Classical tradition (focus on the sublime) |
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Definition
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Term
| “Sublimity, we know, brought out at the happy moment, parts all matter this way and that, and like a lightning flash reveals, reveals, at a stroke and in its entirety, the power of the orator.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “For it is a fact of Nature that the soul is raised by true sublimity, it gains a proud step upwards, it is filled with joy and exultation as though itself has produced what it hears.” |
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Definition
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Term
| psychogogia and catharsis |
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Definition
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Term
| The tension between the value of the rules and the doctrine of inspired creativity |
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Definition
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Term
| “Sublimity is the note which rings from a great mind. Thus it is that, without any utterance, a notion, uncolothed and unsupported, often moves our wonder, because the very thought is great…" |
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Definition
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Term
| “…yet so far as it is possible we must nurture our souls to all that is great, and make them, as it were, teem with noble endowment.” |
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Definition
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Term
| “For when Homer presents to us woundings of the gods, their factions, revenges, tears, bonds sufferings, all massed together, it seems to me that, as he has done his uttermost to make the men of the Trojan war gods, so he has made the gods men… Far better than ‘The Battle of the Gods’ are the passages which show us divinity as something undefiled and truly great” |
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Definition
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Term
| “They saw many other things, and they also saw this, that Nature determined man to be no low or ignoble animal, but introducing us into life…therein, did then implant in our souls an invincible and eternal love of that which is great and, by our own standard, more divine…our conceptions pass eyond the bounds which limit it.” |
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Definition
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Term
| Articulated the concept of “dulce et utile” |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| Simple: foundational, concise, consistent. Rules are for the development of talent |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| “Let the work of art be whatever you want, as long as it is simple and has unity." |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| “Let each form of poetry occupy the proper place allotted to it." |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| “Poets aim either to help or to amuse the reader, or to say what is pleasant and at the same time what is suitable.” |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| “The writer who as combined the pleasant with the useful…wins on all points, by delighting the reader while he gives advice." |
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Definition
| Horace: Epistle to the Pisones, The Art of Poetry |
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Term
| “There are six things to be looked for at the beginning of any doctrinal work, viz. subject, actor, form purpose, title, and the type of philosophy. Of these there are three in which this part, which I meant to dedicate to you, is different from the whole, that is, the subject, the form, and the title, in the others it does not differ…” |
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Definition
| Dante: Letter to Can Grande della Scalla |
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Term
| “…You must know that the sense of this work is not simple, rather it may be called polysemantic, that is, of many senses the first sense is that which comes from the letter, the second is that of that which is signified by the letter…” |
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Definition
| Dante: Letter to Can Grande della Scalla |
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Term
| “…purpose of the whole as well as the part is to remove those living in this life from the state of misery and to lead them to the state of bliss.” |
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Definition
| Dante: Letter to Can Grande della Scalla |
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Term
| He argues that poetry is above the limitations of nature |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| We see all the godlike qualities in man when he produces poetry. He becomes a creator. |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| poetry never affirms, so it never lies |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| Christian humanism: the skills of men are great, and we in a sense reflect the divine; we can even improve on creation, we are just that talented. |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “Her world is brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.” |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “…wit maketh us know what perfection is, and yet our infected will keepeth us from reaching unto it.” |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “This purifying of wit, this enriching of memory, enabling of judgment, and enlarging of conceit, which commonly we call learning…the final end is to lead and draw us to as high a perfection as our degenerate souls, made worse by their clayey lodgings..." |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “…but freely ranging only within the zodiac of his own wit.” |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “For who will be taught, if he be not moved with desire to be taught, and what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of moral doctrine) as that it moveth one to do that which it doth teach?” |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| “Now therein of all sciences (I speak still of human, and according to the humane conceits) is our poet the monarch. For he doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way as will entice any man to enter into it.” |
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Definition
| Sir Philip Sidney (1595):An Apology for Poetry |
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Term
| His goal is to vindicate the English writers as well as set down universal principles for writing |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Term
