A

AFRICAN POETRY, VERNACULAR: ORAL. Ver• tion to the multiplicity of local classifications . nacular poetry in Africa is mostly oral, and A basic distinction must be made between the greater part is still unrecorded. The con• ritual and nonritual forms ; by far the most ventions of oral v.p. belong to the whole per• important are the ritual forms associated, either formance and its occasion, and are therefore in origin or in present reality, with formal not exclusively literary. Internal classifications customary rites and activities. Modern public within the society have no referellce to the occasions may include traditional ritual forms Western categories of prose and poetry, and suitably adapted. Nonritual forms, of course, Afr. definitions of "literary" do not necessarily belong to informal occasions. In either general coincide with those of Eng .-Am. culture. For category the creative role of the performer(s) instance, Afr. proverbs and riddles are major, is important, for even within customary rites not minor, literary forms for which the term the evaluation is of the contemporary per• "poetry," if it is applied, need not relate only formance. Ritual forms include panegyric and to the forms with rhyme. The evaluation even lyric, whereas nonritual forms include lyric of these identifiable genres can be made only and, possibly, narrative. by a complete understanding of the signifi• Panegyric is one of the most developed and cance of any given member (e.g., a particular elaborate poetic genres in Africa. Its specialized praise song) of a genre (e.g., praise poetry) form is best exemplified in the court poetry of within the society at the time of utterance. the Southern Bantu, about which there is a Convention involves not only the verbal con• large literature by scholars in South Africa. tent, but also such factors as status of the These praise poems have been described as in• performer(s), nature of the audience, mode of termediary between epic and ode, a combina• performance, and character of the related arts, tion of exclamatory narration and laudatory especially music, which act interdependently apostrophizing. Similar poems occur elsewhere in the representation of the genre. Literary among the Bantu, notably among the cattle• distinctions may be irrelevant in a perform• owning peoples of East Central Africa. While ance which has no overt literary function. praise poems can be concerned with almost Babalola's work on Yoruba poetry, for instance, anything-animals, divining bones, birds, beer, shows that the mode of performance is as clans-the most developed forms are those in significant for the Afr. critic as actual con• which people, living or dead , are directly tent or structure, and many other cases could praised and addressed. Praise poetry often be cited in support of this. plays an essential part in rites of passage when There are growing signs of a fuller apprecia• an individual or group moves from one status tion of the extent and nature of Afr. v.p., but to another in society. Self-praises by boys at even now it is only beginning to be established initiation, as among the Sotho or the Galla, are as a serious field of systematic study for Afr. an important aspect of their claim to adult• scholars . Where the poetic tradition is strong, hood . oral v.p. is adapted to changing conditions, as The eulogies involved in funeral dirges, as in topical and political songs and modern among the Akan-speak ing peoples of southern praise poems. Generally speaking, however, the Ghana, are also included in this category , as extensive corpus of Afr. oral v.p, which forms are oral poems in praise of the Prophet Mo• the basis for description and discussion today hammed by the Hausa and other Islamic socie• belongs to, or is derived from , traditional Afr. ties. Finnegan has noted that one cannot al• society. The relevant language preserves its ways draw the line between Afr. military soul, and in translation the soul is lost. The poetry and panegyric. Southern Bantu praise survival of Afr. v.p, in the future is dependent, poems have war and military prowess as one among other things, upon the status of the of their main themes, and the same blend of vernacular in particular communities as the praise and interest in battle heroism can be medium for both oral and written forms. At seen in the "heroic recitations" of the Ankole the present time evaluation of recorded texts Hima. In Rwanda military poetry, the form from oral performance is heavily dependent called ibyivugo is panegyric, but the narrative upon nonliterary factors , but it is recognized element is more marked in a second form , that Afr. v.p. has its own artistic features called ibitekerezo, songs preserved by the court analogous to, bill 1I0t always identical with, bards and taught to military recruits. Narra• literary forms from a literate society. tive poetry as a ritual form is not extensive Although the question of genres has not been enough, however, to be assigned a special cate• seriousl y discussed, Finnegan has drawn atten- gory. In hunting songs praise and celebration

-[ 909 ]- SUPPLEMENT are often reserved for the killing of particu• establish the existence of narrative as a sepa • larly outstanding or dangerous game.A domi• rate genre of Afr. oral v.p, nant theme in the Yoruba hunting poems The Oxford Library of Afr. Literature, Ox• called iiata is verbal salute and praise, but ford at the Clarendon Press, presents studies Ambo hunting poetry is lyrical poetry charac• of particular Afr. traditions of oral v.p., no • terized by the mode of delivery. It is not always tably in works by B. W . Andrzejewski and possible to make a firm distinction between I. M. Lewis (Somali), S. A. Babalola (Yoruba) , ritual and nonritual forms. There are derived T . Cope (Zulu) , A. Coupez and T. Kamanzi forms, like the nonritual praise songs of the (Ruanda), D. Kunene (Southern Sotho), H. F. Hausa itinera nt singers, which are relatable to Morris (Ankole) , and I. Schapera (Tswana).• the ritual ltir4ri, a sung proverb, traditionally W. R. Bascom, "Folklore and Lit ," in The Afr. performed as court poetry. World: A Surve y of Social Research , ed . R. A. Lyric, probably the most common genre of Lystad (1965); The Mwindo Epic from the oral poetry in Africa, has a great variety of Ban yanga , tr . and ed. D. Biebuyck and K. C. forms, but basically it is a short poem sung or Mateene (1967); R. Finnegan, Oral Lit. in recited either antiphonally or by an individual. Africa (1970). L.H. As a ritual form, lyric has as its most common WRITTEN . Except for the v.p. derived directly occasions rites of passage such as birth, child• from oral poetry and written in roman script. naming, initiation, betrothal, marriage, acquir• like the v.p. of South Africa and Ethiopia, ing a new title or status, and funeral cere • Afr. written v.p, as a direct literary activity is monies. The occasions for lyric are extended a feature of Islamic societies. Arabic speakers, in urbanized Afr. society to informal, non• mostly in North Africa, outnumber the speak• ritual occasions, like the drinking and dancing ers of an y other single vernacular on the Afri· town songs of the Zulu and the Sotho in South can continent. Besides written v.p, in Arabic Africa . The radio provides opportunities for there is the Islamic written v.p. of non-Arabic nonritual lyrics to be performed. It is a com• speaking peoples, particularly the Fulani, the mon pattern for a prose narrative to be marked Hausa, and the Swahili. North Afr. written structurally from time to time by the inclusion v.p. in Arabic was no doubt a vehicle for the of a song, led by the storyteller and sung by spread of Islamic poetry in West Afr. vernacu• the audience. The song is relevant to the lars , while in East Africa Swahili written v.p. story, but mayor may not forward the narra• derives from the popular Islamic poetry of the tive. The subjects of lyric are about every Hadramawt and the Persian Gulf. Some of conceivable topic in the Afr. experience. Songs the same popularizations are found wherever the about, or attributed to, birds are very common, v.p. is Islamic, as, for instance, vernacular but the main interest is human life and con• adaptations of early Arabic magazi (raids) duct. Love poetry has a rich tradition among literature occurring in North Africa (Arabic) certain peoples, and is often by women, as and in East Africa (Swahili) , as well as muM • among the Zulu of South Africa and the Luo diya, poems composed in honor of the Proph• of Kenya. Songs to accompany rh ythmic work et's birth, occurring in North Africa (Arabic seem to occur in all Afr. societies . and Berber) and in West and East Africa Narrative in oral v.p., in the sense of a rela• (Hausa and Swahili, respectively). tively long narrative poem, is of infrequent In Arabic written v.p, of North Africa the occurrence. Finnegan considers that although term qasida (q.v.) has a much wider range of many of the lengthy praise poems , particularly application than the classical form, with re • those of South Africa, do contain some narra• placement of classical monorhyrne by a stan • tive elements, narrative poetry does not seem zaic structure and multiple rhyme scheme . The to be a typically Afr. form. The most frequent two most conspicuous features are profusion mentions come from the equatorial areas of of rhyme and absence of inflection. The em• .th e Congo, but even there the traditional pat• phasis on rhyme in non-Arabic written v.p. is tern, as exemplified in the Lianja and Mwindo derivative from Arabic poetry. Stock themes, epics, is of a prose narrative incorporating such as the cynegetic (taradiya), the gnomic or most of the local literary forms in both poetry didactic (1;Iikam, wtZl4y4) , the bacchic (khama• and prose. The narrative poetry in these long riyal , and the nostalgic (wataniya) are found in epics is important enough, however, to be shorter v. poems. The wataniya, originally an considered in its own right. The mvet poetry expression of nostalgia for one's place of birth, of Gabon, Spanish Guinea, and the Southern has developed into patriotic poetry in Algeria Cameroons (particularly the Fang people) also and Tunisia. More subtle than the wataniya includes narrative poetry sung to the accom• is the satire (tenk), probably derived frqm the paniment of the mvet, a type of 1)Te. It is lampoons of Sidi Ahmed bin Yusuf (d. 1525) possible that further narrative poems, non• and Sidi Mejdub (d. 1569). North Afr. v.p., ritual in character, remain to be found, but at both written and oral, is a vast field still the present time the evidence is insufficient to largely uninvestigated. -[ 910 ]- AFRICAN POETRY

In sub-Saharan Africa the best -known Is• character and didactic significance of his mes• lamic written V.p. is in Swahili, Hausa, and sage and to his skill in handling the language. Fula. It is found in other languages, such as Such criteria make for conformity, but in Wolof, Songhai, and Manding, but compara• South Africa some attempts were made to in• tively few texts have been published in these novate. Bereng's Lithothokiso tsa Moshoeshoe languages. This is the poetry of the Islamic (The Praises of King Moshoeshoe), published elite, based on Arabian models, and passed on in 1931, was the first collection of original to the majority by oral transmission . (See poems to appear in any South Afr. language, SWAHILt POETllY and HAUSA POETllY). The script in this case Southern Sotho, and in 1936 Jo• is 'ainmi, modified Arabic script adapted for lobe's Omyezo (The Orchard) was a landmark the relevant language. Today roman is more in the history of written Xhosa poetry for its generally used, particularly in derivative poetry experimentation in theme and structure. of a more secular nature in the popular press . B. W. Vilakazi's collection of Zulu songs, The authors, when they are known, are not Inkondlo kaZulu, printed in 1935, showed usually well-versed in Islamic classical poetry, differences from traditional v.p, in themes, in and may not even be able to write Arabic. emotional tenor, and in prosody. It was in South They are familiar with, and are called upon Africa that Africans first began to discuss , to copy, earlier translations of such Arabic through the printed word, the relationship models as al-Buslrl's Burdah or al-Fazzazi 's between Afr. oral v.p. and the written v.p. The 'Lshriniya. Even in the more secular derived discussion still continues, but before a much poetry the poets maintain the same conserva• wider public both inside and outside Africa. tive attitudes whereby their work is justified See: On South Afr. and Ethiopian written only if it serves to edify the faithful, but there v.p .: A.S. Gerard, Four Afr.L iteratures (1971). is more freedom for the poet to choose per• On Afr . v.p. in Arabic: J. Wansbrough, sonal themes. "Theme, Convention and Prosody in the V.P. As a consequence of Western education, oral of North Africa," Bull. of School of Oriental poetry has been written down in various Afr. and Ajr. Studies, 32 (1969). On Hausa v.p.: languages (e.g., in Yoruba, in the Akan lan• M.Hiskett, "Hausa Islamic Verse : Its Sources guages of Ghana, in Kikongo), and in many and Development Prior to 1920" (unpub, Ph.D. instances this has resulted in a literary form diss., Univ. of London, 1969). On Fula v.p .: of existing oral material rather than innova• Poesie peul« de l'Adamawa, ed. P.F. Lacroix tive forms deriving from oral poetry. A large (2 v., 1965). On Songhai v.p.: B. Hama, part of printed v.p. from Ethiopia (since " L'Esprit de la culture sonrhaie,' Presence 1917) and from South Africa (since 1862) has Africaine, 14fl5 (1957). On Swahili v.p. : L. consisted of praise poetry similar in function Harries, Swahili Poetry (1962); J . Knappert, to oral panegyric. Among the Nguni peoples Traditional Swahili Poetry (1967) and Swah ili of South Africa the techniques and aims of Islamic Poetry (1971). The [ohari za Kiswahili praise poetry were transferred to the writing series publ, by the East Afr . Literature Bureau of Christian hymns, but the more internalized consists of edited tenz i (plural of utenzi, a type forms of lyricism were hardly practiced at all . of heroic or narrative or homiletic poem. See Works in the Ge'ez language of Ethiopia SWAHILt POETRY·). L.H. were printed in Europe in the 16th c. The first pieces of imaginative writing in modern IN ENGLtSH (Recent). With the end of the Amharic were printed in Rome. The author colonial period, and the consequent increase of was Afawarq Gabea iYasus, who should be re• literacy and higher education came a vast garded as the true founder of modern Amharic efflorescence of Afr. poetry written in Eng. It Iiterature, In Ethiopia itself, the proclamation displays the variety to be expected in so di• of Ras Tafari as Regent in 1917 marked the verse a continent, and regional styles have beginning of publication in Ge'ez and Amharic, arisen. Nevertheless, the most eminent poets and Amharic odes in honor of the Regent and have created an international community of of Empress Zawditu were among the first works values and influences. to be produced at the Imprimerie Ethiopienne. Generally Afr . Eng. poetry eschews rhyme in The first book to be published in Addis favor of alliteration and assonance. Instead of Ababa after the liberation of the city in 1941 metrical verse, rhythms subject to the poet's was an anthology of praise poems. Ethiopia syntax, logic , emotion, or rhetoric determine stands exceptionally high in the production the verse length. Visual poetry is rare. Ambi• in print of creative v.p., but, of course, in guity is more often syntactic than lexical. The comparison with what is published in the same austerity leads to avoidance of extended Western world the Ethiopian output is still fanciful conceits unless these are buttressed by very small. The Ethiopian writer, like Afr . hard or sardonic reason and concrete, down-to• writers of the vernacular almost everywhere, earth imagery. Oral and other traditional poetry has been valued in proportion to the edifying influences recent Eng. poems primarily in more -[ 911 ]- SUPPLEMENT fundamental elements such as the poet's stance rhetorical, lucid social commentary lamenting as defender of communal values, his integral the disruptions attending modern urbaniza• allusions to the history, customs, and artifacts tion. The poem's speaker is usually the dis• of his culture, and the architectonic fea• possessed, arguing with the cogent similes and tures which sometimes relate poems to tradi• vivid evocation of a more humane past. The tional forms of love song, praise song, pro• other style, more indebted to West Afr. poetry, verbial tale, epic, etc . Afr. experiments in the is a tighter nexus of subtler images and covert transmutation of traditional poetic form into allusions, composing a mordant, singular vision Eng. are perhaps best represented by Taban 10 and response to modern life. It includes a Liyong (Uganda 1938-) and Mazisi Kunene wider range of subjects and tones and is more (South Africa 1932-). In Eating Chiefs 10 likely to employ a narrative structure or focus Liyong experiments with novel forms to con • on some single event. Its preeminent writers vey in Eng. the original poetic effects of Lwo are Jared Augira (Kenya 1947- Juices; myth, poetry, and song. Kunene's Zulu Poems Silent Voices; Soft Corals), Richard C. Ntiru apply traditional Zulu devices and forms to (Uganda 1946- Tensions) and Taban 10 Li• original subjects and thoughts. Most other Afr . yong (Meditations in Limbo; Franz Fanon's poets as well, particularly those who have re • Uneven Ribs; Another Nigger Dead; 13 Offen• sided outside of Africa, display complete sives against Our Enemies). mastery of the functions of form in modern Of necessity South Afr . poetry is most con• Eng. and Am. poetry. One indication of their cerned with social upheaval, subjugation, freedom from these forms is the number of poverty, prisons, revolt, and the private griefs dramas and novels consisting partly or entirely of public injustice, as in O. M. Mtshali, Sounds of poetry. of a Cowhide Drum. Since most works avail• The oldest tradition of sophisticated poetry able to the world are by poets in exile, sub• in Eng. is West Afr ., particularly in Ghana and jects, allusions, and forms reflect British and Nigeria. In recent years other regions have Am. life frequently, as in the works of Keroa• been profoundly influenced by West Afr. poets, petse Kgositsile (1938-, Spirits Unchained; For particularly the Nigerians Christopher Okigbo Melba; My Name is Afrika) and the consum• (1932-67, Labyrinths), John Pepper Clark mate poetry of Dennis Brutus (1924- A (1935- Reed in the Tide; Casualties) and Wole Simple Lust): Soyinka (1934- ldandre; Shuttle in the Crypt). This poetry combines lyricism with audacious Then the keening crescendo leaps of thought, and individualistic feeling of faces split by pain with steadfast social commitment. The authors the wordless, endless wail rely heavily upon references to metaphysical, only the unfree know ... religious, and social concepts of their own ethnic groups, and less upon allusions to Often a setting of expansive and serene nature European cultural history. is evoked in lyrics as a contrast to human distress. The speaker is usually an observer with Before you, mother Idoto a unique combination of passionate concern naked I stand; and reflective distance. before your watery presence, Despite the infinite variety of individual a prodigal genius and experience which shapes Afi . writ• leaning on an oilbean, ing, one can hear a distinctive, characteristic lost in your legend .. AfT. voice in Eng. poetry. It speaks of personal (Okigbo, Heavensgate) involvement in the culture and history of its people. their ideals, and their behavior. It is When social protest occurs, it is presented in individualistic in its perceptions but not in a tone of intellectual and emotional complexity its ethics. It often relies on allusion and rather than prophetic, simplistic fervor. Two logical relationships particularly obscure to other such poets are Kofi Awoonor (Ghana, those who do not share all the poet's European 1935- Rediscovery; Night of My Blood) and or AfT. cultural resources. Its stvlc, independ• Lenri Peters (The Gambia, 1932- Satellites; ent of European canons, is lyrical, imagistic. Katehikali). The graceful poetry of Gabriel prone to philosophical musing, and wary of Okara (Nigeria, 1921-) is less obscure and obtrusive technique which might mitigate a idiosyncratic in its forms, allusions, and tone of sincerity. In short. there is emerging thought. an international tradition discernibly Afr, in East Afr . poetry is dominated by two styles . subjects and styles . and contributing much to As exemplified by Okot p'Bitek (Uganda, the variety and vigor of poetry in Eng. 1931- Song ot Lawino; Song of Ocol; Song of BIBLIOGRAPHIES: J. jalm, Bibliog, 01 NeQ·1/1 . Prisoner; Song of Malaya) and Okello Oculi Lit . (1965); B. Abrash, Black A fro Lit, in Ene. (Uganda, 1942-0rphan), one style has longer, since 1952 (1967); J. Jahn and C.P. Dressler. -f 912 1- AFRICAN POETRY

