Saturday, February 23, 2019
Assignment Meg 5
Dhvani This vocalise kernel sound liter tout ensembley, nevertheless does non deal with the fhction of sound in the euphonyal comedy superstar. The possibility was low gear propounded by Anandavardhana, the ninth century thinker, in his treatise, Dhav slightly(prenominal)aloka (Dhvani+aloka). The Dhvani possibleness considers the indirectly evoked meaning or suggestivity as the feature of spoken communication f a e of literary utterance. This feature separates and de circumstanceines the literary from opposite kinds of discourse, and is an intact-embracing principle which explains the mental synthesis and hunt down of the azoic(a) mansionifi screwt aspects of literary utterance the aestheticalal &e,d or rasa, the figural mode and devices (alamkara), and so on. tie in impostureicle F in anyacy of Absolute StatementIn Kapoors words, all the subsequent literary theorists in the tradition found the confederacy of rasa and dhvani theories both adequate and suf ficient to conk out the cons embraceution of meaning in Indian belles-lettres. In his treatise I engage menti angiotensin converting enzymed out front, Anandavardhana has given a detailed verbal comment of structural analysis of indirect meanings. According to him, if we bottom of the inning explain how indirect meanings arise systematically, we can plead that all potential meanings in here(predicate) in a schoolbook. Anandavardhana intakes the term dhvani to vagabond the universe of suggestion. The soul of kmya is dhyani, he says). His preference for the term sprang from the particular that grammarians before him had apply the term to de none several theorys. First, to de none the sound structure of sabda or words second, to de none the semantic aspect of sabda and third, the complex of the straightaway revealed suggested meaning and the crop of suggestion involved. Thus drvuni theory is a theory of meaning (an Indian hermeneutics or sorts), of symbolism. The thrus t of this theory is towards claiming a great value for the rime of suggestion.Anandavardhana integrates the theory of the rasa with his dhvani theory that is, he says that dhvani is the method by which the effect of rasa is achieved. Rasa is the effect of suggestion. Mimesis For Plato (429-397 B. C. ), poiesis or what we call literary theory or even reproval was an extravaganza or, mimesis. (Poiesis (GK) translates into poetry, in English, nonwithstanding the focus of these 2 term is truly diametrical, for the Greeks lyric poetry had a very flyspeck p guile to play as comp ard to the heroic poem or gaming. Plato and Aristotle more(prenominal)over theorised non more or less lyric oetry, but about calamity and comedy, about drama, so Richard Harland suggests the more appropriate use of the footing literary theory/ reproof for the Greek poiesis). Plato called poiesis an burlesque or mimesis because he believed drama to be a reproduction of whateverthing that is non really present, and is at that placefore a dramatisation of the reproduction (Richard Harland, p. 6). What he elbow room is that in a play or an epic, what run a risks is this the poet recreates an let, the audience take after that re-created capture, they atomic number 18 in f sham en resolutiond to live done that dumbfound . s if they are forciblely within the time and situation of that experience. Not altogether this, Plato, also goes on distinguish among mimesis and digenesis. Mimesis is the speech of a character directly reproduced, whereas digenesis is a narration of doings and sayings where the poet speaks in his own person and does not try to turn our attention in an opposite direction by pret fireing that soineone else is speaking . Plato, quoted in Harland, p. 7). With this bill between mimesis and digenesis, it is easy for us to discern that drama is entirely mimetc , whereas epic is mi metic only where dialogue is reproduced rii t e% t. where the po et t r l l s (lie O I, il I ,d i r IV. / $C . I . iiurt, this is what larv called s h c 111 , 1 1 1 t i tclliigr e,petll . l1l*zih owever disapprt . personation, and i)1 titln,ltiscdd alogue. Mimesis, in Greek judgment primarily meant fashioning of one sort or another. This is well recorded in Plato. Plato gave a new metaphysical and epistemological perspective to mimesis, enlargening its meaning from devising by world hands to making by normal force.Yet, mimesis, not only in Platos commentary but in the use of the impression in the whole of western tradition, always retained the sense of not only making, but of making a copy of some overlord which was never totally independent of the model. (Gupt 93). In Platonic theory, all craft (techne) has been taken to mean some kind of manipulation close to craft. In the Sophist, Plato has divided techne into acquisitive, productive and imaginative categories of which the last brings into existence things not lively before. However, the highest invention, in the