| Takes on the unities and to what extent they should be followed (can they be followed too closely; is it bad to throw them out entirely) |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Term
| “A play ought to be, a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Term
| “If your quarrel, said Eugenius, to those who now write, be grounded only on your reverence to antiquity, there is no man more ready to adore those great Greeks and Romans than I am: but on the other side, I cannot think so contemptibly of the age I live in.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Term
| “A just and lively image of human nature, representing its passion and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Lisideius |
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Term
| “…every age has a kind of universal genius, which inclines those that live in it to some particular studies…Emulation is the spur of wit, and sometimes envy, sometimes admiration, quickens our endeavors.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Crites |
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Term
| “. . . the famous Rules, which the French call Des Trois Unitez, or, the Three Unities, which ought to be observed in every regular play; namely, of Time, Place, and Action.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Crites |
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Term
| “To overcome them [the Classics] we must make use of the advantages we have received from them: but to these assistances we have joined our own industry; for, had we sat down with a dull imitation of them, we might then have lost somewhat of the old perfection, but never acquired any that was new. We draw not therefore after their lines, but those of Nature.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Eugenius |
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Term
| “A play ought to be, a just and lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humours, and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy |
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Term
| “The words of a good writer, which describe it lively, will make a deeper impression of belief in us than all the actor can persuade us to, when he seems to fall dead before us; a pot in the description of a beautiful garden, or a meadow, will please our imagination more than the place itself can please our sight.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Lisideius |
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Term
| “A scene of mirth, mixed with tragedy, has the same effect upon us which our music has betwixt the acts; and that we find a relief to us from the best plots and language of the stage, if the discourses have been long.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Neander |
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Term
| “A thing well said will be wit in all languages. . . . Wit is best conveyed to us in the most easy language.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Eugenius |
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Term
| “He [Shakespeare] was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . he was naturally learned.” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: |
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Term
| “by their servile observations of the Unities of Time and Place, and integrity of scenes, they have brought on themselves that dearth of plot, and narrowness of imagination, which amy be observed in all their plays” |
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Definition
John Dryden (1668)
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy: Neander |
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Term
| “The sound must seem an echo to the sense” |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d / What oft was thought but ne’er so well express’d” |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “Those rules of old, discover’d, not devised,/ Are Nature still, but Nature methodized |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem;/ To copy Nature is to copy them” |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “In Poets as True Genius is but rare,/ True Taste as seldom is the Critic’s share;/ Both must alike from Heav’n derive their light,/These born to judge, as well as those to write” |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “A little learning is a dangerous thing;/ Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:/ |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| “For fools rush in where angels fear to tread” |
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Definition
| Alexander Pope (1711): An Essay on Criticism |
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Term
| Does believe that writers should write with a moral purpose, so this is a fault of Shakespeare |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “All are perhaps more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of the age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. They great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. While an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead we rate them by his best.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “In the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of Shakespeare is commonly a species.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “His tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “He sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| Defends the attacks on Shakespeare’s tragicomic tendencies by saying that tragicomedy is more true to life |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| Argues that Shakespeare’s real talent lies with his comedies, not his tragedies |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “The truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “Imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “The work for a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades and scented with flowers; the compositions of Shakespeare is a forest, in which oaks extend their brances, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filing the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “He that will understand Shakespeare, must not be content to study him in the closet, he must look for meaning sometimes among the sport of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures of the shop.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| “Parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer.” |
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Definition
| Samuel Johnson (1765): Preface to Shakespeare |
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Term
