| |
Any lover of Shakespeare, or of the Romantic poets, can concede that
poetry is pleasurable. But is it good for us, and can it teach us
anything?
These questions may seem odd, but they have beguiled and engaged
eminent critics for millennia. What we call literary criticism is
really a debate over a few key questions:
- What is poetry's wellspring? God? Nature? The human self?
- Is poetry superfluous to human progress?
- Are the literary arts a vehicle to higher truths or a pack of lies?
- Is the author a divinely inspired rhapsode or a mere artisan, "manufacturing" meaning?
To answer these questions, this course engages an enormous range of
material. You'll follow the strands of this "conversation" between
philosophy and the literary arts down the millennia, profiting from
in-depth analyses of works by Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Sir Philip
Sidney, Dryden, Pope, Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge, Matthew Arnold,
T. S. Eliot, Northrop Frye, Foucault, Derrida, and more.
You'll concentrate on critical reflections about poetry—the
oldest of the literary arts, and also come away with lessons on how to
understand literature, and all of the arts, more generally. More
importantly, you'll be prepared to join in these critical conversations
yourself.
What and Wherefore Is Poetry?
Plato believed that poems were lies, and there was no place for poets in Plato's Republic.
To him, poets were unreliable, substituting dreamlike visions for the
true essences of the world that a responsible philosopher should seek.
If the only authentic beauty is the truth found in nature, he asked,
then what use is man-made beauty, fabrications loaded down with
fantasies and lies?
Ever since Plato laid down this challenge, the critical theorists in
this course have striven to prove that poetry is more than pretty
phrases, that it has the power to instruct and improve its reader:
- Aristotle argued that the sufferings of the tragic hero in
Greek drama arouse in us a cathartic surge of terror and pity, even as
his fate teaches us moral lessons.
- Longinus introduced the idea of the poetic sublime. Unlike
rhetoric, which merely persuades, the sublime overwhelms its audience,
literally carrying the audience away to a higher realm of experience.
What Makes a Poet?
Most of the thinkers in this course elevate the poet to a privileged
place among his fellows. The poet, they argue, feels more deeply, more
empathetically, and holds the verbal keys to a kingdom of higher
consciousness. In these lectures, you'll meet the poet in many guises:
The Divine Poet: In his "Defense of Poetry," Sir
Philip Sidney likens the poet to a supernatural creator. While the
carpenter must fashion his works from the materials at hand, and the
historian must work with mere facts, the poet has the power to
transcend the laws of nature. He transforms beasts into cyclopes, men
into heroes, bronze into gold.
The Poet as Alchemist: The German Friedrich Von
Schiller described the poet as the inspired individual who could fuse
humanity's divided nature into one, an alchemist who could combine our
wild, lustful, Dionysiac drives and harmonize them with our Apollonian
urge towards order.
The Voice of the Common Man: William Wordsworth
carved for the poet a more modest role, rooted in the world. Rather
than handing out wisdom from on high, his poet was "a man speaking to
men," rejoicing in life, in touch with elementary feelings and durable
truths.
The Poet at Play: John Keats also championed the
poet as a unique being, not for possessing truth, but for his ability
to "play" with it. Keats praised the poet's sensitivity of feeling, his
capacity to empathize with multiple, contradictory "truths"
simultaneously, to "be content with half-knowledge... capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason."
The Poet as Product: Beginning with Freud and Marx,
a less flattering view of the poet emerged—the view of the poet as a
product of, and a prisoner to, his own subconscious suppositions. The
poet's "truths" in this view are bound up with an ideological
substructure, or a polarizing male-centered worldview, or indeed any
outlook built upon a particular, personal, and biased understanding of
history and society. This condition of radical subjectivity is the
foundation upon which the postmodern platform will later be built.
The Role of the Critics
We have a distorted view of critics today, and often see them as
antagonists to artists, or even as frustrated artists themselves.
Classically, however, critics were allies of the arts, and served as a
liaison between the poet and the audience, pushing art forward and
aiding its development. This course will introduce you to the great
critics of the Western tradition—those who have aided poets in their
efforts to create and audiences in their quest to understand. For
example:
Matthew Arnold: This Victorian sage believed that
great literature is the product of a creative fusion between a great
poet ("the man") and what he called an epoch of expansion ("the
moment"). It was the role of the critic to define the zeitgeist
for the wider artistic community, to prod them past the shackles of
fashion and convention that render a period stale and inactive.
W. K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks: These two critics
were pioneers, yet seen as doctrinaire and elitist for dictating how we
should understand poetry. The poem must not be understood, they argued,
through the author's motivations ("the intentional fallacy"), nor
through its effect on the reader ("the affective fallacy"). Moreover, a
poem must never be understood as having a simple paraphrasable meaning,
or "plot summary." Rather, every word in a poem is a vital ingredient
with a meaning all its own to be uncovered through close individual study.
Out of the Ivory Tower
If these critics' theories about poetry seem somewhat convoluted and
dense with jargon, this trend has only accelerated with the rise of
Postmodernism. Can Structuralism, Poststructuralism, Historicism, and
Deconstructionism really offer us a satisfying account of poetry's
importance?
Actually, these ideas are exciting, challenging, and very much part
of the conversation that began in ancient Greece so long ago. But for
most readers, their fruits remain out of reach behind a wall of
proprietary language, leaving the layman locked out.
This is why Dr. Louis Markos's approach to these theories is so
valuable. As he tackles these intricate and labyrinthine theories of
language, one of his primary goals is to define and explicate the often
esoteric terminology associated with modern and postmodern theory.
When the veil is lifted, you'll find that the postmodernists are
really continuing the conversation that Plato started millennia ago,
and attempting to answer the same questions. If poetry, and language
itself, is purposeful, then what are its ends? And if it has meaning,
then by what means?
"Should I buy Audio or Video?"
This course is an excellent choice in either audio or video. The
video version contains portraits of almost all the theorists, plus
on-screen definitions of key terms and diagrams that illustrate some of
the more abstract concepts. |
|