Bibliog, of Creative Air. Wr iting (1971); H. sometimes referred to as the period of mili• Zell and H. Silver, Reader's Gu ide to Afr. Lit. tant Negritude. The period 1960 to the present (1971); D. E. Herdeck, Ajr, Authors (v, I, is considered by some to have gone beyond 1973). Negritude toward new preoccupations. ANTHOLOGIES: Modern Poetry from Africa, The Negritude movement was launched ed. G. Moore and U. Beier (1963); Book of when, in 1932, seven Martinican students pub• Afr. Verse, ed. J . Reed and C. Wake (1964); lished in Paris the journal Leg itime Defense, Poem s from Black Africa, ed . L. Hughes in which they harshly criticized the Martini• (1966); West Ajr, Verse, ed. D. 1. Nwoga (1967); can middle class for its emulation of Western Drum Beat, ed. L. Okala (1967); Pulsations, bourgeois culture. In 1934 three young poets ed. A. Kemoli (1971); Poems from East Africa, who were to become the towering figures of ed. D. Cook and D. Rubadiri (1971); Seven Negritude-e-Leopold Sedar Senghor (b.1906) of South Air. Poets, ed. C. Pieterse (1971); Mes• Senegal, Leon Gontran Damas (b.I912) of Fr. sages, Poems from Ghana, ed. K. Awoonor and Guiana, and Aime Cesaire (b.I913) of Marti• G. Adali-Mortty (1971); The Word Is Here, ed. nique-established the journal L'Etudiant Noir, K. Kgositsile (1973); Poems from Africa, ed. attracting a group of young Afr. poets and S. Allen (1973). critics. Although the journal was short-lived, HISTORY AND CRITICISM: E. Mphahlele, The the group of writers which it spawned con• Air. Image (1962) and Voices in the Whirlwind tinued to be an active and cohesive unit until (1972); Ajr. Lit. and the Universities, ed. G. about 1940, when World War II disrupted Moore (1965); Introd. to Ajr, Lit., ed. U. Beier their activities. Unlike its predecessor, L'Etu• (1967); W. Cartey, Whispers from a Continent: diant Noir addressed itself to the whole of the The Lit. of Contemporary Black Africa (1969) ; black community within the Fr. colonial em• Protest and Conflict in Air. Lit., ed. C. Pieterse pire, and its writers believed that ultimately and D. Munro (1969); B. King, Introd, to their reaffirmation of Afr. values would "con• Nigerian Lit. (1971); A. Roscoe , Mother Gold tribute to universal life, to the humanization (1971); Standpoints on Ajr, Lit., ed. C. L. of Humanity." Their poetry began also to Wanjala (1973). D.F.D. appear in Parisian publications, such as IN FRENCH (Contemporary). Although black L'Esprit. The journal, Presence Ajricaine, poetry in Fr. is a comparatively recent phe• founded in 1947 by Alioune Diop, has con• nomenon, it is already possible to discern tinued to be a vital force in the development several phases in its development. Black poetry and diffusion of black literature in Fr . In in European tongues (as opposed to tradi• 1948, Senghor published his now-famous An• tional Afr . poetry), arose initially through the thologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et mal • displacement of Afr. populations as a result gache de langue [mncaise, prefaced by Jean- . of the .slave trade and subsequently through Paul Sartre's penetrating analysis of Negritude, colonization of Africa itself and has come to " L'Orphee noir." The Anthology brought to • be spoken of by some literary historians as gether for the first time a body of poetry with "neo-Afr." or "neo-negre :" Such a term would aims recognizably different from those of Con• include black American, Haitian, and much tinental Fr. literature. of Latin Am . literature. However, Afr. poetry Objectively, Negritude has been defined by in Fr., as part of a cohesive and far-flung Senghor as the culture-that is, the sum total literary movement supported by a philosophi• of the economic and political, intellectual and cal basis can be traced back only as far as the moral, artistic and social values-of the peo• Paris of the 1930's, when black students from ples of black Africa and of the Afr .-derived various parts of the Fr . colonies in Africa and peoples of America, Asia, and Oceania. But the Antilles began to examine and question Negritude is also a subjective state: it is the the concept of exclusively Fr. models of be• acceptance on the part of black men of their havior, culture, and literary expression , and distinct culture and of themselves as perpe• turned instead for inspiration to Haitian litera• trators of a distinctive style and world view. In noir, Sartre spoke of a dialectical ture and also to the Harlem Renaissance• L'Orphee progression, in which the black man at first writers Langston Hughes and Claude McKay . rejects the white world and the white race as This awakening, commonly termed Negritude, a necessary prerequisite for reintegration with began operating and came to fruition during his personality and rediscovery of his heritage, the years 1932-48. The postwar years 1948-60 but soon recognizes his recent slave past and witnessed an increasing agitation among the suffering as a potential basis on which to growing numbers of European-educated Afri• create a new humanism in which the whole cans, which culminated in the independence of mankind will ultimately participate, and by 1960 for all of black Africa formerly con• therefore, Negritude will disappear into uni• trolled by France and the former Belgian versalism. Sartre's views have provoked much Congo. In respect to poetry, this period is debate. In any case, it seems clear that Negri- -[ 913 1- SUPPLEMENT tude seeks to rehabilitate the black man addresses itself to the grief of a divided, still• through a point-for-point negation of white warring Africa, as in U Tam'si's Epitome or values. Thus, white civilization, based on Maunick's Fusillez-moi, works which treat the technology and rationality, cannot reach the Lurnumba-Congo and the Biafran tragedies. source of life and expends itself in senseless Militancy in the more recent poetry enlarges hurrying about. But the black soul, existing itself in the humanistic way envisioned bv in intuitive harmony with nature, creates a Senghor, Sartre, and the writers of L'Etudiant civilization wherein sensitivity and authentic Noir to include a concern for all peoples of humanity prevail. Cesaire's long epico-lyric the world, hampered by warfare and oppres• work, Cahier d'un retour au pays natal (Re• sion from achieving true Humanity, as in turn to my native land) provides one of the Maunick's Fusillez-moi: finest examples of Negritude poetry: je continuerai ;\ reciter Hiroshima Nagasaki Eia pour ceux qui n'ont [amais rien invente et Prague et Mozambique j'apprendrai insoucieux de dompter, mais jouant Ie jeu tout Ie reste ... du monde. I will continue to recite Hiroshima Nagasaki Eia for those who invented nothing and Prague and Mozambique I shall not caring to conquer, but playing the learn all the rest game of the world. ANTHOLOGIES: Poetes d'expression [rancatse, David Diop (1927-60) was looked to by the 1900-1945, ed. L. Dumas (1947); Anthologie de first generation of Negritude poets as a prom• la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue ising new star on the horizon. His poetry [r., ed . L. Senghor (1948); Huit poetes de Mada • generally continues the bitterly anti-colonialist gascar, ed. J . Aubert (1959); An Anthol. of Air. themes of the era of militant Negritude. How• and Malagasy Poetry in Fr., ed . C. Wake (1965); ever , there is in a great many of his poems a Neu] poetes camerounais, ed. L. Lagneau [L. consistent internal development from revolt Kesteloot] (1965) and Anthol. negro-ajricaine, against present oppression toward a visionary ed . L. Kesteloot (1967); Nouvelle somme de hope of future redemption. This vision of poesie du monde noir (Presence Africaine, 1966); future fulfillment arises directly out of the La Poesie des noirs, ed. R. Mercier (1967); Neg • experience of suffering on the part of the colo• ritude: Black Poetry from Africa and the Carib • nized Afr., and David Diop's poems thus pro• bean, ed. N. Shapiro (1970); B. J. Fouda et al ., vide perhaps the most apt illustration of Litteraiure cameTOunaise (Kraus reprint, Sartre's contention regarding the messianic 1971); Black Poets in r-.. ed . M. Collins (1972). role of the black man, and at the same time, HISTORY AND CRITICISM : J .-P . Sartre, "Orphee reveal Diop's historical importance as a bridge noir" in Anthol. de la nouvelle poesie negre et between the militant and post-Independence malgache . ... (1948); T. Melone, De la negri • eras. tude dans la litterature negro-airicaine (1962): With political independence, many of the L. Kesteloot, Les Ecriuains noirs de langue fro . .. social preoccupations mirrored in the poetry (1963; 3d ed ., 1967; Eng. tr. by E. C. Kennedy lost their raison d'etre. The tone and themes of in 1974); L. Senghor, Liberte T: Negritude et black Afr . poetry in Fr. have been affected humanisme (1964); Negritude: Essays and Stud• accordingly. However, the profusion of small ies, ed, A. Berrian and R. Long (1967); J. Jahn, volumes, published by Art houses, by a grow• Neo-A[r, Lit.: A Hist . of Black Writing (1968); ing number of younger poets, attests to a J.-M. Abanda Ndengue, De la negritude au still vigorous movement. The more recent po• negrisme (Yaounde, 1970); J.-P. Makouta-Mbou• etry tends to be less concerned with revolt, to kou, In trod. Ii la litt. noire (yaounde, 1970); use less direct language, to be less impersonal, J. Nantet, Panorama de la litt. noire d'expres• more lyrical; the poet appears as visionary or sion fro (1972); D. E. Herdeck, Ajr. Authors repository of a renewed or self-renewing race. (V.I, 1973). C.F .G. The two poets most worthy of note of the new IN PORTUGUESE. Despite the common stamp generation are Tchicaya U Tam'si (b. 1931) of Port. occupation gave to the culture of its dif• Congo-Kinshasa and Edouard Maunick (b. ferent Afr. possessions-Angola, Mozambique, 1931) of Mauritius. U Tam'si and Maunick the islands of Sao Tome and Principe, the Cape express themes of race, of the Afr. heritage Verde islands and Guinea, each of these terri• glimpsed through scenes remembered from tories (with the exception of Moslem Guinea) childhood, of pilgrimage, purification. and re• has produced a distinctive poetry. This litera• newal, of humanist destiny and the bardic ture is the work of a minority of educated in • mission, the whole through a complex system tellectuals cut off from their roots in Afr. cul • of motif symbols. Militancy is still present, but ture, often educated in Portugal and with a -[ 914 1- AFRICAN POETRY strong sense of their mission as spokesmen and 1953-"Onde estao os homens cacados neste reformers. Far from rejecting the Port. lan • vente de loucu ra" (Where are the men pursued guage, they appreciate the common instrument by this wind of madness?). The poetry of Angola it offers, though a few poets have chosen to and Mozambique has also arisen for the most write in Creole dialect. Curiously, some of the part in response to the negritude movement earliest poets came from the smallest posses• and out of the social situation, though one of sions. Two were mulattoes--Caetano da Costa the earliest poets, Rui de Noronha (Mozam• Alegre (1864-90) from Sao Tome, whose poems, bique, 1909-4!l) expressed little more than sad written in the last decades of the 19th c., were resignation at his colonial fate. With the found• published in 1916: and Eugenio Tavares (1867• ing of the reviews, Mensagem (1950) and , after 19!1O) from the Cape Verde islands, who wrote its suppression, Cultura (both in Angola) , there some of his poetry in Creole. However, the earli• began a real movement of poetic discovery of est black poet, Joaquim Cordeiro da Mata Angola and Mozambique. Of great importance, (1857-94), came from Angola . The absence of too, because it drew together poets from differ• a strong Afr. culture possibly acted as an in• ent parts of Africa was the Casa dos Estudantes direct stimulus on the poetry of the islands , do Imperio in Lisbon, a student center which for the verse of ~ose Lopes da Silva (1872-1962) published many Afr. poets before it closed respects Port. tradition. "Nao prostituo a lingua down in the 1960's. During the years of its de Camiies" (I do not prostitute the language existence, the Casa brought together writers, of Camiies), he wrote. With the influence of intellectuals, and future leaders of the Inde• Brazilian Modernism in the thirties, the prob• pendence movement such as Amilcar Cabral, lem of color began to be introduced into Cape Agostinho Neto (b. Angola, 1922), and Mario Verdean poetry. Pedro Monteiro Cardoso (ca. de Andrade (b. Angola, 1928). The poetry of 1890·1942) published some bilingual poems in this period begins by rediscovering the peoples Port. and Creole. With the founding of of Angola and Mozambique. For instance, many Claridade by Jorge Barbosa (1902-71), Manuel of the poems of Viriato da Cruz (b. Angola, Lopes (b. 1907), and others in 19!16, literature 1928) take the form of portraits of typical local increas ingly focused attention on the islands characters, e.g., S6 Santo , the local potentate and their peoples. The sea was an all important who is presented in the language and from the element, for, as Barbosa wrote in his poem , To viewpoint of the people: "Hum-humjMas deixa the Sea, "Nos dilata sonhos enos sufoca de• .. ./Quando 0 sO Santo morrer, jVamos chamar sejos" (it opens up dreams and stifles desires). urn kimbandajPara 'Nghombo nos dizer/Se a On the other hand, another of the founders, sua grande desgracajFoi desamparo de Sanduj Pedro Corsino Azevedo (1905-42), drew on the Ou se e ji\ propia da Raca" (Hum, but never oral traditions of the island and wrote in mind. When Mr. Saint dies, we'll bring the Creole. One of his characteristically humorous' sorcerer so that the Truth God will tell us poems is a detailed description of his snuff• whether his great misfortune was due to the box: Nha tabaquero which he lovingly evokes Spirit having forsaken him or if it is in as made "di diacranda/co' prata tchuquido" (of the blood). As in other parts of Africa, there is jacaranda with inlaid silver). ~lariddde con• the emergence of certain negritude themes-the tinued to appear intermittently, though by the feeling of black brotherhood, for instance, in sixties the young Cape Verdean poets had gone some of the poems of Agostinho Neto ; of black beyond the discovery of their island toward defiance in Jose Craveirinha (b. Mozambique, social themes such as hunger and emigration. 1922) whose Grito Negro compares his black • Among these poets are Gabriel Mariano (b. ness to coal that will someday consume the 1928), Ovldio Martins (b. 1928), and Onesimo boss: of the rape of mother Africa in the poetry Silveira (b. 19!15), who have taken emigration of the woman poet, Noemia de Sousa (b. Mo• as their major theme. That is why in his Um zambique, 1927). With the outbreak of armed poema dijerente, Onesimo Silveira evokes a struggle between 1961-64 many of these poets Utopian future as against the negatives of the were to find themselves involved in the war• present, a poem "sem barcos lastrados de gente/ Agostinho Neto , Kalungano (Marcelino dos A caminho do SuI" (without boats crammed Santos, b. Mozambique, 1929), Jorge Rebelo (b. with people and heading for the South) . In the Mozambique, 1940) have all become leaders of small island of Sao Tome, poetry has a strong the liberation movement and several others, social content and there has been some influ • Antonio Jacinto do Amaral Martins (b. An• ence of the Cuban poet Nicolas Guillen on An• gola, 1924) and Jose Craveirinha, have suffered t6nio Alves Tomas Medeiros (b. 19!11) and Fran• periods of imprisonment. Not unnaturally in cisco Jose de Vasques Tenreiro (1921-6!l), the these poets, the theme of social exploitation is latter a prolific writer on negritude themes. A uppermost, and there are many poems written well-known woman poet of Sao Tome, AIda do on the theme of war itself, for instance, the Esplrito Santo (b. 1926) is author of an im• Poema quarto of Fernando Costa Andrade (b. passioned lament on the Batepa massacre of Angola, 19!16) who writes "Ha sobre a terra -[ 915 1- SUPPLEMENT 50,000 mortos que ninguem chorou" (There are turv, we behold mostly a welter of wholly upon the earth 50,000 unwept dead). In con • shared anxieties that unite the feuding camps. trast to the poetry of the militants is that of The poets who were gathered together at the mulatto Mario Antonio Fernandes de Oli• the ir first full strength ca. 1945 would include veira (b. Angola, 19M) whose poetry often ex• Robert Penn Warren, Richard Eberhart, Theo• presses the mystical bond between the Afr . and dore Roethke, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell . nature and that of Geraldo Bessa Victor (b. John Berryman, Delmore Schwartz, J . V. Cun• Angola, 1917), whose verse looks forward to a ningham, Ra ndall Jarrell, Richard Wilbur, time when racial divisions will be overcome. Charles Olson, and Robert Duncan. They had The social and political nature of the poetry of as predecessors the most formidable group of Angola and Mozambique has had a strong in• poets in Am. tradition, one that began with fluence on language and style, for it is a poetry Edwin Arlington Robinson and Frost and pro• of unequivocal statement which depends for its ceeded through Pound, Eliot, Moore, Williams, effect on a strong emotional tone of lament or Stevens . Ransom, and Jeffers down to a some• protest. The use of Afr. words is restrained, what younger trio of E. E. Cummings, Hart though there is often the evocat ion of the drum Crane, and Allen Tate. Almost all of the poets beat. born in the first two decades of the 20th c. ANTHOLOGIES: Modernos poetas cabo-verdi• seem diminished today when juxtaposed very anos, ed . J. de Figueiredo (1961); Poetas e closely with those born in the last two or three couetistas africanos de expressiio portuguesa, decades of the 19th . Great achievement by the ed. J . Alves das Neves (Sao Paulo, 1963); Litera• fathers sometimes exacts a price from the chil• tura africana de expressiio poriuguesa, I: Poesia, dren, and something of the current strength of ed. M. de Andrade (Algiers, 2d ed ., 1967; tr. Am. poets born during the 1920's ma y derive into Fr. as La Poesie ajricaine d'expression from the sorrows and sacrifice of the middle portugaise [Honfleur], 1969). generation of Roethke, Berryman, Jarrell, Low• HISTORY AND CRITICISM: M. de Andrade, "A ell , and others. poesia africana de expressao portuguesa: evolu• We can di stinguish two formal strains in the cao e tendencias actuais" in his anthol. cited important Am. poets born during the closing above; N. Araujo, A Study of Cape Verdean decades of the 19th c. If we examine Am. poetic Lit. (1966); G. M. Moser, Essays in Port .-Afr. practice as opposed to theory in the 19th c., we Lit. (1969); R. A. Prete-Rodas, Negritude as a see that the main British line of Spenserian• Theme in the Poetry of the Portuguese-Speak• Miltonic poetry, which emerges as the romantic ing World (1970); D. E. Herdeck, Air. Authors tradition, was carried on through Bryant, Poe, (V.I, 1973). JE.F. Longfellow, Timrod, and Lanier, while native strains were invented most plainly by Whitman, AGRARIANS. See FUGITIVES, THE. and more subtly by a gnomic group that in • cludes Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, and, most AMERICAN POETIC SCHOOLS AND TECH• grandly, Dickinson. The two strains, those of NIQUES (CONTEMPORARy). "Ask the fact the Eng . Romantic and the Emersonian gnomic, for the form," Emerson said, but the history of met and mingled in Robinson and Frost. Am. poetry has tended to illustrate a rival A th ird strain of Whitmanian innovation en• quest, which is to beg the form for the fact. sued in the major outburst of 1915 and after• Emerson urged the Am. bards to emulate his wards. The immediate influence of Whitman Merlin, who mounted to paradise by the stair• here-on Edgar Lee Masters, Vachel Lindsay, way of surprise, but even the greatest among Carl Sandburg-was not fructifying, though Emerson's immediate progeny, Whitman and these poets continue to be popular and their Dickinson, chose to present their poetic selves simplified idiom has much to do with the re• through repetitive modes of continuous and cent development of a quasi-folk music. How• overwhelming formal innovation. Am. poetry ever, a Whitmanian element in Pound, Williams, since the end of World War II is an epitome of and even Eliot, today seems far more central this reverse Emersonianism: no other poets in and vitalizing than the European influences so Western history have so self-deceivingly organ• directly exalted by Eliot and Pound themselves ized themselves along the supposed lines of and by their followers . An even more elusive formal divisions. The mimic wars of "closed" Whitmanian influence. wholly divorced from against "open" formers have masqueraded as formal considerations, was crucial for Stevens, conflicts between spiritual stances and ideolog• whose major formal inheritance is as close to ical commitments: closed form , governed by Wordsworth, Keats , and Tennyson as ever Bry• metric and stanza, could thus be writ large as a ant, Poe . and Longfellow were . settled insulation from experience, whereas Despite its enormous range and power, Ste• open form, free -style and full of vatic self-confi• vens's poetry has waited until the late 1960's dence, reduced all experience to a chaos. And and early 1970's to find a strong disciple in yet if we stand back now , after a quarter-cen- John Ashbery, whose own work took a turn -[ 916 ]- AGRARIANS-AMERICAN POETIC SCHOOLS away from surrealism (q.v.) and automatic writ• and late poems look very nearly the same, but ing in The Double Dream of Spring, Three their technical evenness covers a progress away Poems, and a number of uncollected lyrics. In from the metaphysical conceits which used to Ashbery's best poems we look back through lie thick on his pages. Similarly, Jarrell in his Stevens to Whitman in the employment of a last work moved to the Wordsworthian pathos long line , and in a rather oblique use of the that had been his theme all along, and wrote cataloguing effect. There is a similar back• increasingly in a loose iambic that allowed for ground for poets whose middle range of an • much of the "inclusiveness" he had explicitly cestry and poetic temperament appears to be admired in Whitman. Howard in his most re• occupied by Eliot. For instance, W. S. Merwin cent volumes has written dramatic monologues began during the mid-1960's to experiment after the manner of Browning, while Hollander with a celebratory kind of neo-primitivism: in has tended to favor syllabics or else a highly The Moving Target and The Lice, broken syn• enjambed accentual verse. Such a list might go tax is making the dissociation Eliot saw as his• on: the point is that poets who had their be• torically unfortunate but necessary. Yet Merwin ginning in Auden, and whose early work can has recovered the consolatory strain that be• often be mistaken for Auden's, have by what• longed to Whitman and decisively affected The ever route found a resting place in the native Waste Land and Four Quartets, though Eliot tradition. in his own quite amb ivalent public pronounce• Our emphasis ought to fall on a Wordsworth• ments had tried to elim inate Whitman from ian -Whitmanian subjectivity that is just and in• the acceptable "tradition" of poetry in the Eng . evitable. Against this stands the mode of con• language. fessional verse, :r matrix that has produced These cases illustrate the emergence during W. D. Snodgrass , Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, the past few years of a transcendentalism that and many other figures. Confessional poetry has always been essential to Am. poetry but was owes its genesis to Lowell, whose earli~st writ• for a time anx iously rejected by its surest de• ing looked like a late metaphysical pastiche for scendants. The poets of the generation of which his only precursors might be Edward Roethke-Lowell-Wilbur began with the sober Taylor and Allen Tate. In Life Studies Lowell admonition of Eliot and Auden; they were to opened himself to the type of free verse pio• return to closed forms, and forsake metrical neered by Williams, while using the form, as innovation. They, together with their younger Williams had not done, to write his own life's followers in the 1950's-Ashbery, Merwin, story by way of the strictly clinical facts. In James Dickey, James Merrill, Anthony Hecht, later works Lowell has put the same subject, James Wright, Loftis Simpson, Richard How• himself, under a still more minute examina• ard, John Hollander-discovered in their vari• tion, reverting to the format of a diary and ous ways that neither closed nor open forms adopting the form of a fourteen-line entry could be anything but an evasion . Poets who written in flat pentameter. He is certainly the carne into their force somewhat later, such as poet central to this movement, or tendency, in Gary Snyder,A.R. Ammons, Galway Kinnell, Am. poetry, and, though he has been a less and Mark Strand, were less troubled by con• imposing as well as a less domineering pres• straints of form and so could start more com• ence, he seems to be the logical successor to fortably from the fact. In short, never having Eliot in the poetry of belief or anxious un• labored under the illusion that there was some belief which ranges itself against the poetry cross-cultural modern idiom to which they of vision. Although the issue of form is as ought to aspire, they declared themselves from always bogus, the larger opposition here will the first to be successors of Emerson and Whit• probably be lasting. man . Critics have ordinarily associated Lowell in Among the closed formers it is Auden rather this phase with the later work of Berryman, than Eliot who has been the steadiest influence. which belongs more appropriately to a con• His idiom is still going strong in the most re• sideration of Pound's influence. Berryman's cent work of Merrill, Howard Moss, and Wil• Dream Songs have much of the terseness that bur, had a determining effect on the early ef• Pound asked to be communicated from the forts of Hollander and Howard, and never left tone of a poem to its prosody, and their way Jarrell. What separates the Am. disciples of of setting an expressionistic personal stance Auden from many of their British counterparts over against imagistic hardness was also antici• is a revision of Auden's characteristic irony , pated by Pound. It is only in his last and less which (as D. Davie has remarked in a slightly individually realized songs that Berryman ap• different context) begins to realize in it the at • proaches Lowell. titude that nature strikes in confronting man: Iris Murdoch has observed that imagism not merely a man 's own pose in confronting (q.v.) itself was never more than a fantastically himself. This shift is evident also in matters of stripped down version of late romanticism: detail. Wilbur can be representative: his early personality was being reduced to its smallest -[ 917 )- SUPPLEMENT points of perception without ever being ex• far truer to Williams than any of the "Howl"• punged, so that a large claim for the self was Whitmanians has been Denise Levertov. at all events implicitly maintained. There was Williams' habit of regarding a poem as "ob• never any "extinction of personality," in Eliot's servations," enlivened by the colloquial diction phrase. Pound recognized this when he em• of Pound, helped to encourage Marianne barked on his own private quest poem, the Moore in one generation and Elizabeth Bishop enormous and deliberately uncompleted Can• in the next. An ingratiating element in both tos, and his followers have taken roughly the of these poets is that they seem to claim noth• same path. The Black Mountain School, includ• ing for their role, or for their craft. The type ing primarily Olson, Duncan, and Robert of syllabic verse invented by Moore makes the Creeley , can be counted among his most faith• prose of life concede very little to the poetry ful. Olson's own epic was composed largely in and sets nervousness very high among the Poundian cadences, though he professed to faculties that aid perception . Similar qualities, write according to a different rationale. Thus, though with a certain loosening as to form projective verse- is the name given to his ex• and a less jagged conception of what a poem hortation to future bards to write by "field"• ought to be, are notable throughout Bishop's that is, using all the resources of a typewriter work . The "mad exactness" that has often been to complicate what the eye sees on the written remarked in her poetry is itself an exacting page-and at the same time to plan their discipline, and may eventually be viewed as metric according to breath-that is, with a a corrective reaction against the thaumaturgical respect for the full and varied possibilities of excesses of the modern tradition. exhalation helped by the human voice. Olson Another kind of reaction against modernism felt that he was licensed in principle as in prac• accounts for the group of New York poets in tice by the metric of Shakespeare's later plays. which Frank O'Hara, Kenneth Koch, J ames As all the manifestos show, there is an ob• Schuyler, and Ashbery figure as significant scure but profound spiritual kinship that binds names. The opera bouDe of Am. silent films together Williams, Pound, Olson , and a much as well as a native surrealism is at work in younger poet, Allen Ginsberg. The self-dis• the writing of this school : O'Hara's Second coveries of Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Lawrence Avenue can be considered an exemplum of the Ferlinghetti, William Everson, and a host of new mode thereby brought into being, which lesser eminences, who were first heard from in might be described as comic phantasmagoria. the mid-1950 's, are occasionally referred to as Such a poetics is in the last degree an urban making a San Francisco Renaissance. The ad • phenomenon, and will be found irrevocably vent of the Beat Poets (q.v.), and the writing at odds with the school of pre-Wordsworthian, Duncan issued out of. San Francisco, may be or indeed-as it likes to be thought-prehis• set under the rubric of this event. Since the torical clarity which we connect with the names Beat Poets were noisiest in being reborn, have of James Wright and Robert Bly. stayed active through their connection with Sooner or later, as has been noted, the pro• Ferlinghetti's publishing enterprise, and com• liferation of. schools and methods must be un • pose the largest subset of th is group, they have derstood as an impediment, not an aid to ap• a special claim on our attention. In one sense preciation. There are two innovations that these poets are Whitman's authentic he irs: they have some importance: first, the definitive have his expansiveness, his belief in the de• sloughing off of the Georgian diction by Pound, mocracy of the spirit, his sexual frankness, and Frost, and a few others. That the advance they sing of the open road. But the myth has took place at a certain time and place has become a mystique in their hands, which come to seem a truism, yet it holds within it merely to invoke is apparently to justify. In an essential truth. There is also, a bit later, much of Ginsberg's work during the late 1950's Williams' reassertion in free verse of the full and early 1960's, the elliptical image-making range of ambiguity made possible by enjamb• faculty of Williams has also been brought to ment (q.v.), when, as J . Hollander has indicat• bear, and it is to be noted that Williams as• ed , the rhetorical flexibility of that particular sociated himself with this poet's Whitmanian feature of Eng. poetry had been allowed to incarnation at its most aggressive pitch. At least lapse after Milton in the poetry of the late romantics and the Victorians. But , once we one current in Williams' own poetry, how• have taken these into account, the arguments ever , ran directly contrary to Whitman, for within and between self-proclaiming schools Williams tended to freeze any given image in are at best misleading. In the strongest and order to isolate it for contemplation, rather most characteristic poetry of the late 1960's than immersing its solitariness in some wider and early 1970's, a transcendental synthesis of flow of reverie. This is where the style of a the various native strains seems to be develop• poet and the deepest facts of his personality ing , and what is emerging is clearly an ex• intersect, and on this point of style a disciple pressionistic and severe version of Am. ro- -[ 918 ]- AMERICAN POETIC SCHOOLS

