Critical Concepts: Essays Professor -S.

Das

Engagement of philosophers, scholars, poets, critics with the societal function of poetry and literature: Platos Concept of Idea: Plato holds that when God first thought of creating the universe, the conception of the universe came in His mind in the form of Idea. Plato held Idea to be equivalent to God. Therefore Idea became the original or First Reality. The Idea was then transformed into various concrete objects as we see in the universe, such as the firmament, oceans, mountains rivers, plants and all living creatures including humans. All these objects are the Imitation of the original Idea. Every concrete object that exists in the universe is Once removed from reality. Then comes Art- literature, painting, sculpture. They imitate the concrete objects of the universe. Literature imitates them in words, paintings in colors, and sculpture in stone. So art imitates the imitation, copies the copy and thus it is Twice removed from reality. As art is twice removed from reality it is twice removed from truth. So the productions of art neither help in moulding human character nor in promoting the welfare of mankind. Furthermore as the objects of art are charming and alluring, they are still more dangerous to the individual and the society. Plato Condemns Poetry: Poetry Twice Removed From Reality : Plato condemns all forms of art on the ground that they are twice removed from reality. Poetry is the finest of the fine arts and hence more condemned by Plato. It is twice removed from reality or truth. It neither helps in moulding human character nor in promoting human welfare. Therefore he proposed to banish the poets from ideal republic. Poetic Inspiration: A poet is an inspired being. The muse suddenly inspires him and he begins to sing. Such a sudden outpouring of the soul cannot be a reliable substitute for truth based on reason. Poetic utterances are the impulses of the moment and not the pronouncements after cool deliberations. Therefore poetry can do no good. Emotional Appeal: Poetry appeals to the human emotions rather than to human reason. It affects the heart rather than the intellect. Poetry feeds and nourishes human passions rather than controlling and preventing them. It makes man impulsive, sentimental and irrational. Non Moral Character: Poetry has little or no concern with morality. It treats vice and virtue alike and does not bother which wins over the other. It has no regard for moral considerations. In tragedies virtue comes to grief and evil triumphs. Very often poetry presents Gods as unjust and vengeful. Thus poetry corrupts both the citizen and the state. Opposing the views of Plato, his disciple Aristotle put forward the following arguments regarding the social function of poetry: Instinct for Imagination: Man instinctively loves imagination. Man also instinctively love melody. From these two instincts springs poetry. According to Aristotle man instinctively imitates three things Things as they were or are, things as they are said or thought to be, and things as they ought to be. In other words man loves to imitate what is past or present, what is commonly believed and what is ideal. What the poet imitates in the form of poetry has deeper implications. He not only imitates but also creates. He is a creator too. His poetic creation is not twice removed from reality as Plato believed it to be. The pictures of

poetry are not mere reproduction of facts but universal tools that apply to all places and times. Poetry is therefore more noble and philosophical than history. Aesthetic Pleasure: Since poetry originates from mans instinctive love for imitation and melody it gives permanent aesthetic pleasure. It gives pleasure to both the poet and the reader alike. According to Aristotle the poetic pleasure has civil morality too. It is an aesthetic enjoyment which is not divorced from civic ends. Emotional appeal: Poetry also makes an immediate emotional appeal and purifies and ennobles our feelings and sensibilities. It elevates and humanizes the reader imperceptibly. The ennobling aspects of the feelings of pity fear and catharsis purify the soul of man.

