When I read the second chapter of Charles Bressler's book I couldn't help but feel like I was reading a family history of theory. Plato, who is, lets face it the father of a lot of things, starts us off with this idea that poetry must be the ideal. I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live in a place where poetry is helping to form the lives people. They must have been doing a pretty good job with it too, if Plato wanted all poetry to be honorable and good. It would be interesting to know how much our own lives are shaped by art,(of any medium)and how much we are unaware of it.
Just like families, Aristotle comes around and has his own ideas. He feels like poetry doesn't have to be about history at all, but should be more about human nature in general. He believed this is where the truth lies not in history but in what could have been. Throughout this chapter you see how these men built their own ideas on each other's theories. Horace believed that good poetry was imitation. Longinus by reading the others figured out how to spot a "classic", and the idea that we can be moved by a literary work. Dante wanted to bring this high art down to the level of the people and fill it with symbols. Sidney takes Aristotle's idea and makes it his own pushing harder that poetry IS truth, not just a way to get closer to it. Dryden brings back the idea of imitation. Pope came along and brought his ideas of how to criticize poetry. Wordsworth takes Dante's idea and makes poetry even more for the average person by using everyday language. The list keeps going on.
The one thing that is very clear is how you must know the ideas in order to create your own. Bressler in Chapter 1 said we bring every experience with us when we read. When we read we gain experience, and that is how literary criticism was created by knowing what was created before and seeing the patterns. When reading about these men in literary history there is always the thread of the importance of poetry. So many believed that poetry is the greatest of the creations of the human race. Arnold said that it is poetry that keeps things held together and makes the world understandable.
Like life in general you must know your past before you can move on to new things. We must know what our literary ancestors said, before we can come up with our own way of criticism.
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This is interesting:
ReplyDelete“I can't help but wonder what it would be like to live in a place where poetry is helping to form the lives people. … It would be interesting to know how much our own lives are shaped by art,(of any medium)and how much we are unaware of it.”
—because I am fascinated by this concept. I often think about the Nazis who were able to manipulate masses of people into believing pogroms were not just acceptable, but necessary. Now, I realize there were a lot of social factors involved, but the Nazis were able to convince Germans of such atrocities largely due to radio, newspapers, and children’s books. So the mindset then is if people are this susceptible to programming, or being programmed, then it almost seems like Plato and company knew this as well. So then, that is why they—Greeks—would have wanted only GOOD to be portrayed in their forms of art. Like they knew the masses would absorb the art and reenact it in some way, or be effected by it. Imagine then, if all this is possible and has been known even since the time of the Greeks, imagine what could be done with radio, newspaper, children’s books, all kinds of books, television, video games, internet, billboards, magazines…etc, and so on. This brings up the question of censorship too. Do we censor our arts, as Plato was clearly suggesting should be done by banning Poets; or do we let it ride and use its force against itself? I think an argument could made that many things are designed to keep people in certain social positions and classes…women and the glass ceiling, blacks in urban areas, rich staying rich and getting richer… I’m not trying to stray too far off subject, nor am I trying to lose my one and only classmate here, but the point is simply to show that people are controlled by outside forces, such as art and various forms of literature, and this has been known since the first cavitations—so it seems, and mastered.
I'm not sure what "cavitations" is?? should be "civilization"... unless "cavitation" is something great and fantastic and fits into the context of things, then that's what i meant :)
ReplyDeleteart for life's sake is a concept of a person whose name i'll get for us later. she married some guy from bali, or madagascar, or somewhere and the whole world shuddred like the wind in the wing of a wondering hummingbird that knows it's all too fast. here's a good place to mention one of my two resolutions for "begin again 2010": it is to devise, revise and collaborate. collaboration is what we do here, with no objective but batting ideas around in the belfry. Plato. I'm sorry to be so tardy in the blog. don't have internet at home, so why go there.
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