manticism. At any rate, that is our safest No wonder the addresses are torn . .. generalization as we trace the continuity of individual careers. Thus Simpson, who was once allied with Blv and the mid-West clari• Glad of the changes already and if there are fiers, appears in his liveliest work to have more been relatively free of their defining impulse. it will never be you that minds Ashbery, sometimes categorized Quite simply Since it will not be you to be changed, but in as one of the New York poets, instead moves the evening in the severe lamplight together with Schuyler in an enormous ambi• doubts come ence that includes the otherwise very diverse From many scattered distances, and do not Merrill, Wright, Hecht, Ammons, Merwin, corne too near. Hollander, Alvin Feinman, Kinnell, Strand, As it falls along the house, your treasure and many others, who are visionary, as Emer• Cries to the other men ; the darkness will have son prophesied they must be. The stance of none of you, and your are folded into it all these poets makes impossible an expression like mint into the sound of haying .. . in either closed or open phrased fields, and each has been compelled, in order to escape These are five representative poets of their the fall into the confessional, to perform a generation; the excerpts have been taken at deliberate curtailment of the revisionary im• random from a recent anthology. Every pas• pulse toward an endlessly journalistic scrutiny sage, whether in tone, in cognitive aim, or in of himself, while simultaneously asking the human stance, shows the same anxiety: to ask fact for the form . the fact for the form, while being .fearful that For what, finally, can poetic form mean to the fact no longer has a form . This is what an Am.? Every Am. poet who aspires to G. Hartman has called " the anxiety of de• strength knows that he starts in the evening• mand": that which can be used can be used land, realizes he is a latecomer, fears to be up. The generation of poets who stand together only a secondary man. now, mature and ready to write the major Am. verse of the 1970's, may yet be seen as what Solitary, Stevens called "a great shadow's last embellish• Patient for the last voices of the dusk to ment," the shadow being Emerson's. die down, and the dusk ANTHOLOGIES: New Poets of England and To die down, America, ed. D. Hall, R. Pack, and L. Simpson Listeners waiting for courteous rivers (1957); The New Am. Poetry, ed . D. M. Allen To rise and be known ... (1960); Contemporary Am. Poetry, ed. D. Hall (1962) ; Poems of Our Moment, ed. J. Hollander (1968); The Contemporary Am. Poets, ed . M. ... but in the large view, no Strand (1969); 51 lines or changeless shapes: the working in Preferences: Am. Poets and out, together Choose Poems from Their Own Work and and against, of millions of events: th is, from the Past, comm. and introd. by R . How• so that I make ard (1974). Cf. also the Yale Series of Younger no form of Poets, the Pitt Poetry Series of the University formlessness . . of Pittsburgh, the Contemporary Poetry Se• ries of the University of North Carolina Press , the Wesleyan Poetry Program. Suspended somewhere in summer between the CRITICISM : E. Pound, A .B.C. of Reading ceremonies (1934); Y. Winters, Primitivism and Decadence Remembered from childhood and the histori• (1937); W . Stevens, The Necessary Angel cal conflagrations (1951); R. Jarrell, Poetry and the Age (195!l); Imagined in sad, learned youth-somewhere W.C. Williams, Selected Essays (1954); A. Tate, there always hangs The Man of Letters in the Modem World The American moment. (1955); R. J . Mills, Jr. Contemporary Am. Burning, restless, between the deed Poetry (1965); C. Olson, Human Universe And the dream is the life remembered ... (1967); M. L. Rosenthal, The New Poets (1967); A. Alvarez, Beyond All This Fiddle In new rocks new insects are sitting (1968); D. Davie, "On Sincerity," Encounter, With the lights off 31 (1968) and Six Epistles to Eva Hesse (1970); And once more I remember that the begin• The Survival of Poetry, ed . M. Dodsworth ning (1970); R . Howard, Alone with America (1970); H. Bloom, The Ringers in the Tower Is broken (1971); D. Bromwich, "Some Am. Masks," Dis- -[ 919 ]- SUPPLEMENT sent, 20 (19711); K. Malkolf, Crowell's Hand• AMERIND (a combination of syllables for book of Contemporary Am. Poetry (19711); American and Indian). See AMERICAN INDIAN L. Simpson, North of Jamaica (19711); Am. POETRY. Poetry since 1960, ed. R. B. Shaw (1974); M. Bewley, D. Donoghue, R. W. Flint, R. Maz• ANIMAL EPIC. See BEAST EPIC. zocco in The Hudson Review, The New York ANTIMASQUE. See MASQ UE. Review of Books, Partisan Review, passim. HA .B.; D.B. ATTITUDE. See TONE. B

BARDIC VERSE. See CELTIC PROSODY. versality.' Such new B. poets as Don L. Lee and Clarence Major speak within a developing B. BEAST FABLE. See FABLE IN VERSE; BEAST EPIC. aesthetic similar to the mature one existing in music, a context where the B. artist, utterly BIBLICAL POETRY. See HEBREW POETRY. independent of "scholarly criticism," inter• prets the cultural experience which he shares BLACK MOUNTAIN SCHOOL OF POETS. with his B. audience. See PROJECfIVE VERSE.- Since emancipation from traditional Western poetic criteria is relatively new, the formal BLACK POETRY, Recent (U.s.). The term, elements of the new emphasis are quite varied and perhaps the very concept, "Black Poetry" and eclectic, as is indicated by the haiku entered popular usage in the early 1960's along (q.v.) of Etheridge Knight, the South African with "Black Power," "Black Nationalism," and sort of praise poems by Keorapetse Kgositsile , "The Black Arts Movement," In part each of the paeons of Nikki Giovanni, and the com• these rests on the premise of Pan-Africanism, bination of music with poetry (not lyrics) by that is, the belief that all B. communities in "The Last Poets" and many others. Often the Africa and elsewhere share a fundamental cul• figures of speech and prosody borrow from tural heritage and certain historical experiences current oral folk poetry, thus continuing th e and current political concerns, especially vis-a• tradition of "dialect poetry," "jazz poetry," and vis Western culture.B. poetry, then, can mean the many other written styles based on verbal poetry by persons of African descent, but more art endemic to the whole B. community in specifically it designates poetry by such per• America, but foreign to Euro-Am, literary tra • sons which is addressed to the B. heritage dition. Frequently, choices of orthography, aesthetically and to the B. community pol iti • vocabulary, tone, etc., seem intended precisely cally. to contradict academically enshrined canons. Recent B. poetry in the United States there• Thus form itself is applied to the task of fore continues the tradition of spirituals (q.v.) "decolonizing the mind" of both reader and and of the luminaries such as Phillis Wheatley, writer. The poets' concept of a "colonized George Moses Horton, Paul Laurence Dunbar, people" follows closely the thought of such Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Melvin B. political philosophers as Frantz Fanon and Tolson, and Gwendolyn Brooks (see NEGRO Kwame Nkrumah. POETRY. AMERICAN [u.s.). It is distinguished But it is in content that this poetry is most from this tradition primarily by a heightened strikingly directed toward the B. community's consciousness of alienation .from non-B. audio emancipation ideologically and in every other ences-a consciousness emerging from the sense. T ypical is the poem B. Art by Imamu Civil Rights and B. Power movements of the Baraka, which focuses aesthetic principles upon 1960's, the assassinations of Malcolm X and content--eontent which teaches, inspires, and Martin Luther King, the big-eity riots, and hence contributes to liberation. the rekindling of interest in B. Nationalism. The recurrent themes of recent B. poetry It is further characterized by a consciously might be provisionally categorized as either B. aesthetic which regards critical concepts "negative" or " positive"--even though the most and criteria of academic traditionalism as bleak poem may involve a subtle affirmation founded on principles alien to the B. culture. of B. values , and the most affirmative poem Such norms are rejected as racist, stifling, and may evoke images of intense suffer ing. On the parochial, even under the shibboleth of " uni- negative side , there are exposures of the abuses -[ 920 1- AMERIND-CALLIGRAMME and inconsistencies of Western religion and intended audience an interest challenged by aesthetics (yusef Iman's Love You r Enemy, no other serious contemporary B. art except Dudley Randall's B. Poet , White Critic); demo music , and, possibly. drama. onstrations of the loss of B. selfhood which ANTHOLOGIES: B. Expressions: An Anthol. of cha racterizes a colonial mentality (Don L. Lee's New B. Poets, ed , E. Perkins (1967); B. Fire. The Seli-Hatred of Don L. Lee); and dramati• ed. L. Jones and L. Neal (1968); I Am the zations of var ious forms of modern oppression Darker Brother: An Anthol. of Modem Poems (Carolyn Rodgers' The Last M. F., Etheridge by B. Americans (1968) and The Poetry of Knight's Hard Rock Returns to Prison, Johari B. America: Anthol. of the 20th C. (197!1). Amini's Upon Being B. One Friday Night in both ed. A. Adoff; The New B. Poetry, ed . C. July). Major (1969); Soulscript: Airo-Am, Poetry. ed. On the positive side , there are explicit calls J. Jordan (1970); Dices or B. Bones : B. Voices to revolt (Sonia Sanchez' A Coltrane Poem, of the Seventies. ed . A. D. Miller (1970); 19 Don L. Lee's a poem to complement other Necromancers from Now: An Anthol. of Orig• poems) as well as less militant, inward-looking inal Am. Writing [or the 70's, ed. I. Reed affirmations. Nikki Giovanni illustrates a tran• (1970); We Speak as Liberators. ed. O. Coombs sition from one stance to the other, from the (1970); A Broadside Treasury, ed. G. Brooks mid-1960's N igger, Can You Kim to the more (1971). recent concerns of My House. The reintegra• HISTORY AND CRITICISM: A. Bontemps, "The tion of the B. "sense of self" is the implicit New B. Renaissance." Negro Digest. 1l (1961) aim of many contemporary B. poems which and "The Umbra Poets." Mainstream, 16 celebrate oft-disparaged forms of B. beauty• (196!1) ; Anger and Beyond: The Negro Writer physical, spiritual, and cultural (Conrad Kent in the United States . ed. H . Hill (1966); L. Rivers' For All Things B. and Beautiful, Neal , "The B. Arts Movement." Drama Reo., Everett Hoagland's love child-a b. aesthetic. 12 (1968); R . Barksdale. "Urban Crisis and and many B. poets' tributes to B. musicians). the B. Poetic Avant-Garde," Negro Am. Lit. Another important development is the effort Forum, !I (1969); B. Expression: Essays by and to provide a B. and Pan-Africanist cosmology about B. Amel'icans in the Creative Arts. ed . (Larry Neal 's Kuntu, Sun Ra's Of Cosmic Blue A. Gayle (1969); M. Cook and S. Henderson, Prints, Sarah Fabio's Evil Is No B. Thing). The Militant B. Wr iter in Africa and the The authors cited above probably constitute United States (1969); C. Gerald, "The B. a fair list of the contemporary B. poets most Writer and His Role." Negro Digest, 18 (1969); celebrated by their fellow artists and the B. J. Lester, "T he Arts and the B. Revolution," community. Among the most seminal are Arts in Society, 5 (1969); C. Rodgers. "B. Imamu Baraka (Leroi Jones) and Don L. Lee. Poetry-where It's at, " Negro Digest, 18 (1969); In addition other established poets, notably A. P. Davis, "The New Poetry of B. Hate." Gwendolyn Brooks, have participated in the CLA [our., 1l (1970); M. Evans. "Contempo• B. poetry movement. whose centers of activity rary B. Lito... B. World. 19 (1970); The B. are New York and Newark. New Jersey. Chi• Aesthetic, ed . A. Gayle (1971); Dynamite cago . Detroit, and to a lesser extent San 1960's, ed . D. L. Lee Francisco and Los Angeles. Independence has Voices: B. Poetry Of the required reliance on new publishing houses (1971); J. H. Bryant. "The B. Rebellion in Lit. such as J ihad Productions. Broadside Press, and Music," Nation, April 24. 1972; B. Bell, and Third World Press, and on journals such "Contemporary Afro-Am . Poetry as Folk Art ." as The Journal of B. Poetry , Soulbook, and the B. Wo rld .22 (197!1) ; S. Henderson. Understand• preexisting B. World. The determined aspira• ing the New B. Poetry (197!1) ; Modem B. tion to speak in the id iom of Blacks has so Poets: A Collection of Crit . Essays. ed . D. B. succeeded that B. poetry has generated in its Gibson (197!1). D.J. c