In the Elizabethan age all forms of literature blossomed. However they faced frequent attacks from the conservative puritans. The leader of these abusers was Stephen Gosson who wrote a highly malicious treatise called The School of Abuse denouncing the poets and mischievously dedicated it to Sir Philip Sidney. Sidney responded through one of the landmark works in history of literary criticism called An Apologie for Poetrie. Gosson placed poets pipers players and jesters into one group and called them the caterpillars of the commonwealth. He called the poets fathers of lies, pipes of vanities, and schools of abuse. He condemned poetry on four major grounds. One a man could use his time more usefully than in poetry, second that it is the mother of lies, third it is the nurse of abuse and fourth that Plato had justly banished the poets from his ideal Republic. Defending poetry against the first charge Sidney says that man could not use his time more usefully than in poetry. He said that no learning can teach and move us so much as poetry. Next Sidney rebuts the charge of lying leveled against the poets. He who does not seek to establish any fact past or present can never lie. The poet creates something by emotion or imagination against which no charge of lying can be brought. A poet only probes into the human heart and pours out human feelings which can never be false. The third charge of abuse may be partly justified but for this a particular poet may be blamed and not poetry. It is not poetry that abuses mans wit but it is actually the mans wit that abuses poetry. The fourth charge that a great philosopher like Plato proposed to banish the poets from his ideal Republic is also not tenable because Plato sought to banish some bad poets of his times and not poetry in general. Plato himself believed that poetry is divinely inspired . Sidney goes onto say that poetry is the first and most ancient source of learning and wisdom. It is the first light giver to ignorance, the first nurse whose milk by little and little enabled them to feed afterwards of rougher knowledge. In the Augustan or Neoclassical age writers were basically moralists who believed in the didactic, reformatory, or moral function of literature. They believed in followed nature i.e. everyday human life. In classical literature reason overpowers imagination, logic replaces flight of fancy, and good sense prevails over sentiments. Alexander Pope was the high priest of the age of prose and reason. In the Romantic age Shelley revived the idea of the prophetic function of the poet. Shelleys A Defense of Poetry is a rejoinder to Thomas Love Peacocks charges against him in his Four Ages of Poetry. Peacock called poets semi barbarians in a civilized community and condemned Shelleys own poetry as querulous egotistical rhapsodies. Defending poetry Shelley says that poetry is an embodiment of beautiful idealism of moral excellence. He calls the poet a nightingale who sits in the darkness and sings to cheer his own solitude with sweet sounds. He says that poetry is the creative impulse in man. Poets are not only the authors of language, music, dance; architecture and painting but they are the institutors 2

of law, founders of civil society, and inventors of arts of life. They are the men of most spotless virtue, the most consummate prudence, the most fortunate of men. They are philosophers of loftiest power. Poetry is the record of the best and the happiest moments of the happiest and the best minds. Poetry is the center and circumference of knowledge and it comprehends all science. Consequently Shelley calls the poets the unacknowledged legislators of the world. The poet reveals those forms which are common to universal nature and existence. Hence a poem is the very image of life expressed in its eternal truth. Victorian Age was the age of great social turbulence. The religious moral base of the society was fast eroding due to advent of modern industrialization, scientific Darwinism, and the rapid spread of evil effects of modernization of the society. The poets were also concerned about rising duplicity of the society and its blatant indulgence in immoral activities in private life. Needless to say they turned towards the redemptive function of literature particularly poetry to salvage the situation. Matthew Arnold defined poetry as a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty. He adds 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 stayThe strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry. Quoting Wordsworth he says that poetry is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science. But these observations apply to the high and sublime poetry of high excellence. High poetry has the power of forming delighting and sustaining us as nothing else can. This kind of poetry is essentially moral not in the narrow didactic sense but in the larger sense of conforming to the highest ideals of truth goodness and beauty. In his essay on Wordsworth he says A poetry of revolt against moral ideas is a poetry of revolt against life; a poetry of indifference towards moral ideas is a poetry of indifference towards life. However such prophetic reformatory function of poets, critics and this obsessive moral function of poetry did not go unchallenged. Such utilitarian concept of art was countered by the Aesthetes whose call of contemplation of art solely for aesthetic pleasure devoid of any social function gave rise to the movement called Art for Arts Sake. Utilitarianism. The theory of ethics first formulated by Jeremy Bentham (17481832) and subsequently promoted by John Stuart Mill (18061873) and Henry Sidgwick (18381900), which judges all actions in terms of the amount they contribute to the sum of human happiness. It aimed (and aims) to provide a rational foundation for social and legal policy. In Benthams formulation of the theory, an actions contribution to happiness is calculated by adding up the amount of pleasure it brings, minus the amount of pain it entails, erasing distinctions between different types of pleasure (a point Mill would later contest). This led Bentham to argue that the utility of all these arts and sciences, [. . .] the value which they possess, is exactly in proportion to the pleasure they yield, and that therefore, the childs game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry. Indeed, if the game of push-pin furnish more pleasure, it is more valuable than either (Bentham 1825: 206). Aestheticism. Less a coherent movement than a way of thinking about art and culture that appeared first in France in the mid-nineteenth century, and subsequently in Britain from the 1860s, and America from the 1880s. Its doctrine is described by the slogan art for arts sake, a translation of a phrase that became current in France in the first half of the nineteenth century, lart pour lart. Aesthetes believed that art had no social responsibility, that it was an end in itself. The object of art and indeed of life for the aesthete was the appreciation and cultivation of beauty. Preeminent 3

English aesthetes include the critic Walter Pater (18391894), the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (18371909), and the playwright and essayist Oscar Wilde (18541900).