scheme of Plato is not music or poetry, but advancecraft, which is compared to the making of a disaster in the Laws (817B) and to sculpture in the Republic (420C). any production, in a everyday way, is mimesis. In the Greek usage, in that respect was not only the term mimesis but others much(prenominal)(prenominal) as mithexis (participation), homoiosis, (likeness) and paraplesia (likeness) and which were close to the meaning, of mimesis. These terms were also used to show the relationship between an im age (eidolon) and its archetype.Moreover, not only are objects shamd by pictures of them, but the essences of things are imitated also by names that we give to those things. For example, the essence or the dogness of a dog is imitated by the name dog given to that creature (Cratylus 423-24). Similarly, reality is imitated or mimetised by thought, timeless existence by time (Timaeus 38b). The musician imitates divine harmony, the good man imitates the virtues, the sharp legislator imitates the Form of God in constructing his state, god (demiourgos) imitates the Forms in the making of Ws world. With Aristotle the concept of mimesis undergoes a major transformation.It retains the condition of be a copy of a model, but the Platonic denigration is reversed. This reversal is base on a metaphysical revision. The everlasting reality is not transcedental in Aristotles opinion. When an workman makes an object, he incorporates re unresistant universal grammatical constituents in it but he does fall pathetic of any absolute model of dniversality. Because of the universality cracked in art, in Aristotles prospect, art, as all other false leads to familiarity. The amusement that mimesis provides is on account of realizeledge that is acquired by means of mimesis, even though this knowledge is of particulars And since learning and admiring are pleasant, all things connected with them mustinessiness also. be pleas ant for instance, a work of imitation, such as painting, sculpture, Toetry, and all that is well imitated, even if the object of imitation is not pleasant for it is not this that causes pleasure or the reverse, but the inference that the imitation and the object imitated are identical, so that the turn up is that we learn something. (Rhetoric I, xi, 1371 b trans. Freese qtd. by Beardsley 57) Besides possessing didactic capacity mimesis is defined as a pleasing likeness.Aristotle defines the pleasure giving quality of mimesis in the Poetics, as follows First, the instinct of imitation is implanted in man from childhood, one remnant between him and other animals being that he is the or so imitative of living creatures, and through imitation learns his earliest lessons and no less universal is the pleasure felt in things imitated. Thus the origin why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring, and saying perhaps, Ah, that is he. Imitation, then, is one instinct of our nature. (Poetics IV. 1-6 ) As a corollary it follows that the mechanic is no liar, but on the contrary, leads us to Truth. However, Aristotle seems to have limited his vision when it comes to enumerating the objects of imitation. In Plato, all earthly concern was an imitation of Forms, which were transcendental. For Aristotle, though the Form (eidos) of every object existed, it was not a transcendental reality but something within Nature which Nature itself tends to attain. Further, it is verbalize that for Aristotle, Art helps Nature in this endeavour of attaining the perfection of Form.This interpretation of Aristotles metaphysics has been based upon his two oft-quoted sayings, Art imitates Nature (Physics iii. 2 I94a 21. ) and the artist may imitate things as they ought to be (Poetics XXXV I). Amplifying from this plainlycher has concluded If wekxpand Aristotles inclination in the light of his own system, fine art eliminates what is transient and particular and reveals the persistent and essential features of the original. It discovers form (eidos) towards which an object tends, the result which nature strives to attain. (150) There is little in the writings of Aristotle that can explicitly sustain such a conclusion. This breakthrough of the form (eidos) in objects tends to make Aristotle into a shadow of Plato. Aristotle admits that there is something immutable and enduring in art, but that something could be called eidos, is beyond substantiation from Aristotles writings. Similarly, the dictum, art imitates nature, has given rise to many interpretations over the centuries. It has been argued that the irrner principle of Nature is what art imitates.But if we follow out his thought, his (Aristotles) reply would appear to be something of this kind. Nature is a living and imaginative energy, which by a sort of instinctive reason works in every mortal object towards a specific end ( bumbler 155). Th e teleological and structural pattern of tragedy seems to have been transferred on to Nature by Butcher. This was a typical nineteenth century view of Aristotelian philosophy. Since the Renaissance, different definitions of Nature have been foisted upon Aristotles dictum, art imitates Nature.For the purpose of drama, the to the highest degree disastrous one was that of realism, which having captured fiction by techniques of portraiture, landscape, and caricature, transferred these on to drama. Aristotle was clear that a e purpose of imitation in drama, was to provide proper pleasure by imitating deed. Mimesis of men in action was mimesis of all human living. by dint of music, the artist imitates, anger and mildness as well as courage or temperance (Politics v. viii. 5. 