| Reacts against false language—poetry should not be separate from the lives of men, so he focuses in on the rustic and the rural |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| The poet is a man speaking to men, connecting the rest of humanity with universal feelings. He focuses in on the common, which is a revolutionary idea in poetry |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| Pleasure is the acknowledgment of the beauty of the universe |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as possible in a selection of language really used by men.” |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “The understanding of the Reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified.” |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “What is a Poet? . . . He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul . . . He has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement.” |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “Nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the Poet’s art. . . . It is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. We have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure.” |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “Poetry is the first and last of all knowledge – it is as immortal as the heart of man." |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “The end of poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure." |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “I have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquility gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind.” |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| “Poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge |
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Definition
William Wordsworth (1800):
Preface to Lyrical Ballads |
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Term
| The poetic purpose: a willing suspension of disbelief |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “…in which it was agreed, that my endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as the transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “A poem is that species of composition, which his opposed to works of science by proposing to itself such delight from the whole, as is compatible with distinct gratification from each component part." |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “But if the definition sought for be that of a legitimate poem, I answer, it must be one, the parts of which mutually support and explain each other; all in their proportion harmonizing with, and supporting the purpose and known influences of metrical arrangement.” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself.” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “Our conversations turned frequently on the two cardinal points of poetry, the power of exciting the sympathy of the reader by a faithful adherence to the truth of nature, and the power of giving the interest of novelty by the modifying colors of imagination." |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “But more especially on the essential difference of the beautiful and agreeable, rest fundamentally the whole question …: whether the noblest productions of human genius … delight us merely by chance, from accidents of local associations—in short, because they please us … or, whether there exists in the constitution of the human soul a sense, and a regulative principle, which may indeed bye stifled and latent in some, and be perverted and denaturalized in others, yet is nevertheless universal in a given state of intellectual and moral culture; which is independent of local and temporary circumstances …” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which we have exclusively appropriated the name imagination.” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
From Biographica Literaria |
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Term
| “Taste is the intermediate faculty which connects the active with the passive powers of our nature, the intellect with the sense; and its appointed function is to elevate the images of the latter while it realizes the ideas of the former.” |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
On the General Principles of Genial Criticism |
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Term
| “Thus the Philosopher of the later Platonic, or Alexandrine school, named the triangle the first-born of beauty, it being the first and simplest symbol of multeity in unity." |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
On the General Principles of Genial Criticism |
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Term
| “Of all ‘the many’ which I actually see, each and all are really reconciled into unity: while the effulgence from the whole coincides with, and seems to represent, the effluence of delight from my own mind in the intuition of it." |
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Definition
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1817)
On the General Principles of Genial Criticism |
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Term
|
Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| The author must remove himself completely from a work, empty himself and let the art take over. The writer does not bring an agenda to his writing. |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| Poetical character: It has no self, it has no character; the poet has no identity |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of Imagination – what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth” |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| “…the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeable evaporated, from their being in close relationship with Beauty and Truth.” |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| “Negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason” |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| Reason versus Imagination: what imagination seizes as beauty must be truth |
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Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| “As to the poetical Character itself, (I mean that sort of which, if I am anything, I am a Member; that sort distinguished from the wordsworthian or egotistical sublime…) it is not itself—it has no self—it is everything and nothing—It has no character—it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated--It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen” |
|
Definition
John Keats (1817-1818)
Four Letters |
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Term