CALLIGRAMME. The c. takes its name from George). While recognizing the personal quality Guillaume Apollinaire's figure-poems (ideo · in Apollinaire's use of the form, one may cite grammes Iyriques, as he first called them) in in its background the subtle metaphorical ele• his volume Calligrammes (1918). It has been ments of the Chinese written character and, termed "both unique and non-unique, both among others, such historical precedents as avant-garde and historically grounded" (E. E. Alexandrian figure-poems (terhnopaignia) at- -r 921 ]- SUPPLEMENT tributed to Simias of Rhodes, Theocritus, and little way of knowing how effectively c. inhib• Dosiadas; the Latin carmina figurata ; Rabelais' ited poets from writing, but the record is "Dive Bouteille"; George Herbert's wings; and clear that they enjoyed relative freedom until the mouse-tail of Alice's Adventures in Won• the growth of a mass reading public brought derland. The c. thus falls somewhere between about the need for moral c. on an unprece• the pattern poem (see PATTERN POETRY) and dented scale. contemporary concrete poetry." When Apol• Previously c. had been invoked to support linaire shapes his verses variously into a neck• the established churches or governments. With tie, a watch, a crown, a flower, a mandolin, a the advent of widespread printing, the Church Browning pistol, the fac;ade of Notre-Dame, a in 1487 imposed a formal system of licensing fountain, the Eiffel Tower, or a shower of books before publication. Charles V in 1521 rain, there is often an integral lyric quality made publishing without the Church's li• preserved within the form. Yet the c. remains cense a civil offense, and Henry VIII countered essentially a virtuosity, a visual conceit, a with a wholly secular licensing system under sort of modern blending of verse and emblem the dreaded Star Chamber. Still, no major poet (q.v.) in one.-F. J. Carmody, Evolution of is known to have suffered for his poetry even Apollinaire's Poetics 1901-1914 (1963); S. after the Church buttressed its system with an Themerson, Apollinaire's Lyrical Ideograms Index of Prohibited Books (1559). Frequently (1966, rev. ed ., 1968); E. E. George, "Calligrams revised, the Index was subject to the whims in Apollinaire and in Trakl: A Psycho-Stylistic of presiding authorities and at one time listed Study," Language and Style , 1 (1968); P. Re· 11 lines of the Divine Comedy (from Inferno, naud, Lecture d'Apollinaire (1969); G. M. II and 19), later the whole of Paradise Lost in Masters, " Rabelais and Ren. Figure Poems ," It. translation. In post- Napoleonic Austria un• Etudes Rabelaisiennes, 8 (1969); A. H. Greet, der the " Mettern ich System," the Index was "Wordplay in Apollinaire's Calligrammes," combined with secul ar restrictions to impose L'Esprit Createur, 10 (1970). A.G.E. excessively harsh c. on poets or anyone else expressing liberal views. Yet within Catholic CENSORSHIP. Compared to prose fiction , po• nations, like Spain, the Index gradually fell etry has seldom been censored. C. consists of into disuse until formally abrogated in 1966. suppression before or after publication in the Secular restrictions, however, remain, espe• name of some political, religious, or moral cially in nations subject to rigorous political principle invoked by a state, church, or public c. Licensing and blacklisting are standard pressure group. For over 2,000 years the basic measures controlling poetry and other forms principle behind such suppression has been of literary expression. In the USSR, where the the idea asserted in Plato's Republic that sus• state publishes all books and controls all book • ceptible minds must be protected from harm. stores, "ideological administrators" decide what In all this time, poetry, for various reasons, will be written and read and what will not be has been held relatively harmless. After Aris• written or read, including books imported from tophanes lampooned the reigning tyrant, abroad. The state, the party, and the powerful Athens outlawed invective from the stage (437• Writers' Union keep watch for books lacking 35 B.C.) but exempted the chorus because of its literary or social merit. In 1947 a decree roots in religious ritual. This attitude toward against westernizing influences on Russian cul• poetry as a part-sacred , communal activity ture quickly consigned "harmful" poets like probably provided a measure of immunity in Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak to si• earlier times. Today, as censors concentrate lence and their works to instant oblivion. In on protecting the greatest number of people 1972, while young poets like Iosif Brodsky en• from greatest moral harm, they fear poetry dure "government service " followed by exile, only in proportion to its popularity and usu• others are free to read abroad, hinting at some ally leave it alone. relaxation of complete, uncompromising con • Wherever c. has been public policy and trol. poetry has been as vulnerable as any other As other states have granted increasing de• form of expression, persecution of poets has grees of individual freedom , political and re • not been as dramatic as legend would lead us ligious c. have declined but moral c. has to believe. The famous story of Ovid being flourished as a concomitant of democracy. The banished for obscene poetry is fanciful. He was most dramatic shift coincided with the ro • banished for riotous living or opposition poli o mantic movement in England where Lord tics, not poetry. When the infamous Restora• Chancellor Eldon, seeking to shelter the mor• tion rake Sir Charles Sedley was jailed in als of millions among a new mass reading 1663, it was not, as some say, for "mannerly class, invoked the principle, still current, that obscene" poems, but for standing on a balcony a potentially harmful work can have no ex• in Covent Garden "throwing down bottles istence in the eyes of the law and thus no [p ist in) " upon the populace below. There is copyright protection . He permitted piracy of -[ 922 ]- CENSORSHIP-COLLECTIONS, UNIFIED

any work suspected of libel, blasphemy, or im• specifically defined by the applicable state morality or one written by an author whose law:' This revision emphasizing state jurisdic• reputation was merely suspect. tion gives pressure groups a formidable weapon In 1817, when a pirate printed Southey's for grass-roots prosecutions. Wat Tyler, an effusion of his radical youth, Over the past century in the free world, Lord Eldon refused even the conservative pressure groups and police have been notori• laureate an injunction. In the same year, Eldon ously unsuccessful in convicting any major denied Shelley custody of his child because of poet. In fact, a judgment of obscenity against the blasphemy in Queen Mab. Byron, whose six poems in Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal levied wealth and power enabled him to beat off pi• in 1857 was finally annulled by Fr. courts in rates of Don Juan and . Cain, was yet so 1949. In 1929, D. H. Lawrence cunningly ar • stunned by this injustice that he refused to go ranged for British postal authorities to im• on with Don Juan. And Coleridge refused to pound the MS of Pansies, igniting popular translate Faust , fearing he would be blamed furore in his favor. In 1957, after U.S. Customs for Goethe's blasphemy and exposed to Eldon's impounded Ginzberg's Howl and Other Poems, lash . Thus for a quarter-century Eldon ruled, thousands cheered as Judge Clayton Horn ably abetted in the marketplace by the Society threw the case out of court. for the Suppression of Vice, so that by the In 1970 the President's Commission on Ob • close of his career reputable publishers, like scenity and Pornography recommended relax• Byron's John Murray, were simply refusing to ing what few restrictions remain. President issue any new poetry as "quite unsaleable." Nixon rejected the Commission's report, and The Society, like its successors in America, the mere possibility of rel axation caused pres• used boycotts, blacklists, and moral suasion sure groups to redouble their efforts. Neverthe• along with the constant threat of criminal less, on the national level, poetry continues to prosecution under obscenity laws. These laws enjoy immunity from their concerns as they evolved with expansion of the reading public. focus on widely circulating books and the mass In the U.S., the Tariff Act of 1842 banned im• media. On local levels, however, great poems portation of obscene books , including "classics" along with literary classics of all kinds continue (exempted only in 1930), without defining to feel the occasional lash of latter-day Lord obscenity. After mid-century both U.S. and Eldons. Bimonthly the American Library Asso• British law held any book obscene that tended ciation issues a Newsletter on Intellectual to corrupt corruptible minds. In 1933, in the Freedom, reporting harassment of bookstores, "Ulysses case," Judge John Woolsey ruled that public libraries and public schools, a continuo a book must be tested by its effect on "a person ing record of democracy's voice in the republic with average sex instincts," and this principle of letters, assuring us that Plato is alive and was embraced by the Supreme Court's "Roth well and living among the grassroots. decision" (1957) which held that the test of The First Freedom , ed. R. B. Downs (1960); obscenity should be "whether to the average R. W. Haney, Comstockery in America (1960); person, applying contemporary standards, the A. Craig, Banned Books of England and Other dominant theme of the material' taken as a Countries (1962): M. L. Ernst and A.U. whole appeals to prurient interest" (354 U.S. Schwartz, C.: The Search for the Obscene (1964); 487). R. E. McCoy, Freedom of the Press (1968); At the same time, th is landmark decision D. Thomas, A Long Time Burning: History extended immunity to any book with ideas of Literary C. (1969); U. S. Commission on having "the slightest redeeming social impor• Obscenity and Pornography. The Report tance" even though otherwise "unorthodox, (1970). P.M.Z. controversial, or hateful to the prevailing cli• CLOSURE, POETIC. See POETIC CLOSURE.· mate of opinion"-a decision that effectively deprived pressure groups of their most formi• COLLECTIONS, UNIFIED. Groups of poems dable weapon. During 1972, however, the Court possessing a sequential or other holistic form . said that the test was solely whether the domi• Virgil's ten Eclogues and four Georgics have nant theme of the work appealed to prurient recently been examined in detail for their sym• interest, and that "an attempt at serious art" metrical properties, involving pairs of poems was not inevitably a guarantee against a find • within the larger whole, passages on similar ing of obscenity. topics at similar length in similar places, etc. Then in 197!l, the test was narrowed: Such thematic forms have been shown to unify "whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks the episodes of Ovid's Metamorphoses; and serious literary, artistic, political or scientific some looser form has long been observed in value:' More, the Court also limited the scope Martial's Epigrams and Statius' Siluae. Oc• of the test by relating it to community stand• casionally a form was provided, as with some ards: "whether the work depicts or describes, Renaissance editions of Juvenal dividing his in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct sixteen satires into books . -[ 923 ]- SUPPLEMENT