1341 8) and ethical qualities and senses. Similarly, he says, Dance,imitates character, emotions and action (Poetics 1. 5).We should be content to note that in drama he applied the general theory ef mimesis, whic h he thought, was both for the s&e of pleasure and knowledge. But even the Aristotelian affirmation of pleasure in art was not sufficient to free art from being constantly compared with its original, that is the worldly objects. This to begin with Platonic habit, has been strong throughout western criticism which repeatedly gauges art in terms of how truthfully or realistically it represents the world, how much of an judgement of the world can it bring to us, one way or another. , 3. 3 THE MEDIA OF MIMESIS 3. 3. 1 Rhythm, Language, and Haniony After stating that epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, flute or lyre vie are all modes of mimesis, Aristotle states that mimesis in different arl forms is achieved differently, and that the object and room of mimesis is different in each case ( Poetics 1 2-4 ). He states that the three media for all arts are as follows For there are persons who, by conscious act or mere habit, imitate and represent various objects through th e medium of colour and fonn, or once again , by voice so in the arts above mentioned, taken as a whole, the imitation is produced by rhythm, language and harmony, either singly or combined. Poetics 14 ) Leaving aside painting and sculpture which use colour and other forms (materials), the arts of performance like music, dance and drama, use rhythm, language and harmony. flute and lyre use rhythm and notes only, and dancing uses only rhythm. But for Aristotle, rhythm is not a mere beat or a division of time, but movement with regularity, be it theemere movement of the body or that of notes. That is why, dancing, he says, imitates characteG emotion and action by rhythmical movement (15). -Poetry or verse whether creative or informative imitates through language alone, but dithyrambic and elegiac poetry, tragedy and comedy use all three means. In dithyrambic and elegiac poetry all three means are used together, but in tragedy and comedy now one means is employed, now Aristotles Theory of Imitation Classical Cdtkisrn another (15). What is true of tragedy and comedy can be taken as true of all drama, satyr plays included. Aristotles brevity of plan has prevented him from saying anything nevertheless about the manner in which rhythm, language and harmony are employed in drama.About the exposit of language (lexis) one can gather quite a a few(prenominal) things from Aristotles comments on language which he categorised as one of the sextuplet elements of tragedy. But the nature of harmony (which he called melopoiia and enumerated as another element of tragedy) is hardly touched upon by him. So is rhythm never mentioned again in the Poetics. No wonder, then, that one has to look elsewhere to gather training about the use of music in the Greek theatre. Aristotle perhaps likewisek musical employment in drama for granted and, therefore, refrained from stating anything further about it.But the result of what may have been for him a redundancy, was disastrous for the post-Renaissance readers of the Poetics. The pragmatic art of theatre-music being extinct, the Europeans reconstructed a picture of Greek drama in which there was hardly any place for rhythm or music. Greek drama was envisaged as a primarily rhetorical affair (an impression reinforced by Roman tragedies) far removed from the fit of visual and aural channels of theatrical locution that ancient drama depends so much upon.But if Aristotle left out the details of musical application he was at least explicit in stating it as a medium of mimesis. However, he not only neglected but left out from his description of tragedy the visual content of Greek performances constituted by the physical movements and complex gestures of the actors and the chorus. More than their mask and costume, the Greek actors had a repertoire of super emotive gestures, just as the chorus members had a repertoire of a variety of dances to create complex visual effects. CatharsisThere has been a sustained travai l to postulate that civilisation could be a common and basic aesthetic experience. But the very meaning of katharsis