| o The poet tries to cheer himself with his “music,” the listeners do not see him or understand his song—they are just moved by it. |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “Man is an instrument over which a series of external and internal impressions are driven like the alternations of an ever-changing Aeolian lyre which move it by their notion to ever-changing melody.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “A poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “The great secret of morals is love; or a going out of our own nature, and an identification of ourselves with the beautiful which exists in thought, action, or person, not our own. A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensely and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
Reason versus Imagination:
Reason- contemplation, analysis
Imagination- coloring and composing the thoughts produced by reason. |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “There are two kinds of pleasure, one durable, universal and permanent; the other transitory and particular. Utility may either express the means of producing the former or the latter.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “Poetry turns all things to loveliness; it exalts the beauty of that which is most beautiful, and it adds beauty to that which is most deformed; it marries exultation and horror, grief and pleasure, eternity and change; it subdues to union under its light yoke, all irreconcilable things.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “None but God and the poet deserve the name of creator." |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| “A great instrument of moral good is the imagination.” |
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Definition
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1821)
A Defence of Poetry |
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Term
| o The best tragedy exemplifies passion filtered through composure. Action is elemental and primal, resulting from the overwhelming knowledge of truth. |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “The introduction of the chorus, says Schiller, is the decisive step by which war is declared openly and honorably against all naturalism in art.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “It is indeed an ‘ideal’ domain, as Schiller correctly perceived, in which the Greek satyr chorus, the chorus of primitive tragedy, was wont to dwell. It is a domain raised high above the actual paths of mortals. For this chorus the Greek built up the scaffolding of a fictitious natural state and on it placed fictitious natural beings. On this foundation tragedy developed…” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “Similarly, I believe, the Greek man of culture felt himself nullified in the presence of the satiric chorus; and this is the most immediate effect of the Dionysian tragedy, that the state and society and, quite generally, the gulfs between man and man give way to an overwhelming feeling of unity leading back to the very heart of nature.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “The metaphysical comfort—with which, I am suggesting even now, every true tragedy leaves us—that life is at the bottom of things, despite all the changes of appearances, indestructibly powerful and pleasurable—this comfort appears in incarnate clarity in the chorus of satyrs, a chorus of natural beings who live ineradicably, as it were, behind all civilization and remain eternally the same, despite the changes of generations and of the history of nations.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “The satyr was the archetype of man, the embodiment of his highest and most intense emotions |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| Apollonian and the Dionysian |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “The contrast between this real truth of nature and the lie of culture that poses as if it were the only reality is similar to that between the eternal core of things, the thing-in-itself and the whole world of appearances.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “The chorus is the ‘ideal spectator’ insofar as it is the only beholder, the beholder of the visionary world of the scene. A public of spectators as we know it was unknown to the Greeks: in their theaters the terraced structure of concentric arcs made it possible for everybody to actually overlook the whole world of culture around him and to imagine, in absorbed contemplation, that he himself was a Christ.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “At bottom, the aesthetic phenomenon is simple: let anyone have the ability to behold continually a vivid play and to live constantly surrounded by hosts of spirits, and he will be a poet; let anyone feel the urge to transform himself and to speak out of other bodies and souls, and he will be a dramatist.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “Such magic transformation is the presupposition of all dramatic art. In this magic transformation the Dionysian reveler sees himself as a satyr, and as a satyr, in turn, he sees the god, which means that in his metamorphosis he beholds another vision outside himself, as the Apollinian complement of his own state. With this new vision the drama is complete.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “…The chorus is a living wall against the assaults of reality because it—the satyr chorus—represents existence more truthfully, really, and completely than the man of culture does who ordinarily considers himself as the only reality.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “What distinguishes the Aryan notion is the sublime view of active sin as the characteristically Promethean virtue. With that, the ethical basis for pessimistic tragedy has been found: the justification of human evil, meaning both human guilt and the human suffering it entails.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| “What distinguishes the Aryan notion is the sublime view of active sin as the characteristically Promethean virtue. With that, the ethical basis for pessimistic tragedy has been found: the justification of human evil, meaning both human guilt and the human suffering it entails.” |
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Definition
Friedrick Nietzsche (1874)
From The Birth of Tragedy |
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Term