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, associative and progressive integration came narrative and lyric sequences were very com • into being. Some of these involved editorial inte• mon, often employing other devices to impart gration: e.g., Superior Poems of Our T ime unity. Dante's Vita Nuoua and Petrarch's Can• (Kinda i Shuka), a sequence integrated by the zon iere give sequences of love poems in which poet Fujiwara Teika, Other such Japanese u.c, an idealized profane love may lead by stages were modeled on the imperial collections and to divine love, and recent criticism has dis• were made up of poems composed by a single covered in these collections certain calendrical poet and editorially ordered by him (or her). or other structures that provide one version The most frequent version of such u.c. was the of numerological form. The sonnet sequences hundred-poem sequence (hyakushuuta), out of (see SONNET CYCLE) of Edmund Spenser (Amo• which developed later linked forms by poets retti), of Sir Philip Sidney (Astrophel and writing stanzas in alteration. The brevity of the Stella) and, less certainly, of Shakespeare in • Japanese tanka (q.v.) enabled other editorial corporate narrative features, along with other manipulation into episodes accompanied by symptoms of order in unified collections. Two prose. In the 19th and 20th c. somewhat similar of the best Eng. examples of u.c. appeared in groupings of poems will be found in various the 17th c.: George Herbert's collection of di • literatures. A few examples of such include vine poems, The Temple, and John Dryden's Charles Pierre Baudelaire's Fleurs du mal, collection, chiefly of narratives and transla• Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonette an Orpheus, and tions, Fables Ancient and Modern. Varieties of Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology. linking by echoing of words , development of In numerous poetic traditions, various meth• plot, and variations on themes assist Herbert ods of bringing two or more poems together and Dryden, the former in developing ideas have existed; e.g., see COMPANION POEMS. --On of the vicissitudes of the soul in a eucharistic Virgil, see B. Otis, Virgil:A Study in Civilized series; and the latter, versions of the good life. Poetry (1963) and M. J. C. Putnam, Virgil 's Emblem (q.v.) books frequently showed such Pastoral Art (1970). On Ovid, see B. Otis, Ovid a progression, and particularly in dealing with as an Epic Poet (1966). On Dante and Petrarch, the vanity of earthly things or the vicissitudes see C. S. Singleton, An Essay on the Vita Nuoua of the soul. Francis Quarles treats the former (1958); T . P. Roche, "Calendrical Structure in topic in the first two books of his Emblemes Petrarch's Canzoniere," SP , 71 (1974). On Ren• and the latter in the last three. Because dis• aissance sonnet sequences, see T. P. Roche, covery of the unifying principles of such col• "Shakespeare and the Sonnet Sequence" in H ist, lections has come so recently, it seems most Of Lit. in the Eng. Language, II (1540-1674), ed. likely that further study will show that nu• C. Ricks (1970; ch . 5). On Herbert, see L. L. merous other u.c, can be found in classical, Martz, The Poetry of Meditation (1954) and on Renaissance, and subsequent times. Dryden, E. Miner, Dryden's Poetry (1967). On The extraordinary features of certain Japa• Japanese poetry, see R. H. Brower and E. Miner, nese collections have also become known not Japanese Court Poetry (1961). E.M. long ago. The first imperial collection, the Kokinshu (early 10th c.) contains 1,111 poems COMPANION POEMS. Two poems designed in twenty books. The most important groups to be read as complements, opposites, or replies. of books are those on the seasons and on love, The best known c.p. in Eng. poetry are Mil• both of which are ordered temporally, the ton's L'Allegro and II Penseroso ; which are former on a natural basis and in relation to truly paired, in the manner of rhetorical essays the Ceremonies of the Year iNenchii Gyiiii), preferring the rival claims of day and night, the latter on the pattern of a courtly love af• youth and age, etc., as in Milton's own aca• fair. Implicit in the progressive integration of demic exercises (see Prolusions, 1.7), which im• the Kokinshii was the possibility, partly realized ply a paired oration on the other side. Because in that collection, of associative linkage in rhetorical amplification could work to augment terms of diction, imagery, and topic. Such or diminish, and because satire and panegyric possibilities were fully realized by the eighth shared numerous topics, such sets of opposites imperial collection, the Shinkokinshii (early were common in many forms of writing. Truly lSth c.), in which the twenty books of almost paired poems are not numerous in Eng. litera• 2,000 poems are integrated editorially into a ture. After Milton, there are Abraham Cowley's sequence of nearly 10,000 lines. The central Against Hope and For Hope, the former of feature of such integration is the art of the edi• which was also paired with Richard Crashaw's tors or compilers in bringing together poems For Hope; and John Oldham's Satyr against written by different poets of different ages into Virtue, with the Counterpart to the Satyr a single whole, with integration rather than against Virtue. Such opposed poems were some• authorship or historical chronology determin• times printed together in alternating stanzas: ing order. On the model of such imperial col• so Cowley and Crashaw on hope; Maria Tessel• lections, various shorter collections employing schade Visscher's (a 17th-c. Dutch poet) WIlde - [ 924 ]- COMPANION POEMS·COMPUTER POETRY en Tamme Zangster (Wild and Tame Singer) ; COMPUTER POETRY. A c. is not only a Robert Burton's Author's Abstract 0/ Melan• calculator; it is also a data-processing machine, choly; and Edmund Waller's In Answer 0/ Sir which can manipulate symbols of any kind. John Suckling's Verses, interwoven with Suck• That is, it can be programmed to "generate" ling's Against Fruition. Some of the poems graphics (line drawings), musical compositions, paired by one author against those by another and verbal strings such as sentences. are answer poems with parodic elements. Chris• Simply described, a c. poem is one or more topher Marlowe's Come live with me and be my sentences generated by a specially designed c. love excited a number of replies with parodic program. One current poetic aesthetic would features. identify as poetic a sentence such as the follow• True answer poems, implying social inter• ing: "What did she put four whistles beside course in verse address, will be found in large heated rugs for?" Although this sentence is numbers in collections of Chinese, Korean, and syntactically well formed, it violates some of japanese poetry. The classical poetic traditions the semantic rules which govern the combina• of those countries assumed that the persons tion of words in Eng. Any sentence which is well addressed were also poets , and in fact poetry formed but which is difficult to interpret, or was often exchanged on occasions that today any pair or sequence of sentences whose logical would call for prose or telephone communica• connection is obscure is likely to be interpreted tion. It sometimes happened that japanese as poetry: "The old horse staggers along the poems not actually paired were brought to• road. Newspapers are on sale in Wall Street. gether editorially with a headnote describing The sun will set again this evening:' Although the (imaginary) situation, leading to a genre the average reader of prose would consider the known as "tales of poems" (uta-monogatari) of sequence incoherent, the reader of modern po• which The Tales 0/ Ise (Ise Monogatari) is the etry, conditioned to allusive symbolism, will best known example. Another japanese ex• seek or invent relationships to create coherence ample that flour ished in classical times was the from three such random utterances. The reader poetry-match (utaawase), in which two or of Shakespeare, Milton, or Pope, however, more people competed by writing poems on would not have responded in the same manner given topics, with a judgment given by one or because the poetry of earlier eras was governed more judges. Such matches often were great oc• by a logic of discourse similar to prose. Evi• casions of state, and they had a variant in the dently, c. poetry is possible only in the age of poetry-match with oneself (jikaawase) , in which the c., which happens to be an age that de• a single poet wrote two poems on each topic mands more logic from prose than from poetry. and sent them to an esteemed critic for judg• For this reason, c. prose is extremely difficult ment. to produce. Poems composed over a period of time might C. poems are basically of two kinds: formu• also be paired. Recent study of Virgil's Eclogues lary and derivative. Formulary poems consist of and Georgics shows that indiyidual poems in strings of generated sentences.A c-generated the former ten and latter four have symmetri• sentence at the simplest level is produced by cal features. Other recent study has shown such means of a formula (sentence rule) like the symmetry to characterize larger poetic collec• following: tions such as Petrarch's Canzoniere and Ed• mund Spenser's Amoretti, The symmetry of SENTENCE = NOUN + VERB + ADVERB such collections often employs a calendrical or other numerological basis. john Donne's two Each word -class in the formula is like a bin Anniversaries-The Anatomy 0/ the World and containing a pile of cards on each of which a The Progress 0/ the Soul-are c.p. more by word is written (e.g., VERB = scavenge, mis• virtue of relation and contrast in theme, tone, place, corrupt, vary, yawn). When the program and occasion . runs, it is as if someone had picked the top card The art of c.p, is sufficiently natural for it to from each successive bin and arranged the words so drawn into a sequence. If three bins be continued into later times. William Blake's each contained five cards, according to the rule Songs In nocence and Songs Experience 0/ 0/ given above the following sentences would be include a number of poems set against each generated: l. Craters scavenge nervously; 2. other and understood only by their contrasts. Suits misplace wrongly; ~. Messiahs corrupt Similarly, Robert Browning's Meeting at Night abl)'; 4. Sentiments vary never; 5. Graves yawn and Parting at Morning pair two related ex• hungrily. It will be noticed that the sentences periences. The pairing will also be found in the produced are of quite different orders of regu• works of later poets , often in question-and• larity: ~ is well formed, 2 is ill formed (mis• answer or "straight" and parodic versions. See place requires an object), 4 is inverted (never also COLLECTIONS, UNIFIED;- PARllMEN; POETIC normally comes before the verb), both 5 and I CONTESTS; PREGUNTA ; TENZONE. F.J.W.; E.M . are well formed but violate semantic rules -[ 925 ]- SUPPLEMENT (yawn and scavenge both require mammal or tion of poets, critics, and scholars interested in animate subjects) and 5 produces an acceptable poetry with some access to c. techniques and metaphor, whereas 1 creates something like a vocabulary. They have been interested both in nonsense metaphor. To generate more than five the possibilities offered by this new tool and by of the 625 possible sentences, it is necessary to the disturbing implications of its use: its ap• return the cards to the bins after each use but parently superhuman inventiveness and the without preserving the or iginal order. Thus inability of the reader to distinguish with cer• any word has the chance of being drawn during tainty between the machine and the human any pass and all combinations will eventually product. At the same time, a curiosity about occur. the discoveries made possible by such activity To create poetic objects by such a process, it led to derivative c. poetry. is necessary only to devise a variety of sentence The basic principle of derivative c. poetry rules of greater complexity along with rules is to take an existing poem or line and to alter for combining them. In addition, it ma y be it in some systematic way. Hamlet's "T o be or desirable to place such constraints on the out• not to be, that is the question" might become put as length of line, meter, and rhyme-all of "T o speak or not to speak , that is the riddle," wh ich are possible but difficult. Metrical con• "T o know or not to know, that is the struggle," straints require the prior syllabification of each etc. . . . If the line were not so well known, word and the location of its stress, if it is pol y• the identification of the original might be un• syllabic. To achieve rhyming, it is necessary to certain. The following stanza is based on one recode letter symbols into phonetic equivalents from Dylan Thomas's In the beginning and is so that similar sounds rather than letter com• the result of marking all the nouns, verbs , and binations may be matched, although the same adjectives in the original, arranging them in can be achieved on a small scale by storing alphabetical order, and replacing them in the sets of rhyming words. This is easier in most poem. The result is a set of stanzas containing other languages than in Eng . only Thomas's own words yet evidently not his The following stanzas result from a formu• work. Some of the collocations are as unusual as lary generation: his own. Although the question of which is better need not arise, it is noteworthy that, in The landscape of your clay mitigates me. a number of experiments, college students have Coldly, usually failed to identify the or iginal except bv By your recognizable shape, chance: I am wronged. In the beginning was the root, the rock The perspective of your frog feeds me. That from the solid star of the smile Dimly, Set all the substance of the sun; By your wet love, And from the secret space of the signature I am raked. The smile spouted up, translating to the stamp (M. Borroff) Three-pointed sign of spark and spark.

These two stanzas, resulting from two sentence Dylan Thomas more than most poets strove for rules and one stanza rule (Sentence I = Nom• the exceptional collocation, even at times using inal + Prepositional phrase + Verb + Per• mechanical means to achieve it . According to a sonal Pronoun; Sentence 2 = Adverb + Prepo• friend, Thomas recorded likely short ordinary sitional phrase + Pronoun + Passive verb; words in a notebook he carried with him (and Stanza = Sentence I, Sentence 2) display the called his "dictionary") and which he would unexpectedness of juxtaposition characteristic consult at random when he was at a loss for a of this process. At the same time, the repetitive word or phrase in a poem (see bibliog.: Mille , structure may undermine the poetic effect by " Possible Usefulness . .. ," p. 172). That it is betraying the mechanical or iginator. The most difficult to distinguish between his own " root• sophisticated efforts provide variety of structure ing air," "secret oils," and "letters of the void" along with unusual juxtapositions. and the computer's "rooting imprint," "secret Although documentation is lacking, it is space ," and "three-pointed sign of spark and probable that c. poetry was invented simul• spark" perhaps reveals less about c. poetry than taneously at various locations during the 1950's about his . Because words have connections with by engineers occupied in language tasks (such each other in our minds, certain collocations as machine translation) who relished the oppor• are regularly inhibited even for poets, who are tunity of engaging in complex word play . The freer than the norm in this regard. The com • earliest examples appear in the pages of tech• plete disregard of these inhibitions in c. poetry nical journals and- represent purely sporadic gives it both its fresh and its outrageous efforts at entertainment. During the following character. decade, these developments came to the atten- Derivative c. poetry is a species of parodv -[ 926 ]- COMPUTER POETRY·CONCRETE POETRY when it is practiced on well-known lines. As mountains of paper produced by the machine. such, it calls into question the inevitability of Normal poems, however, also undergo a weed • the original: "Spring is the nepenthean desert, ing or pruning process, though c. poetry is not scrambling :' "April is the vacuous land, edited by a c., but by a person. Editing poetry inverting ." T. S. Eliot acknowledged that by c. is not beyond possibility if the criteria for some of th e word combinations in parts of The poetic acceptability could be explicitly stated. Waste Land were incomprehensible to him. This would be not unlike defining "good" This kind of substitution is the active principle poetry. of a program called ERATO (by L. T . Milic), The peculiar affinity of computers and poetry which is based on a dozen opening lines by is based on the previously noted tendency of poets of the last hundred years, each of which is the modern reader to puzzle out a sense in the provided with vocabulary alternatives for key obscurest work that is called poetry. The words. Cummings's "Darting] because my blood achievement of c. poetry is in the direction of can sing " can take many forms if only the noun providing a more accurate notion of the work • and verb are altered: "my mouth [life , soul , ings of poetry, and especially of poetic lan • spirit, heart, hand] can [wing, play, skip, chime , guage. No important c. poems have been pro• leap, laugh, jump]." Each poem in the series duced and none are likely, though one poet (A. results from the choice of a number of the Turner) has found inspiration enough in the original lines in random order with key words RETURNER poems, which were based on an orlg• permuted, the number of lines in each poem inal work of hers, to write further poems based and the degree of repetition being determined on the derivations. The inevitable question on by random numbers. One example follows : this subject concerns the identity of the author of c. poetry. It is unquestionable that the poet HEMS is not the assemblage of wires , transistors, and print trains called a c. The poet is the pro• (I) This is my news to the multitude: grammer, whose ideas of what poetry ought to (2) Turn to me in the chaos of the da y. be , whose choice of structures and of vocabu• (3) I have suspected what capricious lary determine to a considerable extent what maidens say, the finished product will be . The poem is both (4) I strutted upon a loathsome place, the actual verse object and the program, the (5) Abo ve the new hems of the sea. abstract structure of instructions and data, of (6) I stopped upon a loathsome station, which the actual output is onl y the incidental (7) Still here lying beneath the roof, product.C. poetry is a new way of producing (8) Above the humid hems of the surf. the poetry of our time. If it should ever de • velop its own aesthetic and break away from The lines by E. Dickinson (I), C. Rossetti. (2), the mainstream, it will become a new kind of Yeats (3), S. Crane (4,6), Hart Crane (5,8), and poetry. MacLeish (7), alt ered as they have been, con• J. A. Baudot, La Machine aecrire (Montreal, stitute a new whole still somehow related to 1964) ; Cybernetic Serendipity, ed. J. Reichardt the originals. The relation of line- (I) to Emily (1969); M. Krause and G. F. Schaudt, C.-Lyrilc Dickinson's "This is my letter to the world" is (1969); M. Borroff, "C . as Poet," Yale Alumni that of pa raphrase, but this is not true of lines Magazine , 34 (1971); L. T. Milic, "The Pos· (4) and (6) to their original, Stephen Crane's "I sible Usefulness of Poetry Generation," in The stood upon a high place." The grammatical C. in Lit. and Linguistic Research (1971), structure, especially that conve yed by the choice Erato (1971) and "The 'Returner' Poetry Pro• and arrangement of function words, signals the gram," ITL (Institute of Applied Linguistics), kinship between derivations and originals. But II (1971); A. Turner, "'Returner' Re-turned," the new collocations are unique, even when Midwest Quarterly, 13 (1972). L.T.M. they depart from the original in predictable ways, as lines (5) and (8) plainly connect with CONCRETE POETRY.A mode of graphic art, Hart Crane's "Above the fresh ruffles of the employing graphemes of a given language and surf" in the imagery of the edge of the sea as selected typeface, used by themselves, in clusters, a garment. ERATO evidently produces new morphemes, words, or phrases, and so patterned poems, even if only in the legal sense that the that an evocative or witty reading of an other• publisher has no need to seek permission from wise minimal utterance may result. Alterna• the owners of the cop yright of the originating tivel y, a mode of inscription poem-and hence poets. (It is noteworthy that existing cop yright vaguely linked to epigram-embodied totally laws protect onl y sequences of words, not struc• and (imbedded irretrievabl y) in a unique typo• tures or ideas.) graphical instance. In this aspect, c.p. is allied Needless to say, only a fraction of the output to its contemporary concept of musique con• of a c. poetry program is displayed as poetry. crete, in which the musical work-whether Editing is inevitable, especially in view of the synthesized electronically, drawn directly (rather -[ 927 ]- SUPPLEMENT than recorded) on a cinema sound track, etc.• tenor (q.v.): " loneliness" contains the single exists not as a text to be performed by an in • leaffall, its emblem (q.v.), This might have strumental interpreter, but in a canonical and been done in a single horizontal line, but the uninterpretable form. A self-conscious literary vertical format graphically represents the drop• movement crystalIized around the Constella• ping, enforces a slow scanning (and hence, tions (1953) of the Swiss Engen Gomringer. reading), discovers hidden "ones" in the' words This volume contained minimal inscriptions of (with graphic puns based on the identity of words in sanserif type, the words, perhaps sig• the 12th letter of the alphabet with the first nificantly, being in various languages (an alien• arabic numeral in many typefaces), etc. Need• ated Sprachgejiihl being in some way character• less to say, this is more complex and sophisti• istic of most c.p .), Gomringer claimed to be cated than many formal instances of c.p., and intensifying and authenticating linguistic ex• developed from cummings' lifelong experi• perience by means of varied spatial presenta• ments with format and its relation to poetic tions of words and other elements (a concern form. with reading as scanning that goes back to There is some debate about how the many Mallarme); and he and his followers have varieties of typographical experiment in mod• drawn elaborate and sometimes labored analo• ern European and Am . poetry constitute ac• gies between spatial, musical, and abstract con• tual c.p, The shaped poems (arranged for the ceptual patternings. An intern ationa l movement, typewriter's one-em-per-character) of May reminiscent in its many manifestos and group Swenson's Iconographs (1970) and John Hol• publications of futurist, surrealist and Dadaist lander's Types of Shape (1969) clearly belong (qq.v.) literary parties, has embraced practition• to the tradition of the technopaignia or pattern ers in Brazil (the so-called Noigandres Group), poetry (q.v.) stretching from Hellenistic times France, England, the U.S., and other countries. through Apollinaire's Calligrammes;" in all The best known of these include Ian Hamilton these cases, the poems on being read aloud lose Finlay (Great Britain), whose more recent in• only the accompanying pictorial emblem made scriptions on wood or stone have fled the page up by their shaping. More direct precursors of entirely for the outdoors; Mary Ellen Solt c.p . are: Mallarrne's Un Coup de Des; Ch rist ian (U.S,), a scholar of the movement; Augusto de Morgenstern's Fisches Nachtgesang (composed Campos (Brazil), Helmut Heissenbiittel (Ger• of the metrical signs "U" and "-", so ar • many), Carlo Belloli (Italy), and Emmett Wil• ranged as to suggest a gaping fish-mouth); liams (U.S.). the experiments of Henri Barzun; the poster• Writers on the subject have distinguished like texts of the futurists and of such Dada among "type poems," "typewriter poems," "ob• poets as Richard Huelsenbeck; Valery's inscrip• ject poems," and so forth, and such sub- or tions for the facade of the Trocadero, etc . Then, too, there was the entire typographic related movements as Spatialisme or Lettrisme. ambience of modernist art, including the A good rule of thumb for identifying a concrete aesthetics of the Bauhaus, and the specific work poem might be to try and read the inscription of such designers as Jan Tschichold (in his aloud without describing the format (type style, Tvpographische Gestaltung, 1935). A recent and graphic arrangement, etc .) as one might a print. brilliant development in the area of pictured A poem will yield up its heart to oral reading; inscription has been the great graphic artist if a concrete poem will not, it is because no Saul Steinberg's conceptual maps, wherein picture will . Consider, for example, e.e, cum• groups of related pronouns, auxiliary verbs in mings' poem #1 from 95 Poems (1958) : different tenses, etc. are diagrammed out in a painted and drawn landscape, in such a way l(a as to depict and schematize their relationship. ANTHOLOGIES: Anthol. of C.P., ed . E. Wil• Ie liams (1967); CP.: A World View, ed . M. E. af fa Solt (2d ed ., 1970); Imaged Word & Worded [mages, ed . R . Kostelanetz (1970); The Word 11 as Image, ed . B. Bowler (1970); Kon-krete Poesie, ed . E. Gomringer (1972). s) HISTORY AND CRITICISM : A. Leide, Dichtung one als Spiel (1963); M. Weaver, "C.P.," Lugano I Review, nos. 5-6 (1966); E. Lucie-Smith, "C.P:,'· Encounter, 26 (1966); R . P. Draper, "C.P. ,'· iness NUL, 2 (1971). J .H.