has been a source of remote interpretations. In the nineteenth century one major way of facial expression at purge was to take it as a medical examination term transferred to poetical criticism. Cleansing (kenosis) in the Hippocratic writings denotes the entire removal of healthy but surplus humours Catharsis is the removal of the afflictions or excesses (ta lupounta) and the like of qualitatively alien matter (But cher 253). This doctrine of imbalance of merry forces later on called humours, as the primary cause of disease, is of uncloudedly Indian origin. As demonstrated by Filliozat, the science was well manifestationted in India as early as the Atharva Veda and travelled t o Greece through Persia). According to the Hippocratic theory, an imbalance among the elements of air , bile (of two kinds) and immobility causes each and every disease. The cure lyi ng in subduing the overswollen element and restoring the balance between the four elements. Besides this well- give tongue to medicinal doctrine, there was also the manage of curing madness through musical catharsis.The patients were do to listen to certain melodies which made them fall back into their normal state, as if they had undergone a medical or purgative (cathartic) treatment (Politics V. viii. 7. 1342 a IS qtd. in Butcher 249). It is further added that not only is catharsis achieved musically but that those who are liable to pity and fear, and in general, persons of emotional temperament pass through a like experience they all undergo a catharsis of some kind and feel a pleasurable relief (Butcher 251).The nature of catharsis draw in the Politics should be true for the Poetics, as Aristotle himself has stated that his observations are of a general nature in the former treatise but shall be more detailed in a later work. Therefore, those who presumed that tragical cath arsis like musical catharsis restores normally healthy emotional state, were not so wrong. But this rather clinical definition of catharsis does not satisfy the literary theorists. As early as Butcher it was felt there was more to it. But the word, as taken up by Aristotle into his terminology of art, has probably a further meaning.It expresses not 6nly a fact of psychology or of pathology, but a principle of art (253). The tragic pity and fear he postulated, in real life contain a morbid and disturbing I element As the tragic action passes, the lower forms of emotion are found to have been transmuted into more slap-up forms (254). He further postulated that this purification is also a change of the private emotion to the universal. Purged of the petty care of the self (261) emotion now becomes a federal agency of the universal, so that the net result is a noble emotional gratification (267).It is not difficult to discern that catharsis is equated with aesthetic pleasure in wh ich noble emotional joy is an essential feature, But whatever may have been the indirect effect of the repeated work of catharsis, we may confidently say that Aristotle in his definition of tragedy is thinking, not only of any remote result, but of the immediate end of the art, of the Aristotles Theory of aesthetic function it fulfils (Butcher 269). Tragedy -Part IJ In my opinion, to raise the balancing function of catharsis to the direct of . universalisation is to stretch the concept too far.CertC,-rlyt, he restorative function of catharsis may bring relief such as a disgusted person feels upon recovery. But it is a presumption on the part of Butcher that universalisation takes place because the element purged from the melodramatic emotion is that of personal petty interest of the self (261). The Aristotelian catharsis, or for that matter the whole tradition of catharsis, by music or Dionysian orgies, has personal cure or satisfaction as its end. Inner restoration, but not th e enjoyment of a new aesthetic element, can at best be the purpose of catharsis. The factors of enjoyment, of oikeia hedone, are ifferent as stated earliest. . Other than regarding it as purificational, there has been another mjowr ay of interpret catharsis. The dual concept of purity and impurity which pervaded the physical, moral, religious and spiritual life of the Greeks was the nigh deepseated factor governing their daily activities. The duality of pollution (miasma) and purgation (catharsis) was part of the Indo-European belief system. We find that in Greek plays, all tragic action is dependent on acts of transgression such as the murder of a kin, sexual defilement, affronts to deities, and so on.These acts brought pollution (miasma) upon the protagonist and the plurality around him. In Greek morality there were prescriptions for expiation of such crimes, just as in India rituals were prescribed for purging of pollution. In tragedies, the very ritual of expiation was oft en enacted, as in the Oresteia. In virtually plays, the protagonist was expelled from the community by death or banishment there