| Poetry is our salvation, since God is dead |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| Touchstone theory: We must keep in mind all the greats who have come before us |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay…But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion to-day is its unconscious poetry.” |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “In poetry, as a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, the spirit of our race will find…its consolation and stay |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “The best poetry is what we want; the best poetry will be found to have a power of forming, sustaining, and delighting us, as nothing else can.” |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “Only one thing we may add as to the substance and matter of poetry, guiding ourselves by Aristotle’s profound observation that the superiority of poetry over history consists in its possessing a higher truth and a higher seriousness…the substance and matter of the best poetry acquire their special character from possessing, in an eminent degree, truth and seriousness.” |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “But you ask me whether such verse proceeds from men with an adequate poetic criticism of life, from men whose criticism of life has a high seriousness, or even, without that high seriousness, has poetic largness, freedom, insight, benignity?” |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| Made literature a valid area for academic study/ he was the first professor of English |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| “But for supreme poetical success more is requires than the powerful application of ideas to life; it must be an application under the conditions fixed by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.” |
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Definition
Matthew Arnold (1880)
The Study of Poetry |
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Term
| Beauty can instruct, but art is not really about instruction |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| • We must approach life with an intensity and passion, living more abundantly. |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “Every one of those impressions is the impression of the individual in his isolation, each mind keeping as a solitary prisoner its own dream of a world." |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “To such a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself on the stream, to a single sharp impression, with a sense in it, a relic more or less fleeting, of such moments gone by, what is real in our life fines itself down. It is with this movement, with the passage and dissolution of impressions, images, sensations, that analysis leaves off—that continual vanishing away, that strange, perpetual weaving and unweaving of ourselves.” |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end.” |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| Impressionistic criticism: whether or not the impression enriches the moment determines its value. |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.” |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “What we have to do is to be for ever curiously testing new opinions and courting new impressions, never acquiescing in a facile orthodoxy….” |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| “For our only change lies in expanding that interval, in getting as many pulsations as possible into the given time.” |
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Definition
Walter Pater (1888)
From Studies in the History of the Renaissance |
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Term
| Truth is the real morality |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “Art lives upon discussion, upon experiment, upon curiosity, upon variety of attempt, upon the exchange of views and the comparison of standpoints.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “…the good subsists and emits its light and stimulates our desire for perfection.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting." |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “A novel is in its broadest definition a personal, a direct impression of life: that, to begin with, constitutes its value, which is greater or less according to the intensity of the impression.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| Marks the beginning of modern literary theory |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every airborne particle in its tissue. It is the very atmosphere of the mind; and when the mind is imaginative – much more when it happens to be that of a man of genius – it takes to itself the faintest hints of life, it converts the very pulses of the air into revelations." |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donnee: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of ‘liking’ a work of art or not liking it: the most improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate test.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “I am quite at a loss to imagine anything (at any rate in this matter of fiction) that people ought to like or dislike.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “Humanity is immense, and has a myriad forms; the most one can affirm is that some of the flowers of fiction have the odour of it, and others have not; as for telling you in advance how your nosegay should be composed, that is another affair” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “Try and catch the color of life itself.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “…the deepest quality of a work of art will always be the quality of the mind of the producer. In proportion as that intelligence is fine will the novel, the picture, the statue partake of the substance of beauty and truth. To be constituted of such elements is, to my vision, to have purpose enough.” |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| • Part of the aesthetic movement, inspired by Pater’s call for “art for art’s sake” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| o He has a great regard for the Greeks, especially in the marriage of their critical and artistic natures—all Greeks were critics, in his mind |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “For, after all, what is our primary debt to the Greeks? Simply the critical spirit." |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “Recognizing that the most perfect art is that which most fully mirrors man in all his infinite variety.” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “We are discussing the Art of Fiction; questions of art are questions (in the widest sense) of execution; questions of morality are quite another affair." |
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Definition
Henry James (1884)
The Art of Fiction |
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Term
