CLS2133 Literary Appreciation

Lecture 1
Miss Na-Thinamalar
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Introduction
I

like thinking about literature as doing something, rather than just being something; it helps me understand literature as part of a larger world we live in, and Literary Theory is a tool or, better, a set of tools which enables us to examine how that happens. (Mary Klages, 2006)

Literary

Theory points to sets of ideas that have greatly influenced the way we have thought about, and taught. Big umbrella term that covers a variety of approaches to texts ; if these approaches have anything in common, examine how a text is written and how we are able to read it. Literary Theory comes from all kinds of discipline; linguistics, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, history, economics, gender studies and political science.

Humanism
Literature

& art in general, what we call the humanities, makes us better human beings, puts us in touch with human values and dilemmas, helps us u/stand the human condition.

In

the broadest sense, humanism is the world-view that posits human values, as the central focus of life and thought. Because humanist thought displaced the idea of God as the absolute center of the universe, replacing it with the idea of the human mind as a supreme power of knowledge and creation, it is sometimes referred to as scholar humanism.

Debates

thing. It is important to look at the ideas which form the basic of humanist thought. There is a need to look at the Western Anglo-European history and culture.

on whether its good or a bad

Ancient Greek- Plato

Ancient Greek literature epic, dramatic poetry, comedy and tragedy, and other forms of story telling. These forms were presented orally, through characters who acted out human situations. These forms were seen as models for human behaviour and interaction. In ancient Greece, cultural knowledge was passed on via a tradition of presentation, or representation. (story-telling)

Plato
Born: 428 B.C.E. Family: Aristocratic/political Dies: 348-347 B.C.E.
Plato is one of the most important Greek philosophers. He founded the Academy in Athens, an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences. His works on philosophy, politics and mathematics were very influencial and laid the foundations for Euclid's systematic approach to mathematics.

Plato

established a philosophic tradition; the human capacity for rationale thought, became the highest and most desirable form of thought, and preferable means for conveying cultural knowledge. was a process of logical deduction as demonstrated in his Socratic dialogues; stories, poetry and drama, because they appealed to their audiences emotions more than to their rational minds, became inferior methods for passing on cultural values and demonstrating the best ways of being.

Reason

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For

Plato

Art is aroused by emotions could never be true in the way that reasoned argument could be true. Truth could only be apprehended through rationale thought. (like math or geometry)

Reason

feeling)

Vs. Emotion (truths of human

Reason is eternal and unchanging Emotion is chaotic and ever-shifting

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Philosophers

use logic and reason to discover truth. Artist evoke emotions by making representations of the world through our senses(words, colours, poetry or painting) which Plato called nature. Artist work only stimulate emotion, irrational with madness. Plato fear that art and artist will threaten the social order because the people are distracted from the eternal truth.

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Plato

worries that literary art (poetry & drama) tells lies and influences the audiences in irrational ways. In Book X of the Republic Plato firmly banishes all poets from this ideal society. Moral criticism focuses solely on the content of a work of literature, only analyzing the good or bad rather than paying attention to its artistic values.

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Platos firm ideas:

The material world we perceive through our body and our senses is not the real world, but an imperfect copy of an ideal world. Art, in whatever form or medium, works to reproduce or represent perceivable material world. World is organized in binary opposites: rationale/ irrational, good/evil, male/female. Literature is important, and needs to be regulated or supervised, because it has powerful effect on its readers. The content of literature, what it says and represents, is more important than the form it comes in.

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Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

Aristotle

(384 BC 322 BC)[1] was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology

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In

contrast, Aristotle was less interested in the content of literature than in its form. Art is a process of putting the events of nature into a medium; words or paint that improves or completes nature. Art doesnt lie but reveals truth in a different way than rational deduction. Reality does not reside in a static eternal world of perfect ideal forms, in relation to which the material world is a flawed imitation; rather, reality is the everchanging world of appearances and perceptions.

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Plato

founds the tradition of moral criticism by worrying about what a work of poetry does to its audience, Aristotle founds the tradition of genre criticism by investigating what a particular work is, rather than what it does. Aristotle, the artist does not imitate nature, or copy it, as Plato argued, but rather takes something from nature and puts it into a different medium that it doesnt inhabit in its natural state. (E.g. cherry tree- idea of re-presenting)

For

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Artists are important, to Aristotle, because art imposes order on what might otherwise be a disordered and chaotic natural order.

Literature in particular imposes a particular kind of narrative order on events, so that what is described in words has a beginning, a middle, and an end.
Art & literature complete a process that the natural world leaves incomplete; nature merely presents us with events, phenomena, sensory experiences (like sight of a cherry tree in bloom), while art, by creating an order in which to understand those events and experiences, provides us with their meaning.

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Plato
The

Aristotle
The

concern with the content and effect of a work of art. This is called as moral criticism.

concern with the form and unity of a work of art. This is called as aesthetic criticism.

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Reflection
Ask yourself these questions:

How is literature taught to you so far? What do think of the two philosophers ideology?

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The END!