was expulsion (kenosis) of the sinner and purification (catharsis) of a given location, city, grove or household. Whereas in some plays, as in the Oresteia, this cycle was shown in ,- itP n. 1, . teness, in other playh it was shown partially. In some other plays as in Hecabe or Women of Troy, there is only miasma and no katharsis. Looked at in this way, tragedy was a depiction of the cycle of miasma and catharsis. To my thought, the annual picture of tragedy was to reaffm the miasrnacatharsis duality, which was a major cultural value of ancient Greek society. In all ancient societies the purpose of retelling the myths, particularly on festal occasions, was many-fold it was to preserve and transmit the stories, to re-state the beliefs they enshrined, and $0 relive the behaviour patterns sanctified by tradition.The retelling always had a ritual significa nce even if it took the form of dramatic enactment for the purpose of entertainment. Entertainment and ritual were intertwined in ancient theatre. In this manner, tragedy was a reliving of the pollution-purity cycle by both the actors and the spectators. The community, the protagonist, hisher acts, and the aflame(p) emotions of the audience, all underwent a catharsis. In his analysis,of catharsis, Gerald Else has rightly grasped the spiritual significance that catharsis had for the Greeks, but he restricts the scope of purgation to the acts of the protagonist.For Else, remorse makes the hero desirable to the spectators pity, and this pity along with the heros remorse proves that the act of transgression was actually a pure (cufharos) act. Thus catharsis is the process of proving purity. As Else puts it The filthiness inheres in a conscious intention to kill a person who is a close kin. An unconscious(p) intention to do so, i. e, in intention to do so without being aware of the ki nship as Oedipus did not know that he killed his father would therefore be pure, catharos. But purity must be proved to our satisfaction.Catharsis would then be the process of proving that the act was pure in that sense. How is such a thing proved ? According to Nicomachean morality (3,2, 11 lob19 and 11 1 la20 ), by the remorse of the doer, which shows that if he had cognize the facts he would not have done the deed. In Oedipus, the thing which establishes this to our satisfaction is Oedipus self blinding. It, then, effects a purification of the tragic deed and so makes Oedipus eligible to our pity. (Else 98) From this interpretation it seems that Else does not believe that catharsis enefits the audience and their emotions in anyway. In his reading of the famous passage , in the Poetics, catharsis is purification of the tragic deed and not of the emotions of the spectators. This goes against all other instances of catharsis as mentioned by Plato and Aristotle. The examples they h ave givenindicate a change in the mental state of the spectators or music listeners. Besides, it is nowhere indicated by Aristotle that pity in tragedy was aroused for the purpose of regenerating and purifying the sin and the sinner.He is more touch with demo how we can feel pity for the protagonist. This feeling in us is more capable of providing catharsis to us rather than just providing that the act of the hero was catharos. If the concept of catharsis is to have any general utility, it must be persumed that the cycle of pollution and purgation (miasma and catharsis) effects an emotional catharsis in the audience as well. A harmonious view of catharsis which combines its spiritual, clinical and aesthetic effects is more in keeping with the merge approach of the ancients. Biographia Literaria Biographia Literaria was begun by its author as a literary chronicle but ended up in discussions about Kant, and Schelling and Cole covers perceptive criticism of Wordsworths poetry and a comprehensive statement on creative image which constitutes his most signal contribution to literary criticism and theory. As was his wont, oler ridge has let his awe-inspiringly powerful mind sluttish on aestheiics, its philosophical foundations and its practical application in an almost desultory manner.The result is a exploit of inexhaustible potential called Biographia Literaria to which critics of all shades of opinion have dark for help and inspiration and very seldom has any one of them been disappointed. Arthur Symons justly seed the work as rthe greatest book of English criticism. Coleridge has sometimes been accused of borrowing from the Germans, particularly from Kant, Sckelliangd the Schlegels, but most of his ideas were originally arrived at and, in my case. the system into which these ideas were fttA as the cosmos of his own great mind. Coleridges whole aesthetic his definition of poetry, his idea of the poet, and h s poetical criticism revolve around his the ory of creative imagination. From this point of view chapters XI11 and XIV of Biographin Literrrialr e most signticant. The statement