Some theories of Literature (0)

Introduction to Literature
N.Raud
Lecture 1
Some Theories of Literature
Sources:
Sylvan Barnet. Morton Berman. William Burto. 2000.
An Introduction to Literature. Fiction. Poetry. Drama.
Boston. Toronto: Little, Brown and Company.
Guy De Maupassant, Hautot and His Son, pp.325333
James Joyce, Araby,pp.345349
William Faulkner, The Bear, ÕIS, SMFolder
WHAT IS LITERATURE?
Literature is a "performance in words". It
has an element of entertaining display,
we expect literature to be in some
sense entertaining, or, to afford
pleasure.
WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES LITERATURE
PLEASANT?
A literary work seizes our interest and
more or less ­ at least for a moment
makes the rest of the world fade and
vanish.
A work of art has this power to catch us
up momentarily and to delight us.
TRUTH IN LITERATURE
Art offers truth as well as pleasure.
What kind of truth?
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR (17751864)
THERE IS A FLOWER I WISH TO WEAR,
BUT NOT UNTIL FIRST WORN BY YOU
HEART'S ­EASE ­ OF ALL EARTH'S FLOWERS MOST RARE
BRING IT, AND BRING ENOUGH FOR TWO.
Is it true that the flower is the earth's rarest flower? If we want to
know about flowers hadn't we better listen to botanists than
poets? Isn't it apparent that whatever value Landor's poem has
is not in its botany?
THE NATURE OF LITERATURE:
THE IMITATIVE THEORY
Art is an imitation of something.
Poetics Aristotle (384322B.C.):
A form is presented in a substance not natural
to it:
Michelangelo imitates Moses in stone
Shakespeare imitated Caesar in an actor's
words and gestures
Although no one whistled at Waterloo, one
might whistle waterloo.
THE IMITATIVE THEORY
The imitative instinct is not the artist's private
possession A boy can play cops.
This natural tendency to imitate is combined,
Aristotle says, with a tendency toward rhythm
or pattern, and the result can be a work of art.
In its simplest form the imitative theory
appeals to the naive " How lifelike that wax
apple is!" "How like a Frenchman that actor
looks!"
THE IMITATIVE THEORY
Aristotle theory includes such a close copy of nature as
a wax apple, but it goes farther. Artist refines nature,
showing not what happened but what should
happened in a world free from accident.
The artist does not imitate servilely (), he
recreates reality and presents it to us in a fashion in
which we see its essence more clearly.
The artist's imitation is more than a copy of what is
apparent to every eye, his imitation is in some measure
a creation. It is imaginative and interpretive, it reflects a
special view of reality
THE IMITATIVE THEORY
The theory often includes the notion that
art gives us not only pleasure but
knowledge, insight into the nature of
reality
Art finishes knowledge, its value
depends partly on its truth.
THE EXPRESSIVE THEORY
The artist is not essentially an imitator but a man who
expresses his feelings.
William Wordsworth: " Poetry is a spontaneous overflow
of powerful feelings", the poet's job is " to treat of
things not as they are but as they seem to exist to
the senses and the passions.
The work of art is not an imitation of the external
world but an expression of the internal world, the
embodiment of emotion.
The truth has nothing to do with literature. Feelings
can not be true or false. They simply exist.
THE EXPRESSIVE THEORY
What value does expressive writing have?
One can reply : it is valuable for the writer: "If I don't
write to empty my mind", Byron said, "I go mad".
If a work of art is an expression of emotion , it must
be a very special kind of expression.
Advocates of the expressive theory: By showing us
how he sees and feels something, the writer may
pluck the blinders from our eyes and melt the ice
around our heart.
An awareness of how other people feel is, after all, a
way of expanding and enriching one's own
personality.
THE AFFECTIVE THEORY
A work of art ought to arouse a
particular emotion, or affect in the
perceiver.
An artist expresses his emotion,
embodying it in a work of art, and this
work evokes in the perceiver a similar or
identical emotion.
THE AFFECTIVE THEORY
Art is a human activity consisting in this,
that one man consciously by means of
certain external signs, hands on to
others feelings he has lived through,
and that others are infected by these
feelings , and also experience them.
(Tolstoi, What is art?)
THE AFFECTIVE THEORY
Let me for once presume to instruct the times,
To know the poet from the man of rhymes,
"tis he, who gives my breast a thousand pains,
can make me feel each passion that he feigns
Enrage, compose, with more than magic art
With pity and with terror tear my heart
And snatch me o'ver the earth or through the air
To Thebes, to Athens, when he will, and where
(Alexander Pope)
THE AFFECTIVE THEORY
Pope holds that the aim of art is to reform those whom it
touches:
To wake the soul by tender strokes of art
To rise the genius, and to mend the heart
To make mankind, in conscious virtue bold
Live over each scene, and be what they behold:
For this the Magic first trod the stage,
Commanding tears to stream through every age
Tyrants no more their savage nature kept
And foes to virtue wondered how they wept.
SOME TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS
A piece of literature is a performance in words,
It strongly holds our attention, seeming complete in
itself,
It is not primarily regarded as a source of factual
information
It offers a unique delight and satisfaction
It offers some sort of truth
It has a beneficial effect on the perceiver , gives us
an insight into reality, broaden our awareness of the
possibilities of experience, valuably affect our
nervous system.
H/W assignment
A short essay (150 words) on the topic:
Which of the theories of literature reflect
my understanding of literature.