A haiku-like evaded simile is here so arranged CONFESSIONAL POETRY. See AMF.RICAN po• that the vehicle is literally troped into the F.TIC SCHOOLS AND TECHNIQUF.S (CONTFMPORARY) .· -r 928 1- CONFESSIONAL POETRY-CONTEXTUALISM

CONTEXTUALISM. The name now common• the need to establish the discontinuity of the ly used to describe certain critical doctrines of work's intramural structure, its independence the new criticism and of later theoretical de • of all extrapoetic discourse. It assumes that velopments made in sympathy with new critical the work, when it is constructed to function attitudes. The term c. can be a misleading de • as a proper poem ought to , has provided such scription for these doctrines, inasmuch as there a structure. are ambiguities in it which permit it to be C. has been used in this limited way since applied to various literary theories. the term was taken from Murray Krieger's The Critics have thought of themselves as con • New Apologists for Poetry (1956) and more textualists who have maintained doctrines far broadly applied, as if to a school of critics (see from those of the new criticism. For example, the articles by Walter Sutton in the blbliog.), it has always seemed appropriate to use this Krieger's use of the term was largely fashioned term to characterize those who see literature after Cleanth Brooks's sense of context in The within its social context; that is, those who see Well Wrought Urn (1947). And Brooks, like a continuity of meaning flowing between the Krieger's teacher, Eliseo Vivas, followed upon literary work and its surroundings. For such the work of the early I. A. Richards (from critics, all interpretation treats meaning as a Principles of Literary Criticism [1924] to The function of a language that is an expression Philosophy of Rhetoric [1936]). Richards dis• of its cultural moment. Thus the context tinguished poetry from science by employing which gives each word its meaning is seen as the opposition between emotive and referential that total cultural-personal situation which discourse. In science the verbal signs, with defines and limits that word's function. Stephen fixed and single meanings, were to reach out C. Pepper himself termed such a theory "con• of their discourse to point to their objects; the textualist," though his model for it was Dew• efficacy of the discourse was tested by the ac• evan and instrumentalist, and not at all new curacy of that pointing. In poetry such ref• critical. (See Aesthetic Quality: A Contextua• erence was to be blocked by the multiplication listie Theory of Beauty [19!18] and his later of ironic complexities which were meant to works.) Of course, the biographical critic could, feed an emotion-seeking rather than a knowl • similarly, see himself as a contextualist who edge-seeking occasion. Brooks, shaking off what treats each meaning within a continuity that he saw as Richards' commitment to behavioral flows among all the works of a poet as a func• psvchologism, extended his interest in corn• tion of his sensibility and vision, as these feed plexity by conceiving of an objective poetic and frame those works. Or the archetypal context, whose dramatic structure was con • critic could be a contextualist working from trolled by cross-referential ironies and para• a continuity among all works of the human doxes: the referential-emotive dichotomy was imagination seen as a single structure express• transformed into a referential-contextual ing a monomyth. And so the applications dichotomy. Poetry was defined by its capacity• could go on to other methods of criticism. In through its juxtapositions of words-to generate each case the critic would see his interpretation new meanings out of old as it remade lan• controlled by, and referring to, an autono• guage into the unique structure composed of mous context made up of the continuities be• "the right words in the right order," as Eliot tween the poem and the particular world of had put it. meanings of which it is a function. Indeed, Although Brooks had failed to do so, it had we could claim that each critic's approach to be pointed out, by way of concession, that can be defined as we discover what constitutes it was theoretically naive to claim that only the context of the work for him-which is to poetry was contextual, that in nonpoetry signs say, as we discover what sort of contextualist "do not change under the pressure of context" he is. but are "pure denotations" which "are defined Clearly, what is today termed c. is more in advance." Instead, all language must of narrowly and exclusively defined. It refers to course be seen as contextual; this is why there critics for whom the verbal structure of the are so many possible kinds of c. But the post• properly literary work itself becomes the au• new-critical contextualist still can claim that tonomous context that generates meanings a poem is discontinuous with other forms of which become self-referential. Such critics see discourse, in that only its meaning is radically the work as beginning with "old words" that untranslatable, since that meaning is an im• become transformed into Mallarrne's "new manent and hence inseparable feature of the word," a "total" word whose definition is pro• poem's actual verbal configuration. vided by the internal relations of the work The contextualist has come a long way from itself, and nowhere else . Unlike other con• Richards' subjectivism. By the time he came textualisms, which emphasize the continuity to The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Richards him• between the work aud the extramural elements self had turned toward the sort of c. which that determine its context, this c. begins with Brooks was to practice. But the earlier Richards -I 929 ]- SUPPLEMENT had begun by limiting himself to one or an• about the poem's discontinuity with other dis• other subjective experience of the poem, either course, the completeness of its contextual sys• from the poet's side or the reader's. He could tem, rests onthe postulation of an ideal object. not postulate a normative poetic context which Such an object ma y seem to many to lie beyond was to be a transformation of the contexts the incompleteness of our actual experiences active in either the poet's or the reader's ex• of poems and the imperfections of poems periences of the words prior to encountering themselves if they should seek to seal them• them in the poem. For the contextualist, how• selves off. In their more candid moments one ever , the reading of the poem must be more senses in contextualists a tension between the than the interaction of these two subjective completed object they must heuristically pos• contexts, the poet's and the reader's: the tulate and their doubts that they can experi• meanings of the poem cannot be reduced to ence it in that wholeness. They know how they either of them. The reader is rather seen to must allow the language of poetic discourse discover, in the interrelations among the fea• to function, and they fear for the limits of tures of the work, those transformations of their own capacities to sustain so self -sufficient recognizable elements which create a new and a language experience. Those who deny the sovereign context-e-out there. He recognizes power of poems to function as c. requires (see these elements from his own experiences in Walter Sutton in the bibliog.) simply assert language prior to this poem, and from what the continuity of our actual language experi• his research leads him to discover about the ence without seeing an y need to create an poet's original range of contextual elements ideal, discontinuous object which can direct of meaning. But, as his habits of reading poems and educate that experience. On his side , the lead to his discovery of a context of trans• contextualist will not forfeit the poem's formed elements, the reader permits himself chance to transform language-and its capacity to be overcome by it, surrendering his own to transform us. contexts to it. The poet has probably done J. A. Richards, Principles of Lit . Crit. (1924) much the same with his contexts while cre• and The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936); S. C. ating the poem as his completed object. In Pepper, Aesthetic Quality: A Contextualistic this manner-a manner consistent with Vivas' Theory of Beauty (1938) and "T he Develop• definition of aesthetic experience as "intransi• ment of Contextualistic Aesthetics:' Antioch tive "-the context in the poem comes to be the Reo ., 28 (1968); E. Vivas, "A Definition of the controlling one, working to enclose the reader Esthetic Experience:' Jour. of Philosophy, 34 within his experience of the enrapturing aes• (1937) and "C. Reconsidered:' JAAC, 18 (1959); thetic object. It must end by changing and C. Brooks, "The Heresy of Paraphrase:' The enlarging his contexts (as they preexisted this poem) by imposing irs own, thus making pos• Well Wrought Urn (1947); M. Krieger, sible his education: it leads him out of him• The N ew Apologists for Poetry (1956) and The self by leading him into the fuller world of Play and Place of Grit. (1967); W . Sutton, "The the poem. Contextualist Dilemma-s-or Fallacy?" JAAC, 17 As one would expect, such a critical doctrine (1958) and "Contextualist Theory and Crit. as must meet with wide opposition. Its claim a Social Act," JAAC, 19 (1961). M .K.

D

DIONYSIAN. See APOLLONIAN-DIONYSIAN. E

ESEMPLASTIC. Coleridge (BiograPhia Liter• I thought that a new term would both aid the aria, ch. 10) coined the word ('to shape into recollection of my meaning, and prevent its one') "because, having to convey a new sense , being confounded with the usual import of the -[ 9S0 ]- DIONYSIAN-GENERATIVE METRICS word, imagination." lmaginatio , that is, con • with the feeling of simultaneousness" (ibid. , noted passive reception of image-impressions, ch . 15). In his early poem The Eolian Harp and Coleridge wished to emphasize active crea • Coleridge describes organic unity-in-variety tivity. Considering, as he did, the imagination and the plastic power that achieves it: to be "a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM " And what if all of animated nature (ibid., ch . 13). he sought for metaphors to ex• Be but organic Harps diversely fram'd, press this act. Among these the shaping or That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps plastic power is perhaps most characteristic, Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, and unity ("to shape into one") is the end At once the Soul of each , and God of all? that creation seeks. Thus in a famous illustra• tion of imaginative power from Shakespeare's S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, ed. J. Venus and Adonis the poet achieves unity-in• Shawcross (2 v.• 1907); B. Willey. Nineteenth variety. or "the liveliest image of succession Century Studies (1949. pp . 13ff). R.H.F. F

FILID (pl . (iii). See IRISH POETRY. Early period. FORMALISM, RUSSIAN. See RUSSiAN FORMAL· ISM .

G

GENERATIVE METRICS is a term used to more often than not at the beginning of lines. refer to several forms of metrical theory or Thus it may be correct to regard g.m. as a linguistic prosody that emerged in the middle more rigorous form of metrical theory than 1960's and early 1970's as a kind of off-shoot or any that had been attempted before, just as by-product of transformational generative lin • it might be correct to say that transforma• gu istic theory. (See LINGUISTICS AND POETICS, to tional-generative Iingustic theory was a more which this entry may be regarded as a supple• rigorous attempt to account for grammatical ment. See also METER and PROSODY.) The com• utterances in a language, and to distinguish mon aim of these various theories was an at • between grammatical and ungrammatical ones. tempt to state descriptive "rules" of meter Both employ (and in a sense, are made possible which would "account for" what is felt to be by) the form alism of some aspects of modern the "metricalitv" (d. "grammaticality" in lin • mathematics. The parallelism may in some guistic theory) of the great maiority of metered sense be extended to the set of base rules and lines of verse in a language, and which would transformations which in a generative gram• include and explain those phenomena which mar may be thought of as "generating" utter• in earlier theories had to be listed as unex• ances; the metrical rules may be thought of as plained "exceptions." Thus, for example, most "generating" metrical lines of poetry. The rules varieties of g.m. account automatically for the of a generative grammar assign a "structural phenomenon of initial trochees in Eng. iambic descr iption" to a sentence; the rules of a verse, whereas this phenomenon remains unex• generative metric do the same for a line of plained (Le., must be listed as an "exception") in verse. The rules of the grammar are at least a "foot theory" which says that a line of iambic partially ordered; the metrical rules. being in verse is a sequence of so many iambic feet, essence rules which are " plugged in" or inserted each of which consists of two syllables, the after some contiguous bank of phonological second of which is more accented than the rules in the grammar, adhere also to the first. The foot theory then has to recognize ordering principle. Finally, those who have that in fact there are many (intuitively metri• done the initial explorations in g.m. are lin• cal) iambic lines that contain trochees, but it guists brought up in, or working in. the has no explanation why these trochees occur transformational-generative tradition. -[ 981 ]- SUPPLEMENT The immediate source of g.m. was a study "Nuclear Stress Rule'). Thus in "So let the of Chaucer's meter by Morris Halle and blue lump poise between my knees ," greater Samuel Jay Keyser in 1966. Here a theory of linguistically assigned stress is found on "lump" meter was advanced (specifically, a theory of than on either "blue" or "poise," which would iambic pentameter) which held that a verse establish a stress maximum in position 5. Ac• line should be conceived of essentially as a cordingly, it was necessary either to revise the sequence of positions-lO, in the case of iambic metrical theory, or to revise the phonological pentameter-where the odd positions were component of the grammar to account for such characterized as Weak, and the even positions deviant stress patterns. Halle and Keyser chose as Stro ng . A stress max imum may not occur in the first course, and weakened the theory so a weak position. The stress maximum is de• that the notion of relative stress (though in • fined as a linguistically assigned stress greater troduced by the phonological component of than that found on either adjacent syllable tIte grammar) does 1T0t figure in the metrical without intervening juncture. Conditions for rules; in short, the notion "greater than" is occupancy of a position by more than one eliminated, and stress maximum is redefined syllable (Le., phenomena such as synaeresis, as major word stress occurring between two synaloepha, qq .v.) are also provided, as is the unstressed syllables. Beaver, who first pointed cond ition for zero occupancy (the beheaded out the problem, chose the second course, and line; see ACEPHALOUS). proposed that forms of rhythm-adjustment The striking features of the Halle-Keyser rules, much as his "stress exchange rule," system were the concept of the stress maximum should be introduced directly into the phono• and the conception of the line as a sequence logical component of the grammar. of positions (not, that is, as a collection of Applications of g.m , to other meters than feet). Such a theory would accept as metrical iambic pentameter have not received very full various configurat ions of stresses and syllabic investigation. It would appear th at necessary disposition which one finds in well -known adaptations of the theory would be minor lines of iambic pentameter (e.g., "Silent, upon technical ones , such as that Weak and Strong a peak in Darien," where there are only three would be assigned to even and odd in trochaic linguistically assigned stresses, in positions I, structures, etc. But difficulties do arise, and 6, and 8), while rejecting as unmetrical such a some of Hascall's work on triple meters sug• line as "How many bards gild the lapses of gests that the matter may not be quite that time," with its stress maximum in position 7. simple. As for older metrical forms , Keyser It is important to note that the concept of advanced a theory of Old Eng. prosody in a stress is not a phonetic one , but a phonological 1969 study in CE. one, and the theory is therefore in no direct Acquaintance with the theory of g.m. spread sense dependent upon performance. Note also rather quickly, and interesting work was done that the phrase "linguistically assigned" im • by Jacqueline Gueron in France (on Eng. nurs• plies a system of grammar, a set of rules, that ery rhymes), and by Walter Bernhart in Ger• does assign stress to certain syllables of words, many. Applications to stylistics was an obvious and to certain syllables within phrases, and development, and such works as those by Free• that "greater than" (that found on adjacent man , Beaver, and others witness to the vitality syllables) implies that a final utterance will of the g.m. approach. exhibit various stress levels, and that it is rela• For historical purposes, it should be noted tivity of stress level that counts. To illustrate that adumbrations of g.m . appear in earlier the foregoing sentences, a reader might place metricists. Otto Jesperson had in 1903 theo• actual (i.e., phonetic) stress on the second rized that the "foot" concept was untenable, syllable of the line "Whenever Richard Cor y and had offered a systematic explanation of went down town ," but a particular phonologi• the phenomenon of reversed initial feet in cal system may not assign stress to adverbs of iambic meters. The notion of the verse line as the type represented by "whenever" and this a sequence of positions (rather than a sequence syllable would therefore not constitute a stress of feet) appeared over two centuries ago in maximum, no matter how it is read. Edward Bysshe, The Art 0/ Poetry (1737). As the original theory underwent elabora• Another system of metrics developing about tion, chiefly at the hands of those attempting the same time as that evolved by Halle, Keyser, to use ie for stylistic analysis, certain problems Beaver , and others meets the general definition presented themselves. Central among these was given earlier of g.m., and therefore will be the discovery of a good many intuitively metri• touched upon briefly here, even though in cal lines where stress maxima did occur in odd some respects it differs markedly from the ap• position, by virt ue of certain phrasal stress proach already described. Karl Magnuson and rules, notably the rule that assigns greater Frank Ryder, working originally in German stress to the rightmost member within a syn• poetry, advanced a metrical system which tactic unit (called by Chomsky and Halle the might be called a "Distinctive Feature" theory. -[ 932 ]- GENERATIVE METRICS·GENEVA SCHOOL

Magnuson and Ryder theorize that a syllable poet. An especially interesting aspect of the may be considered as a bundle of four features theory, as elaborated by Magnuson and Ryder, which figure in the realization of more and is that the use of the feature Word Onset less metrical lines: [±Strong], [±Weak], amounts to the claim-unique in current Eng. [±Word Onset), and [±Pre-Strong]. A syllable prosody, so far as this writer knows-that place• is [+Strong] if it receives lexical stress assign• ment of word boundary is an essential element ment, or if it is the accented syllable of a non• in Eng. versification. lexical polysyllabic.A syllable is [+Word On• M. Halle and S. J . Keyser, "Chaucer and the set] just in case it begins a word. A syllable is Study of Prosody," CE, 28 (1966), "Illustration [+Pre·Strong] if it occurs anywhere in a word and Defense of a Theory of the Iambic Pen• before a [+Strong] syllable. The feature tameter," CE, !l!l (1971), Eng. Stress. Its Form, [+Weak] is made necessary by the different Its Growth, and Its Role in Verse (1971); J. C. metrical behavior in German of suffixes based Beaver, "A Grammar of Prosody," CE, 29 (1968), on _ i_ and -u- (-isch, -ung, etc.) from "Contrastive Stress and Metered Verse," Lan• those based on -a- and -ei- (_sam, -heit, guage and Style , 2 (1969), "The Rules of Stress etc.) , The former are designated [+Weak), the in Eng. Verse," Language, 47 (1971), "Current latter [-Weak). This feature is carried over Metrical Issues, " CE,!l!l (1971), review of Halle into English in a somewhat different manner: and Keyser, Eng. Stress, in Language Sciences, [+Weak] is assigned to monosyllabic nonlexical 18 (1971); D. C. Freeman, "On the Primes of words, all unstressed syllables of polysyllabics, Metrical Style ," Language and Style, 1 (1968), and, in addition, to stressed syllables of non• "Metrical Position Constituency and G.M.... lexical polysyllables (e.g., the first syllable in Language and Style , 2 (1969); D. Hascall, many will be both [+Strong) and [+Weak]). "Some Contributions to the Halle-Keyser The• Now the central assumption of the Magnu• or y of Prosody," CE , !l0 (1969); K. Magnuson son -Ryder metric is that there exists an "Ex• and F. Ryder, "T he Study of Eng. Prosody: An pect ation Matrix," an ideal combin ation of Alternative Proposal," cE,!l1 (1970), "Second features for an even (strong) metrical position Thoughts on Eng. Prosody," CE , !l3 (1971); and an ideal combination, or syllable type for J. Maling, "Sentence Stress in Old. Eng.,' Lin• an odd (or weak) metrical position: guistic Inquiry, 2 (1971); J . Roubaud, " Metre et vel's: Deux applications de la metrique Even Odd generative de Halle-Kevser," Poetique, revue WO (Word Onset) + de theorie et d'analyse litteraires, 7 (1971); WK (Weak) + "G.M.," special issue of Poetics , no. 11 (1974; ST (Strong) + articles by J . C. Beaver, A.W. Bernhart, J. PS (Pre-Strong) + Gueron, D. L. Hascall, W. Klein,K. Magnuson). J.C.B. Since the expectation matrix can never be ful• filled completely, it follows that one must as• GENERIC RHYME. See CELTIC PROSODY . sume all poetry to be unmetrical in some degree, and the task of prosody is to find the constraints GENEVA SCHOOL, THE. The G.S. of literary upon the conditions under which a feature criticism brings together a group of critics with may occur in a nonaffirming rel at ion to the varying ties to Geneva. They are united by matrix. These constraints are the Base Rules. friendship and by a common vision of literature The rules deal with relations between metrical as a network of existential expressions combin• slots : between even-odd, odd-even, even -even, ing in the work to delineate the figure of an in• and odd-odd, It is found that the even-odd re • dividual artistic consciousness. Marcel Raymond lationship is "more highly governed" than and Albert Beguin, the earliest members of the an y other-eonstraints must always be placed school, and Jean Starobinski and Jean Rousset on occurrences in th is relationship but not are all directly associated with the University necessarily in the other relationships. The dis• of Geneva; Georges Poulet, born a Belgian, covery of the rules is the goal of this metric, taught in Switzerland for many years and was for within these will be found, if any, all the directly influenced by Raymond; jean-Plerre discriminating features of degrees of metricality Richard, a Frenchman, and J. Hillis Miller, an that we ma y expect in an author, a period, or American, both recognize Pouler's influence on whatever provides the corpus. The prosodist their own work. This G.S. should not be con• tabulates all the sequences of occurring and fused with an earlier G.S. of linguistic theory nonoccurring syllable types in the corpus under associated with Ferdinand de Saussure, Charles investigation, and then deduces the rules from Bally, and Albert Sechehaye. Although the th is data. second G.S. is aware of and has commented According to Frank Ryder, the distinctive on Saussure's work, the roots of their literary feature metric has historical origins as far criticism lie not in structural linguistics but hack as Philip von Zesen, a 17th-c. German in existential and phenomenological theory -[ 933 J- SUPPLEMENT