of the theory of imagination in Biographia Litercrria is preceded by a long-winded and, at time, abstruegnlosophical discourse in the form of certain theses or propositions whose crs is Coleridges drive to define Nature and Self.Nature the sum of all that is objective is passive and unconscious fleck Self or Intelligence the sum of all that is indwelling is vital and conscious. All knowledge is the product of the union of the subject and the object. This coalescence leads to the act of creation, I AM. It is in this state of self-consciousness that object ar. d subject, being and knowledge, are identical and the reality of the one life in us and abroad is experienced and affirmed and chaos is converted into z cosmos. What happens is that the Self or Spirit views itself in all objects which as objects are dead and finite.Coleridges theory of cre ativeymagination is essentially grounded ir, ihis perception. Hence Coleridges view of the . =lagination approximates to the riecvso l Schelling and Kant. Like Coleridge they recognise the mutualness of subject and object as complementary aspects of a single reality. excessively they all agree about the self conceived 2s a totality thought and feeling in their original identity and not as an abstraction. doubting Thomas Steams Eliot (1888-1965) is probably the best known and most influential English poet of the ordinal century. His work as a critic is equally significant. l7. S.Eliots critical rig was quite diverse he wrote theoretical piecesas well as riveteso f particular authors. Tradition and the Individual Talent (1919) clearly expresses Eliots concepts about poetry and the importance of tradition. Eliot emphasizes the need for critical thinking criticism is as inevitable as breathing. He feels that it is unfortunate that the word tradition is mentioned only with pejorative implications, as when we call some poet too traditional. He questions the habit of praising a poet primarily for those elements in his work which are more individual and differentiate him Erom others. ccordingto T. S. Eliot, even the most individual part of a poets work may be those which are most live with the influence of his poetic ancestors. Eliot stresses the objective and intellectual element. The whole of recent literature leave be in the bones of the poet with the true historical sense, a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literiture of his own country has a synchronic existence and composes a simultaneous rove. No poet has his complete meaning alone. For proper evaluation, you must set a poet, for contrast and comparison, among the dead poets.Eliot envisages a dynamic relationship between past and present writers. The existing monuments form an ideal order amgng themselves, which is modified by the introduc tion of the new (the really new) work of art among them. An artist can be judged only by the standards of thepast this does not mean the standards of dead critics. It means a judgement when two things, the old and the new, are measured by each other. To some extent, this resembles Matthew Arnolds touchstone the ideal order formed by the existing monuments provide the standard, a land of touchstone, for evaluation.As with Arnolds touchstones, Eliots ideal order is intrinsic and in need of modification from time to time. T. S. Eliot Eliot lays stress on the artist knowing the mind of Europe the mind of his own countrya mind which he learns in time to be much more important than his own . private mind. But he does not mean pedantic knowledge, he means a consciousness of the past, and some persons have a greater sensitivity to this historical awareness. As Eliot states, with apothegmatic brevity, Some can absorb knowledge, the more tardy New upbraiding must sweat for it. Shakespear e acquired more essential history from Plutarch than ost men could from the whole British Museum. Throughout Eliots poetry and criticism, we find this emphasis on the artist surrendering himself to some larger authority. His later policy-making and religious writings too valorized authority. It is interesting that Eliot always worked within his own cultural space religion meant Christianity, while literature, culture and history meant exclusively European literature, culture or history. Tradition, for Eliot, means an awareness of the history of Europe, not as dead facts but as a11 ever-changing yet changeless presence, constantly interacting subconsciously with the individual poet.He wants the poet to merge his personality with the tradition. The progress of the artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. He suggests the analogy of the catalyst in a scientific laboratory for this process of depersonalization. The mind of the poet is a medium in wh ich experiences can enter into new combinations. When oxygen and sulphur dioxide are interracial in the presence of a filament of platinum, they form sulphuric stifling. This combination takes place