| “He [Plato] first perhaps stirred in the soul of man that desire that we have not yet satisfied, the desire to know the connection between Beauty and Truth, and the place of Beauty in the moral and intellectual order of the Kosmos.” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “That purification and spiritualizing of the nature which he calls catharsis is, as Goethe saw, essentially aesthetic, and is not moral, as Lessing fancied. Concerning himself primarily with the impression that the work of art produces, Aristotle sets himself to analyze that impression, to investigate its source, to see how it is engendered.” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “The mimic spectacle of life that Tragedy affords cleanses the bosom of much ‘perilous stuff,’ and by presenting high and worthy objects for the exercise of the emotions purifies and spiritualises the man.” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “Without the critical faculty, there is not artistic creation at all, worthy of the name…Well, that spirit of choice, that subtle tact of omission, is really the critical faculty in one of its most characteristic moods, and no one who does not possess this critical faculty can create anything at all in art |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| The purpose of art is progress, a movement towards perfections |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| Art is motivated by religious perceptions and the best attains to unify man. |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| Two ways of uniting men: creating feelings of sonship with God and brotherhood to men; simple feelings of common life. |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| “Words have not merely music as sweet as that of viol and lute…but thought and passion and spirituality are theirs also, are theirs indeed along.” |
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Definition
Oscar Wilde (1891)
From The Critic as Artist |
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Term
| “Art, all art, has this characteristic, that it unites people. Every art causes those to whom the artist’s feelings is transmitted to unite in the soul with the artist and with all who receive the same impression” |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| “All history shows that the progress of humanity is accomplished no otherwise than under the guidance of religion.” |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| “…and as has been the case always and everywhere, art transmitting feelings flowing from the religious perception of our time should be chosen from amid all the indifferent art, should be acknowledged, highly valued, and encouraged, while art running counter to that perception should be condemned and despised, and all the remaining, indifferent, art should neither be distinguished nor encouraged.” |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “…so the evolution of feeling proceeds by means of art—feelings less kind and less necessary for the well-being of mankind being replaced by other kinder and more needful for that end. That is the purpose of art.” |
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Definition
Leo Tolstoy (1898)
What is Art? |
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Term
| We must write with a knowledge of the whole of history behind us |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| Depersonalization: an extinction of personality |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| The author should not be able to be found in the poem. |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “…criticism is as inevitable as breathing, and that we should be none the worse for articulating what passes in our minds when we read a book and feel an emotion about it, for criticizing our own minds in their work of criticism.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “One of the facts that might come to light in this process is our tendency to insists, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of his work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors…” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “We have seen many such simple currents soon lost in the sand; and novelty is better than repetition.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “…the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of literature of Europe form Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his own county has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “In a peculiar sense he will be aware also that he must inevitable be judged by the standards of the past. I say judged, not amputated, by them; not judged to be as good as, or worse or better than, the dead; and certainly not judged by the canons of the dead critics. It is a judgment, a comparison, in which two things are measured by each other. To conform merely would be for the new work not really to conform at all; it would not be new, and would therefore not be a work of art. And we do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value—a test, it is true which can only be slowly and cautiously applied, for we are none of us infallible judges of conformity.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “He must be quite aware of the obvious fact that art never improves, but that the material of art is never quite the same.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “But the difference between the present and the past is that the conscious present is an awareness of the past in a way and to an extent which the past’s awareness of itself cannot show.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “Someone said: ‘The dead writers are remote from us because we know so much more than they did.’ Precisely, and they are that which we know.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy must sweat for it. Shakespeare acquired more essential history form Plutarch than most men could from the whole British Museum.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “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.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “The analogy was that of the catalyst. When the two gases previously mention are mixed in the presence of a filament of platinum, the form sulphurous acid. This combination takes place only if the platinum is present; nevertheless the newly formed acid contains no trace of platinum…the mind of the poet is the shred of platinum.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “The experience, you will notice, the elements which enter the presence of the transforming catalyst, are of two kinds: emotions and feelings.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particle which can unite to from a new compound are present together.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “The point of view which I am struggling to attack is perhaps related to the metaphysical theory of the substantial unity of the soul: for my meaning is, that the poet has, not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality, in which impression and experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “Consequently, we must believe that ‘emotion recollected in tranquility’ is an inexact formula. For it is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor, without distortion of meaning, tranquility. It is a concentration, and a new thing resulting from the concentration, of a very great number of experience which to the practical and active person would not seem to be experiences at all…” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| “The emotion of art is impersonal and the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1920)