(Husserl, Jaspers, and Bachelard), in the roo structures of separate texts, and for going be• mantic tradition, in a certain academic his• yond acceptable boundar ies of linguistic inter• toricism (A. O. Lovejoy), and in Bergson's pretation. It is true that their analysis of the analyses of perception of time. individual creative imagination can apply also While the Geneva critics develop highly in• to other media, and Starobinski and Rousset dividual critiques, they hold basically to the have written on artistic and architectural form. same philosophy of artistic creation. Reacting Only Miller regularly equates forms of percep• against "objective" views of a work (whether tion with structures of syntax. Miller's example that of continental scholarship or Am. new shows that Geneva criticism can apply to lin • criticism), they still rel y exclusively on the guistic structures, and that the real distinction written text as evidence. The poem must not lies not here but in the school's assumption of be seen as an object, however; it is the struc• an individual consciousness available in an tural record of an individual human con • authentically personal expression . Those who sciousness. The author cannot be reached as see literature as an objective pattern of greater an historical being, but the critic can analyze or lesser beauty, or as an impersonal construc• the tracery of interlocking terms left in the tion of language determined by transindividual work, and deduce from there a pattern of in• coordinates, will not agree with Geneva criti• dividual consciousness which is no less human cism . for being artistically created. There are many There is a surprising variety of methods in • methods for arriving at this pattern of con• side the G.S. Marcel Raymond and Albert sciousness: words indicating perception of Beguin retain a traditional historical frame• space and time can be extrapolated and juxta• work for their analyses of spiritual careers in posed ; recurrent types of experience can be Fr. symbolist and German romantic poetry. compared and followed through the text; these Beguin later limited his sympathetic readings perceptions and experiences themselves can be to a decreasing circle of Catholic authors. seen from a more subjective (Cartesian) point Georges Poulet, the first to propose a complete of view or in an object-centered vision . Since methodological approach and the main figure the Geneva critics believe that literature ex• of the modern G.S., plots with subtlety and presses an author's attempt to formulate and encyclopedic knowledge the temporal and cope with his experience, they often link these spatial coordinates of the developing creative patterns of consciousness with large r meta• consciousness in an author's work. Poulet env is• physical problems: with an awareness of true ages histories of artistic consciousness, in presence (Poulet), of divinity (Beguin) or an which he would include the works of gifted immanent reality (Miller), and of the precari• critics. In contrast with Pouler's Cartesian ori• ous viability of expressive forms themselves entation, and like Gaston Bachelard, Jean• (Starobinski, Miller, Rousset). A basic meta• Pierre Richard stresses th e pa ttern of meta• phor is that of an inner mental space, an initial morphosed obj ects appearing in the text's void from which consciousness emerges to plot mental universe. Jean Starobinski, trained in the characteristic architecture of its experience. medicine as well as in literature, is a versatile The Geneva critics see literature as a struc• critic who describes processes of the creative ture of consciousness, and therefore consider imagina tion in art, literature, and illness. Hi s the proper poetic response an act of sympa• colleague Jean Rousset is especially interested in thetic reading. The reader tries to efface hi s transformations of style, and the structures of own presuppositions, and awaits a "signal" from consciousness he perceives in a work are more the work that will direct him to penetrate its formal and less personal than those of the structure from a given angle. Evidently, the other European Geneva critics . Hillis Miller poem as consciousness surpasses anyone at • blends the objective traditions of Am. new tempt to plot its coordinates; each reader finds criticism with the Geneva interest in spiritual his own way into the work, and uses each time careers; like Poulet and Starobinski, Miller in a slightly different avenue of penetration. Since his later work embarks on the criticism of the properly literary act is a meeting of minds, criticism. Poulet, Starobinski, Rousset, and there can be no judgment or evaluation ac• Miller locate their individual critiques inside cording to exterior criteria be they aesthetic, the framework of a changing history of con • psychological, sociological, or political. Again, sciousness. since the critic aims at communicating with an embodied textual consciousness, he need not Later developments in the G.S. point to an limit himself to separate works . Georges Poulet increasing awareness of other modes of criti• and Jean-Pierre Richard prefer to draw upon cism, and of the work's relationship to th e an author's complete works to establish his society from which it springs. Unchanging, cogito, while Rousset and Miller treat individ• however, is the group's primary att achment to ual works as well. The Geneva critics have patterns of individual consciousness, and to been criticized for not keeping to the ob jective the concept of literature as an iruersubjective - [ 934 ]- GENEVA SCHOOL-HARLEM RENAISSANCE ex perience fully realized onl y in the act of (1961), Onze Etudes sur la poesie moderne reading. (1964), Etudes sur le romantisme (1970); J. Staro• M. Ra ymond, De Baudelaire au surrealisme binski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, la transparence (1933), Genies de France (1942), Senancour, et l'obstacle (1957, enl. ed., 1971), L'Oeil vi• sensations et revelations (1965); A. Beguin, vant I-II (1961, 1970), L'Invention de la liberte L'Ame romantique et le reve (1937), Balzac (1964); J.H. Miller, Charles Dickens, The World visionnaire (1946), Pascal par lui-meme (1952) ; of His Novels (1958), Poets of Reality (1965) , G. Poulet, Etudes sur le temps humain I-IV The Form of Victorian Fiction (1968), Thomas (1949-1968) ,L 'Espace proustien (1963), La Con• Hardy, Distance and Desire (1970); S. N. La• science critique (1971); J. Rousset, La Littera• ture de l'dg« baroque en France (1953), Form e wall, Critics of Consciousness: The Existential et sign ification (1962), L'Interieur et l'exteri• Structures of Lit. (1968); J. H. Miller, "The eur (1968); J.-P. Richard, Poesie et prcjondeur Geneva School," Modem Fr. Crit., ed . J . K. (1955), L'Uniuers imaginaire de Mallarme Simon (1972). S.N.!..

H

HARLEM RENAISSANCE. Extending roughly periodicals-e.g., the NAACP's Crisis (1910) from the end of World War I to the onset of and the Urban League's Opportunity (1923) . the Depression, the literary movement known Such established publishing houses as Knopf as the H.R . represented a startling burst of and Harper's recognized that there was a grow• creativity among Am . black writers. Most of the ing white audience for works about black life principal figures of the movement-Claude Mc• (especially when presented as the embodiment Kay, Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and of the uninhibited sensibility popularized by Countee Cullen-were poets, and it was in the the Jazz Age). Moreover , the new movements in verse of the H.R. that the " New Negro" most Am. poetry associated with Poetry magazine• emphatically announced his arrival. The spirit free verse, imagism (QQ .v.), and other breaks of this poetry is perhaps best exemplified in with tradition-provided a hospitable environ• Hughes's 1926 declaration that the younger ment for much new black writing. black writers "now intend to express our indi• The poetry of the H .R. was different in both vidual dark-skinned selves without fear or manner and matter from the tradition of Am. shame." black verse that had extended from Phillis As its name indicates, the movement was Wheatley to Paul Laurence Dunbar. Most of centered in New York's Harlem, swollen by the the H .R. poets, with the major exception of Great Migration of southern blacks into a Countee Cullen, made use of a markedly mod• "Negro capital," a cultural hub which attracted ernistic style: they not only took advantage of the young artists and intellectuals who made the latest formal innovations in verse, but also the Renaissance. A new stage in Am. black con• mined their own resources of blues and jazz, sciousness was evident. The experience of the folk speech, and jive talk. The content of this war rendered many blacks less willing than pcetry-e-stressing black pride and bold protests ever to tolerate white racism, and the violence of racism and social injustice-also represented of postwar anti-black feeling only hardened this a new emphasis. Claude McKay's sonnet If We resolve. Moral leadership had passed from Must Die , published during the race riots of Booker T. Washington to W .E.B. DuBois, and the Red Summer of 1919, crystallized the new the aims of black awareness were furthered by consciousness in its final couplet: " Like men such organizat ions as the NAACP, the National we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,/ Urban League, and the Association for the Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!" Study of Negro Life and History. The Univer• The H.R. poets declared a kinship with blacks sal Negro Improvement Association, founded world-wide, sometimes expressing nostalgia for by Marcus Garvey "to promote the spirit of the lost African past, as in Cullen's Heritage. race pride and love," was short-lived but-very But they also presented realistic pictures of influential on the writings of the H.R. Am. black life from cane fields to Pullman One result of the new consciousness was a porters' closets to Harlem cabarets, and the)' great increase in publishing opportunities for affirmed and celebrated their Am. folk tradi• black writers. Some of the work of the H.R. tion. For example, James Weldon Johnson, who writers appeared in recently launched black had earlier praised the "black and unknown