only in the presence of platinum, which is the catalyst. But the sulphuric acid shows no trace of platinum, which remains unaffected.The catalyst facilitates the chemical change, but does not participate in it, and remains unchanged. Eliot compares the mind of the poet to the shred of platinum, which will give birth and transmute the. passions which are its material. Eliot shifts the critical focus from the poet to the poetry, and declares, Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation are directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry. Eliot sees the poets mind as a receptacle for seizing and stonng up numberless feelings,phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new increase are present together. He says that concepts like sublimity, great ness or colour of emotion are irrelevant. It is not the greatness of the emotion that matters, but the extravagance of the artistic process, the pressure under which the artistic hsion takes place, that is important. In this way he rejects the Romantic emphasis on genius and the exceptional mind. Eliot refutes the idea that poetry is the expression of the personality of the poet. Experiences important for the man may have no place in his poems, and vice-versa. The emotions occasioned by events in the personal life of the poet are not important.What matters is the emotion transmuted into poetry, the feelings convey in the poetry. Emotions which he has never experienced will serve his turn as well as those familiar to him. Eliot says that Wordsworths formula is wrong. (Iam sure you would remember Wordsworths comments on poetry in the Preface to the melodic Ballads Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling it takes its origins from emotion recollected in tranquility. ) For Eliot, poetryls not recollection of feeling, it is a new thing resulting from the concentration of a very great number of experiences . . it is a concentration which does not happen consciously or of deliberation. Eliot believes that Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an relief valve fiom emotion it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. For him, the emotion of art is impersonal, and the artist can achieve this impersonality only by cultivating the historical sense, by belng conscious of the tradition It is now generally believed that Eliots idea of tradition is rather narrow in two respects.First, hes talking of only if the poetic tradition and neglects the fact that even the poetic tradition is a complex amalgam of written and oral poetry and the elements that go into them. It was only in later writings that he realised the fact that in ibc making of verse many elements are involved. In his wntlngs on poetic drama he glves evidence of having broadened his scope. Second, Eliot is neglecting other traditions that go into social formations. When he iatrr wrote Religion and Literature, he gives more scope to non-poebc elements of tradition. On these considerations one can say that he developshis ideas on tradition T.S. Eliot throughout his literary passage right up to the time he wrote Notes Towards a Definition of Culture in which traditionis more expansive than in his earlier writings. Dissociation of feeling is a literary term first used by T. S. Eliot in his stress The Metaphysical Poets1 It refers to the way in which intellectual thought was separated from the experience of feeling in seventeenth century poetry. Eliot used the term to describe the manner by which the nature and substance of English poetry changed between the time of Donne or Lord Herbert of Cherbury and the time of Tennyson and Browning. In this essay, Eliot attempts to define the metaphysical poet and in doing so to determine the metaph ysical poets era as well as his discernible qualities. We may express the difference by the following theory The poets of the seventeenth century, the successors of the dramatists of the sixteenth, possessed a mechanism of feeling which could devour any kind of experience. They are simple, artificial, difficult, or fantastic, as their predecessors were no less nor more than Dante, Guido Cavalcanti, Guinicelli, or Cino.In the seventeenth century a disassociation of sensibility set in, from which we have never recovered and this dissociation, as is natural, was exacerbate by the influence of the two most powerful poets of the century, Milton and Dryden. Theory of dissociation of sensibility The theory of dissociation of sensibility rests largely upon Eliots description of the disparity in style that exists between the metaphysical poets of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century and the poets of the late seventeenth century onward.In The Metaphysical Poets, 1 Eliot claims t hat the earlier grouping of poets were constantly amalgamating disparate experience and thus expressing their thoughts through the experience of feeling, while the later poets did not unite their