Tradition and the Individual Talent |
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Term
| Calls the play a failure because of its structural problems—it does not work compellingly and artfully as a whole. |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “…neither of these men in writing about Hamlet remembered that his first business was to study a work of art.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “And probably more people have thought Hamlet a work of art because they found it interesting than have found it interesting because it is a work of art. It is the ‘Mona Lisa’ of literature.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other works, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “The artistic ‘inevitability’ lies in this complete adequacy of the external to the emotion.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “The intense feeling, ecstatic or terrible, without an object or exceeding its object, is something which every person of sensibility has known.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| We must simply admit that here Shakespeare tackled a problem which proved too much to him.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| “…he cannot objectify it, and it therefore remains to poison life and obstruct action.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1921)
Hamlet and His Problems |
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Term
| What we read for pleasure often has more of an effect on us. |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
| “Literary criticism should be completely by criticism from a deifinite ethical and theological standpoint.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
| "I am not concerned primarily with Religious Literature. I am concerned with the relation between Religion and Literature.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
| “What I want is a literature which should be unconsciously, rather than deliberately and defiantly, Christian.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
| “But I inline to come to the alarming conclusion that it is just the literature that we read for ‘amusement,’ or ‘purely for pleasure’ that may have the greatest and least suspected influence upon us. It is the literature which we read with the least effort that can have the easiest and most insidious influence on us.” |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
| “What I do wish to affirm is that the whole of modern literature is corrupted by what I call Secularism, that it is simply unaware of, simply cannot understand the meaning of, the primacy of the supernatural over the natural life, of something which I assume to be our primary concern.”( |
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Definition
T.S. Eliot (1935)
Religion and Literature |
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Term
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| Tension between moral and aesthetic criticism that will always exist |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| o A formalist critique does not really deal with the morality not because it denies its existence in the work or its importance. All the moral issues have been worked out before the work—they are outside of the work. |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “The intent of the critic may well be, then, first to read his poem sensitively, and make comparative judgments about its technical practice, or, as we might say, to emulate Eliot. Beyond that, it is to read and remark the poem knowingly; that is, with an esthetician’s understanding of what a poem generally ‘is.’” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “As for the moralistic understanding of poetry, it is sometimes the specific moralists, men with moral axes to grind, and incidentally men of unassailable public position, who cherish that; they have a ‘use’ for poetry. But not exclusively, for we may find it held also by critics who are more spontaneous and innocent: apparently they fall back upon it because it attributes some special character to poetry” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “My feel about such a position would be that the moral criticism we shall have with us always” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “. . . the business of the literary critic is exclusively with an esthetic criticism. The business of the moralist will naturally, and properly, be with something else” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “Art is more cool than hot, and a moral fervor is as disastrous to it as a burst of passion itself. We have seen Marxists recently so revolted by Shakespeare’s addiction to royal or noble personae that they cannot obtain esthetic experience from the plays; all they get is moral agitation” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “A poem is, so to speak, a democratic state, whereas, a prose discourse—mathematic, scientific, ethical, or practical and vernacular—is a totalitarian state” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “The intent of the good critic because therefore to examine and define the poem with respect to its structure and its texture. If he has nothing to say about its texture he has nothing to say about it specifically as a poem, but it treating it only insofar as it is prose” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “Art is post-ethical rather than unethical” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| “The final desideratum is an ontological insight, nothing less. I am committed by my title to representation of criticism as, in the last resort, a speculative exercise” |
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Definition
John Crowe Ransom (1941)
Criticism as Pure Speculation |
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Term
| If we can see that the assertions made in a poem are to be taken as part o an organic context, if we can resist the temptation to deal with them in isolation, the we may be willing to go on to deal with the world-view, or “philosophy,” or “truth” of the poem as a whole in terms of its dramatic wholeness… |
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Definition
Cleanth Brooks
Keats’s Sylvan Historian: History without Footnotes |
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