thoughts with their emotive experiences and therefore expressed thought separately from feeling. He explains that the dissociation of sensibility is the reason for the difference between the intellectual and the reflective poet. The earlier intellectual poet, Eliot writes, possessed a mechanism of sensibility which could devour any kind of experience. When the dissociation of sensibility occurred, the poets revolted against the ratiocinative, the descriptive they thought and felt by fits, unbalanced they reflected. Thus dissociation of sensibility is the point at which and the manner by which this change in poetic method and style occurred it is defined by Eliot as the expiration of sensation united with thought. Eliot uses John Donnes poetry as the most prominent example of united sensi bility and thought. He writes, a thought to Donne was an experience it modified his sensibility. Eliots apparent appreciation of Donnes ability to unify intellectual thought and the sensation of feeling demonstrates that he believes dissociation of sensibility to be a hindrance in the progression of poetry. Eliot asserts that despite the progress of refined language, the separation between thought and emotion led to the end of an era of poetry that was more mature and that would wear better than the poetry that followed. interpretionism deconstruction has been variously presentehs a philosophical position, a political or intellectual stance or just simply as a strategy of reading.As students of literature and literary theory, we should be interested in its power as a mode of reading therefore most of the points about Deconstruction in this Block will be made through instances of reading literature and philosophy. Let us begin here with a simple reading of Derrida describing a gene ral strategy of Deconstruction Every philosophical argument is structured in terms of oppositions and in this traditional philosophical opposition we have not a unruffled co-existence of facing terms but a violent pecking order. ane of the terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically etc. ), occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment to reverse the hierarchy. Deconstruction, Derrida implies, looks upon a text as inherently riddled with vertical oppositions. A deconstructive reading uncovers not only these hierarchical oppositions but also shows that the excellent term in the opposition can be seen as inferior. When we put together some other strategies of Deconstruction outlined in Derridas writings, a working definition begins to emerge. To deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical opposition on which it relies, by identifying in the text and then tear do wn the rhetorical operations that produce the supposed ground of argument, the key concept or premise. This explanation by Jonathan Culler is comprehensive. So, let us treat it as a companion to the description by Derrida cited above in order to advance our working idea of Deconstruction. Broadly speaking Derrida and Culler are making these points 1. Deconstruction is a searching out or dismantling operation conducted on a discourse to show . How the discourse itself undermines the argument (philosophy) it asserts. 3. One way of doing it is to see how the argument is structured/emailprotected, that is investigate its rhetorical locating or argumentative strategy. As Derrida argues, this struchkis often the product of a hierarchy in which two opposed terms are presented as superior and inferior. Deconstruction then pulls the carpet from below the superior by showing the limited basis of its superiority and thus reverses the hierarchy, making the superior, inferior. 4. This reversed hierarchy is again open to the same deconstructive operadon.In a way, Deconstruction is a permanent act of destabilization. .So, Deconstruction points to a fallacy not in. the way the first or second hierarchy is constructed but in the very process of creating hierarchies in human thought (which as I have stated earlier, is indispensable to most if not all human arguments or thought. ). Deconstruction does not lead us from a faulty to a make better way of thinking I or writing. Rather it shows us the limitations of human thought operating through I language even while harboring the same limitations itself.Every deconstructive operation relies on the same principle it sets out to deconstruct and is thus open to deconstruction itself. Yet, Deconstruction is not simply about reversing hierarchieMough it is one of the I things a deconstructive analysis achieves. Fundamentally, it is a way of understand the structure of a discourse, locating its controlling centre and identifying the unfounded assumptions on which it relies to function as a discourse. It may be compared to a examine operation that uncovers fault lines in a discourse, which may include ideologic assumptions and suppositions .
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