-[ 935 ]- SUPPLEMENT bards" who created the spirituals (q.v.), now poets in the 1920's may be measured by the two turned the folk art of the black sermon into the editions of Johnson's The Book of Am. Negro literary art of his God 's Trombones (1927). Poetry. Between the two ed it ions of 1922 and Johnson-like DuBois, William Stanley 1931 there was a great burgeoning of talent: Braithwaite, and, above all, Alain Leroy Locke among the poets who emerged during this in• -served as critic and mentor for many of the terval, and whose work appears in the later H.R. poets, and his 1922 anthology, The Book edition, are Cullen, Hughes, Bontemps, Horne, of Am. Negro Poetry, helped to in tr od uce one Cuney, and Helene Johnson. Not until the of the movement's most important figures: 1960's was there to be so much poetic activity Claude McKay (189(}-1948). McKay was born and achievement by Am. black writers (see in Jamaica and had already published dialect BLACK POETRY, RECENT) . poetry there before coming to the United States. Despite the charges which have been leveled Spring in New Hampshire (1920) and Harlem at the H .R.-superficiality, lack of concern for Shadows (1922) present his major themes of ordinary folk and real issues , and failure to militant protest and earthy lyricism. Another realize the potential for long-term cultural and of the movement's major figures, Jean Toomer artistic development of black people-it repre• (1894-1967), published an extraordinary and sents a coming of age for black Am. poetry. influential collection of poetry and poetic prose The H.R. liberated black expression and pro• in Cane (19211) . But Toomer did not want to be duced some classic figures and an enduring labeled a "Negro" poet, and his subsequent body of poetry. Almost all or" what has come (and somewhat disappointing) work stands after builds on the new consciousness and lit • apart from the H .R . By his own request, none erary foundations established by these poets of of his poetry appeared in the 19111 edition of the H.R. johnson's anthology. A. Gayle, Jr., "The H .R.: Toward a Black Langston Hughes (1902-67), who outlasted Aesthetic," Midcontinent Am. Studies Journal, the Renaissance to become the "poet laure• 11 (1970); ["The H.R. Issue,"] Black World, 19 ate" of black America, demonstrates a feeling (1970); N. I. Huggins, The H.R. (1971); The for folk expression, folk speech, and folk music H .R . Remembered, ed . A. Bontemps (1972); in The W eary Blues (1926) and Fine Clothes to "Intro.' to Afro-Am. Writing (part 3), ed. R.A. the Jew (1927), and was espec ially successful Long and E. Collier, II (1972); Modern Black in his poetic adaptations of jazz and blues. On Poets: A Collection of Crit, Essays, ed. D. B. the other hand, Countee Cullen (190H6) Gibson (1973); J. Wagner, Black Poets of the wrote a much more personal and conventional U.S.: From Paul Laurence Dunbar to Langston kind of poetry, represented in Color (1925), Hughes, tr . K. Douglas (19711). Copper Sun (1927), and The Black Christ R.A.L.; G.T.H . (1929). Cullen's devotion to Victorian models of scansion and diction won him great respect HAUSA POETRY. For the Hausa people of among the major Am. critics of the 1920's, but West Africa an essentialfeature of poetry (wllk'a, rendered h is style at ypical of the H .R . poem, SOng) is that it should have a tune. Many lesser-known poets also contributed to Prosodic features, such as quantitative meter, the sense of achievement of the H.R. Arn a rhyme , and either couplet or 5-line stanza form, Bonternps, whose H .R . poems were not col• distinguish poetry from other forms of uiak :«, lected in a volume, displayed a profound philo• e.g., the songs of Mamman Shata, where nor• sophical and historical vision in Nocturne at mally they do not occur. Drumming is normal Bethesda. Waring Cuney and Frank Horne pre• for popular song, but not for the sung or sented in their work intensely personal per• chanted poetry with religious and social themes. ceptions of the black experience. And Sterling Apart from folksong, the main pre-Islamic Brown, in even purer accents than Hughes, source for H .p. is praise-singing (kirtiri) , but speaks with the voice of the folk Negro in such the Islamic jihtid (holy war) of Sheikh Usumanu poems as Southern Road and Long Gone. dan Fodio in the early 19th c. introduced new Among the women poets of the H .R ., Jessie themes and prosodic forms. To encourage the Fauset and Georgia Douglas Johnson occupied spread of his reforming message, the Sheikh ex• themselves primarily with issues of love and the perimented with the vernacular instead of loss of love, and the concerns of the female Arabic. He and his children and successors first sensibility. Anne Spencer presented more tough• used their native Fula, and, later and increas• minded, less subjectively romantic versions of ingly, H . in order that th eir Islamic teaching these same themes. By contrast, Gwendolyn should reach the common people. Of the six • Bennett and Helene Johnson eschewed a spe• teen classical Arabic meters, H . uses about cifically feminine point of view in poems im • twelve, including all of the common ones. H . bued with black pride, poets are not usually conversant with the ana• There can be no question that the H.R. was lytic terminology of Arabic prosody, but they a poetic success. The distance marked by black have adhered fairly strictly to the patterns. -f 9lJ6 1- HAUSA POETRY·HISTORICISM Thus, in his comic poem about a millam's However, in praise and satire the poet's feel• (scholar) experience with a bicycle, Aliyu Na ings often shine through, as in Na Mangi's Mangi , a popular modern poet, uses a wafir Imfira;i (Comfort), a long poem with many (abundant) trimeter catalectic, e.g., hundreds of verses. Where he is praising the ...., _...., ",-,-I...., _""" __ I..., __ Prophet, he sometimes sounds a note of mysti• cism, love, and longing. zama zamaninsu ne aka %0 da [ai'[a There is little, if any, written criticism of ...,---1...., -....,--1...,_"-,,, ku'di ba masu nauyaya aljihu ba H ip . A good H. poet has something for all his listeners: images and tune for the less sophisti• because in their day paper money was cated , and, for the more sophisticated, skilled introduced not heavy for the pocket. use of the language and close adherence to the metrical pattern. But a small number of purely H. deviations COLLECTIONS: Wak'ok'in Hausa (1956; H. are often allowed so long as they do not ob• poems by various poets); Wak'ar Bagauda ta scure the fundamental rhythm. Kana ("The Kano Poem about Bagauda,' 1969); The main themes of the poetry of Sheikh Gangar Wa'a%u ("Drum of Homily," 1969); Usumanu and his immediate successors were: Wak'ok'in ["Poems of'1 Mu'azu Ha'de;a (1970) ; praise of the Prophet, correct Muslim doctrine, Wak'ok'in ["Poems of"] Sa'adu Zungur (1971) ; threats of hellfire and promises of Paradise, and Aliyu Na Mangi, Wak'ok'in Imfiraji ("Songs of Islamic law. Legitimization of the Fulani po• Comfort," 1972); Salihu Kontagora, Kimiyya da litical order established by the jihlld was also Fasaha ("Science and Wit," 1972). an important part of the message, but some• HISTORY AND CRITICISM : J. H. Greenberg, times a H. poet like Muhammadu Birnin Gwari "H. Verse Prosody," Jour . Am. Oriental Studies, (ca. 1880) would write verse to express the 69 (1949); M. Hiskett, "The 'Song of Bagauda': opinions of H. subjects rather than those of the A Hausa King List and Homily in Verse," Fulani rulers. After the Brit ish occupation in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African 19011, the resentment felt against the new rulers Studies, 27 (1964), 28 (1965) and "H. Islamic appeared, somewhat disguised, in poetry, as, for Verse: Its Sources and Development prior to example, in that of Aliyu dan Sidi, Emir of 1920" (unpubl, Ph.D. diss., Univ. of London, Zaria , who was deposed by the British in 1920. 1969); J. N. Paden, "Kano H. Poetry," Kana These poems, and many by less famous poets, Studies, I (1965); D. W. Arnott, "The Song survive in manuscripts written in ajami (Arabic of the Rains," Ajr, Language Studies, 9 (1968); script) . One, the Bagauda, which contains an A. N. Skinner, " A. H. Poet in Lighter Vein," account of the pre-Islamic rulers of Kano and Atr. Language Review, 8 (1969). A.NoS. which has been attributed to Shehu Na Salga, has been translated and edited by M. Hiskett HERMENEUTICS. See INTERPRETATION;- HIS• (see bibliog.). However, with the slow spread TORICISM .- of Western education and ideas and the emer• gence of a new elite, first from Katsina College HISTORICISM. Although the term h. (some• and later from many new schools, themes have times spelled " historism") has long been multiplied and developed, while poetic form known to philosophers of history, it has only has remained largely unchanged. H. poets re• recently been widely employed by aestheticians ceived impetus especially from the "introduc• in an effort to develop a theory of poetic in• tion of politics" in the years between 1945 and terpretation. Its general usage by historiog• Independence (1960) and, more recently, from raphers, however, is often vague and uninfor• the Civil War. Since the 1911O's, too, poetry, mative for poetry criticism. Benedetto Croce previously conveyed through the memories of (History as the Story of Liberty, 1941) defines men or in aiami, has appeared more and more h. broadly as the philosophy or science of his• in roman script and in print, either in the tory. Friedrich Meinecke (Die Entstehung des newspaper Gaskiya Ta Fi Kuiabo (began 19119) Historismus, 19116) applies the term to the or in booklets emanating from the publishing awakening historical consciousness which de• center of Zaria. It is through these media and, veloped out of the 19th-c. rebellion against 18th-c. rationalism and empiricism, that is, as increasingly, the radio that modern H. poets• a description of a Weltanschauung. Ernst such as Aliyu Na Mangi , Mu'azu Ha'deja, Troeltsch (Der Historismus und seine Problems, Sa'ad Zungur, Mudi Sipikin, Ak'i!u Aliyu, 1922) sees h. as a synonym for intellectual his• Salihu Kontagora, Na'ibi Wali, and many others ' tory or Geistesgeschichte. Similarly, poetry -are becoming better known. critics have employed the term loosely to in• Modern poets have added contemporary dicate little more than the necessity of reading themes, both social and political, of a com• any poetic text more or less as an historical munal nature. The personal, lyric note is rare, document. H. is confused, therefore, with and when it occurs it is seldom passed on. "literary history " or the various types of "his- -[ 987 ]- SUPPLEMENT torical criticism" which resemble traditional stands directly opposed to the transcendental antiquarian or scholarly pursuits (see CRm• Idealism of metaphysical h. As a methodology CISM. TYPES). The meaning of the poem is de • of poetic interpretation it forces the critic to tennined by its sociohistorical milieu, and treat the poetic text as a peculiar (and often value judgments are ignored or dismissed as unreliable) kind of sociological document, as a mere subjective responses. As a result, this ap• transparent key to contemporary social mean• proach falls into what Rene Wellek calls a ings and values. In varying degrees Sainte• "crippling relativism and an anarchy of values" Beuve, Taine, and Brunetiere were the leading (T he His tory of Modem Criticism , III , xiii). exponents of this theory which derived much The poem can mean only what it meant to the support from 19th -c. positivism.A third type author and his contemporary audience and of h., originated by Michelet, Cornte, Goethe, can express values which are valid only for and Brandes, and adopted by a substantial the author's world; any other meanings and portion of early 20th·c. Am. critics, can best values are imposed upon it by the critic. be called "nationalistic:' Like metaphysical h. , Partly as a result of this misuse, h . has also nationalistic h. is characterized by the effort to been the focal point of bitter condemnation place the individual poem in a general socio• by historians and critics alike, and these at• historical scheme, but the boundaries of this tacks reflect the inherent contradictions in the general context are clearly drawn according to term. Karl Popper argues that h. leads to a national frontiers. Poetry, therefore, is seen as general theory of society as "closed"; h., he either the expression of native political ideals claims, establishes a un iversal historical point or as the manifestation of racial folk myths. of view through which the meaning and value The fourth type of h. marks a radical de• of any particular event (or poetic text) is de• parture from the first three. Designated "aes• tennined (Wesley Morris, Toward a New H. , thetic" h., it is the product of the philosophy 1972, p. 5). Conversely, J. Hillis Miller states of history promoted by Croce and R. G. Col• that h. eventuates in a "subjectivist" philoso• lingwood (An Essay on Philosophical Method, phy and is characterized by the absence of 1950). Aesthetic h . shifts the focus of the "anyone point of view" (The Disappearance critic's attention from the extrinsic historical of God, 1965, pp. 10, 107). The first emphasizes or cultural context, which determ ines the the influence of Hegelian Idealism on h . and poem's meaning, to the creative act of the the second focuses on the origins of an h . atti• poet who in writing the poem is seen to make tude in 19th-c. aestheticism. To limit h. to cultural meanings and values, not merely re• either of these extremes, however, is inaccurate. flect them. This type of h . emphasizes the Moreover, it is on the basis of these contradic• poet's imaginative or intuitive powers as he tions that a viable "new" h. has recently gives form 10 culture through the act of emerged in poetic theory, and this new critical poetic composition (see IMAGINATION. THE RO• school traces its origins through h . theory to MANTICS). the ver y source of these conflicting impulses If aesthetic h. , however, directs the critic's in romantic poetics (see ROMANTICISM). (For attention away hom the extrinsic meanings arguments on much earlier sources for h. see and values of the poet's culture, it bypasses Meinecke; and George Huppert, "T he Renais• the intrinsic meanings and values of the text sance Background of H.," History and Theory, itself in its haste to refocus attention on the 5 (1966), 48-60.) poet as an intuitive seer. As a result, aesthetic Within these general definitions one can dis• h. finall y loses the distinction between the tinguish four major types of traditional h., poem and external reality by collapsing both three of which develop various aspects of the into the poet's mind. Nevertheless, it is this old "historical criticism:' The broadest type emphasis on aesthetics or creativity that has may be labeled "metaphysical," for it derives most directly influenced the " new" h. in poetry principally from Hegelian Idealism and focuses criticism. Harry Levin, in what appears to be on the transcendental continuity of historical an effort to join aesthetic h . with the more development which allows the critic of poetry traditional forms of historical criticism, claims to determine the meaning of an y poem by that we must see that "literature is not only merely locating its position in the grand his • the effect of social causes; it is also the cause torical scheme. On one level this leads to an of social effects" (The Gates of Hom, 1963, p. historical relativism of the type described by 17). The poet, then, is both the maker of his • Wellek, but its most damning weakness for tory and the chronicler of his times. To this poetic theory is that it shifts the critic's atten• dualistic position contemporary formalist tion away from the particular details of the schools of criticism, particularly the Am . " new work toward the universal meanings and values criticism" (see NEW CRITICISM), have added a of the transcendent scheme which are reflected third important field of interest for the critic in that work. The second type, "naturalistic" of poetry: the text as a meaningful object in (sometimes "positivistic" or "scientific') h ., itself. Thus the "new" h . critic must affirm the -[ 938 ]- HISTORICISM unique creative powers of the poet and the and expressions are universally "sharable," that unique, inviolable structure of the poem while understanding and communication are possible he also maintains that both poet and poem at a high level of generalization. He also ar• are products of their cultural-historical milieu. gued that particular manifestations of thought The "new" h. clearly develops from the many (man 's consciousness revealed in poetry) are phases of romanticism, preserving in its inter• subject to the determining forces of the poet's pretive methodology the organicist's concern Weltanschauung (identifiable as historically with the integri ty of the poem 's structure and meaningful psychological types). The critic's or the Idealist's interest in connecting the partic• historian's task, therefore, is to read himself ular poetic expression to the transcendental into the dynamic structure of the text which or sociohistorical scheme. is an expression of the poet's age. But Dilthey's The varied tradition of h. is clearly problem• theory results in historical relativism, for the atic . Moreover, it is the tension between the act of interpretation becomes for him no more tendency to seek order and mean ing in external than a "reperformance" of the author's original (or extrinsic) historical continuity and the experience as he composed the text. In reading emphasis on free creative activity which gen• backward from present to past he has resigned erates (intrinsic) meaning within the poetic the role of "active" interpreter; the historian text that is central to "new" h. theory. This becomes passive very much in the way that the movement has been largely the work of literary phenomenologist Georges Poulet has defined theorists; and because the primary interest here the role of all readers as giving oneself up to is in the interpretation of individual texts, the the thoughts of another f'The Phenomenol• greatest problem is to avoid falling into the ogy of Reading," NLH , I [1969], 53-68). E. D. determinism of Idealistic historians like Hirsch, Jr., in his recent proposal of a herme• Hegel without giving up the very sensible neutic theory, has preserved the relativism of idea that in some degree poems are always Dilthey's theory in order to explain the dif• related to external sociohistorical meanings ference between a text's "meaning" and its and values. " New" h. critics are consequently "significance" (Validit)' in Interpretation, wary of the term "continuity" which suggests 1967). The former is historically determined, a permanent, even transcendent, historical a product of the author's conscious "will" and scheme (Morris, Toward a New H .; Fredric unconscious cultural attitudes. It is discovered Jameson, Marxism and Form , 1971, particularly by a somewhat statistically oriented interpre• pp. 257-79). Yet without some external linking tive methodology that measures the validity of of events history is reduced to mere random possible "meanings" against the determining change, and the connections between individ• possibilities of the period. A poem 's "signifi• ual poetic texts are merely fortuitous. The cance" is merely a subjective evaluation made primary goal of "new" h. critics is to join the by a literary critic according to his own and interests of "literary history," with its method• his society's value system. In this approach, ological basis in historical scholarship and however, Hirsch has deepened the split between its focus on cultural generalizations, and the literary historian and the literary critic. "literary criticism," with its penchant for aes• Jean-Paul Sartre (Critique de la raison dia• thetic (and ahistorical) values and its formalist lectique, 1960) offers a partial solution to this bias, into one, complete, and adequate critical dilemma in seeing history as the continuity of activity. The practical problem, as Wellek man's acts of self-projection which create both says, is that a poem is of its own time and of himself and his world. History, therefore, has the present (hence somehow above time); the no metaphysical support, nor is it merely a poem has a "dual mode of existence" (,Periods collection of isolated acts of self-awareness. and Movements in Literary History," EIE, Consciousness is dialectical, and the historical 1940; Toward a New H., ch. 2). process is the product of man's free, individual Consciously or unconsciously, the "new" h. projections of his future which arise only critic confronts in this dilemma the general through his opposition as a free consciousness problems of poetic interpretation which have to the determining forces of his own socio• been the central concern of hermeneutic philoso• economic milieu. phy. The goal is a viable interpretive method• In bare outline Sartre's theory is much like ology which allows us to understand poetic the "new" h. proposed by some literary theo• texts written in remote historical periods. rists of the 1950's and 1960's. Harry Levin's in• Wilhelm Dilthey (Das geschichtliche Beunssst• terest in poetry's effect on social change re• sein und die Weltanschauungen, Gesammelte sembles a similar interest in poetry as a cultural Schriiten, VIII , 191!Hi7), one of the most in• force voiced by Lionel Trilling: that poetry fluential philosophers of art and history to makes man aware of his "opposing self," aware devise an answer to these problems, attempted of the conflict between the individual and his to construct a hermeneutic theory based on cultural context captured in the poem (The his hypothesis that man's individual thoughts Liberal Imagination, 1950). So, too, the phenom- -[ 939 ]- SUPPLEMENT enologically oriented neo-Marxism of Lucien the individual poetic expression and the lan • Goldmann proposes that the creative artist is guage system which circumscribes all verbal both a product of and spokesman for socio• utterances. This is a profound problem for economic change (Pour une sociologie du both linguistic studies and poetics, but it sug• roman, 1964). Roy Harvey Pearce (H. Once gests that one can read from the text into the More, 1969) argues that the artist is a man of artist's society without reducing one aspect to his times, but he is such because his own the other. Leo Spitzer (Linguistics and Literary unique world vision (encompassing both his History, 1948) and Eric Auerbach (Mimesis. own existence and his culture) arises from 19511) have both approached the study of in• the opposition between individual conscious• dividual stylistic traits in literature with this ness and social structures. The tensions de• assumption. They have attempted to link the veloped in the artist through the dialectical poem to the author's perception of his world nature of his self-awareness are captured in and to the cultural tradition within which he the structure of his verbal expressions; the lived. Moreover, in their sympathy with h., "individual style" of the poem grows out of both men have searched for a continuous pat• and yet opposes the "basic style" of the culture tern of such relationships, for a historical or• which produced it. ganization of the dynamic interplay between Those critics whose tradition is more in line man's verbal expressions and his culture. Such with the theories of the Am. "new criticism" an approach seems to defy the precision of a have also made efforts to develop a "new" h. scientific methodology, but it has reopened Eliseo Vivas claims that the unique poetic poetry to historical interpretation without de• context is at once the poet's "creation" of an nying the other extreme of its dual mode of aesthetic order and his "discovery" of meanings existence, its timeless. aesthetic value. and values "existent" in his culture (Creation In addition to the works already cited, the and Discovery, 1955). Charles Feidelson, enlarg• following are useful for the study of h. For ing upon the conceptions of the symbolist tra• general theory see: F. Engel-janosi, The dition, develops a peculiarly Am. symbolism Growth of H. (1944); D. Lee and R. Beck, "The which in its own history-and in the individual Meaning of H.... Am. Historical Review, 59 works of Am. authors-reveals the growth of (1954); K. Popper, The Poverty of H. (1957); an Am. poetic imagination (Symbolism and C. Antoni. From History to Sociology (1959) Am. Literature, 19511). Murray Krieger (The and L'Historisme (1961); W. B. Gallie, Philos. Play and Place of Criticism, 1967) sees the and Historical Understanding (1964); H. metaphorical structure of the poem as both White, The Uses of History (1968; comp, and a discrete, inviolable and timeless aesthetic ed.) and Metahistory (19711). - For works object and a structure of meaning constituted on h. and related literary problems see: V. W . from the elements of the artist's culturally de• Brooks , "On Constructing a Usable Past," Dial, termined language system. Krieger assumes 64 (1918); V. L. Parrington, Main Currents in that language always carries with it the fun• Am. Thought (1927); G. Hicks, The Great damental values and meanings of society, but Tradition (191l5); A. O. Lovejoy, The Great these "old words" are wrought into a new Chain of Being (191l6); E. Wilson, To the "Word" (the poem) under the power of the Finland Station (1940); K. Burke, The Philos. artist's creative imagination. The tension be• of Lit. Form (1941); F. O. Matthiessen, Am. tween artist and society described by Trilling Renaissance (1941); M. Bewley, The Complex and Pearce is, for Krieger, the essential tension Fate (1952); L. Goldmann, Le Dieu cache faced by any literary artist as he confronts (1955); R.W.B. Lewis, The Am. Adam (1955) the cultural limitations of his language. and The Picaresque Saint (1959); S. Burck• The renewed interest in h. in modem literary hardt, "Poetry. Language and the Condition of theory inevitably must confront the problems Modern Man," Century Review, 4 (1960); M. of the origin and nature of language. Histori• Krieger, The Tragic Vision (1960), A Window cist literary critics have turned most frequently to Crit. (1964), and The Classic Vision (1971) ; to the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer (The R. H. Pearce, The Continuity of Am. Lit. 19511) to argue Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, (1961); G. Lukacs, The Historical Novel, tr. that language and cognition are so intimately H. and S. Mitchell (1962) and Aesthetilt (pt. I, related that man's perception of the world is 2 v., 19611); F. Hoffman, constituted in his acts of speech, and most The Mortal No (1964); particularly in his creative utterances. Thus R. B. Heilman, "Historian and Critic: Notes on the dialectic of consciousness which establishes Attitudes," Sll. 7!l (1965); H. Levin. "Toward a dynamic relationship between the "self" of a Sociology of the Novel," JHI, 26 (1965); G. the author and the restrictive structure of his Hartman, "Beyond Formalism" and "Toward society is perhaps most immediately reflected Lit . History" in Beyond Formalism (1970). in the similar dialectical relationship between W.MO.

-[ 940 ]- HISTORICISM-ICON 8c ICONOLOGY I

ICON AND ICONOLOGY. Eikon appears in tion among aestheticians, art historians, and Aristotle's Rhetoric (3.4) in the sense of com• literary critics . His early articles appeared at parison or simile. To later classical and Renais• a time of growing interest, stimulated by the sance theorists this term meant a verbal de• semantics of I. A. Richards, in the nature of scription of a person or thing, in which similes the language of poetry, and his iconic hy• may be used either to evaluate or simply to pothesis suggested a possible criterion for dis• present vividly the subject of the description: tinguishing the language of poetry from that Quintilian speaks of a kind of comparison used in other modes of discourse. It also "which the Greeks call eikon, and which ex• appealed to critics who wished to stress the presses the appearance of things and persons" density of poetic language, the sensuous par• (Institutio Oratoria 5.11.24); H. Peacham de• ticularity of good poetry, and the crucial im• fines "icon" as a "form e of speech which paint• portance of the medium. Morris himself had eth out the image of a person or thing, by discussed some of the more important iconic comparing forme with forme, quality with elements in poetry: onomatopoeia (q.v.): the quality, and one likenesse with another" (The general relation of sound to sense (see TONE • Garden of Eloquence, 1577). With the passing COLOR); the possible iconic relation of style of the Renaissance interest in the discovery, to subject matter; and the iconicity involved naming, and systematic classification of stylistic in the signification of metaphors and symbols. and rhetorical devices, "icon" almost disap• Later theorists have explored these and other peared from poetics. iconic elements in poetry. However, all of the The revival of the term in modern poetics is issues discussed above remain highly contro• primarily due to the influence of several arti• versial, and the fruitfulness of the iconic hy• cles (1939) on the nature of art written by the pothesis is still undetermined. philosopher and semiotician Charles Morris . "Icon," in the sense of "image" or "picture," In these articles he sketches an aesthetics has also had a long history of use in the grounded on modern sign theory. The doctrine criticism of the visual arts. The study of that art is a language, he says, has a history images-their origin, distribution, transforma• going back to Plato, but a full exploitation of tion , classification, and, particularly, the inter• this theory had to await the development of pretation of their meaning-has been called a systematic and scientific semiotic. Art differs "iconography" or "iconologv." In modern use, from other forms of discourse both in the these two terms are sometimes synonymous, kind of sign that the artist uses and also in sometimes defined so as to point to different the kind of referent that he wishes the sign concerns of the art critic (an influential dis• to convey. Taking his terminology from C. S. tinction between the meanings of these two Peirce, Morris divides all signs into iconic and terms has been made by Erwin Panofsky, 19119, noniconic signs. An icon is a sign which is 1955). In recent years, some critics of poetry similar to the referent that it denotes in one have discovered a fundamental similarity be• or more significant respects ; thus maps , blue• tween their interests in poetry and the aims prints, pictures, and photographs are examples and methods of iconologists. Poetry, like the of icons. Obviously, not all icons are works of visual arts, uses images, and a legitimate con• art, and so Morris completes his definition by cern of the critic of poetry is in the origin, saying that the referent of the icon used in distribution, etc. of verbal images. Further• art is a human value. The iconic sign enables more, since the same image may be used in the artist to "present" (rather than simply poetry and the visual arts, these critics have assert) the value; that is, the sign provides the found a wealth of information in the writings audience with an actual instance of the value of art historians and critics that has been of which it denotes. Morris later (1946) modified immense help in the interpretation of medie• his claim that the iconic presentation of a val, Renaissance, and 17th-c. poetry, especially value is a definition of art, but he has con• that which employs allegorical imagery (see tinued to defend the position that art is a FINE ARTS AND POETRY). use of language for appraisive signifying and Rosemond Tuve is a good example of a that it typically makes a generous use of iconic critic whose theoretical and practical criticism signs. shows the strong influence of iconology. Like Morris's position attracted widespread atten- Panofsky, she assumes that the images that -[ 941 ]- SUPPLEMENT appear in paintings or poems are a language Thought," JWCI, 11 (1948); R. Tuve, A Read• whose meanings must be fathomed before the ing of George Herbert (1952), Images and work can have any aesthetic effect. When the Themes in Five Poems by Milton (1957), Al• images in an artistic work have the same mean• legorical Imagery (1966); Wheelwright; M. ing for all interpreters, including the artist, no Rieser, "T he Semiotic Theory of Art in problems of interpretation arise and every in• America," JAAC, 15 (1956); P. Henle, "Meta• terpreter is his own iconologist. However, in phor" in Language, Thought, and Culture the interpretation of poetry, especially the po• (1958); W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (1958); etry of the distant past, this happy state is rare. D. W. Robertson, A Preface to Chaucer (1962); The images in such poetry may have changed S. C. Chew, The Pilgrimage of Life (1962); their meanings or may even have lost them J. Bialostocki, "Iconography and Iconologv" in altogether. For example, Tuve points out that Encyclopedia of World Art (1963); J . H. Hag• George Herbert's The Sacrifice is unintelligible strum, William Blake: Poet and Painter (1964); to a reader who does not recognize that the P.J. Alpers, The Poetry of the Faerie Queene poem is filled with conventionalized symbolic (1967); M. B. Hester, The Meaning of Poetic imagery provided by a long iconographical Metaphor (1967); L. A. Sonnino, A Handbook tradition. The layers of suggested meanings, to 16th-C. Rhetoric (1968); J. Aptekar, Icons not to speak of the profound thematic center of Justice: Iconography and Thematic Imagery of the poem, are lost to a reader who does not in Book V of the Faerie Queene (1969); J . V. know , for example, that in the medieval re• Fleming, The "Roman de la Rose ": A Study ligious tradition Noah and Moses were types in Allegory and Iconography (1969). F.G. of Christ; that manna prefigured the Eucharist; that the creation of Eve from the rib of sleep• INTERPRETATION. FOURFOLD METHOD. This ing Adam was paralleled with the flowing of term, or a number of minor variations on it, the sacraments from the pierced side of Christ; is normally used to refer to the classified sys• and that the tree of Adam's sin became the tem of biblical interpretation dominant in the cross which bore Christ as its fruit. To sup• Middle Ages and Renaissance, going back to port such interpretations Tuve uses Panofsky's Patristic theorizing on and systematizing of "saturation" technique. She quotes from the biblical hermeneutics. It is by no means an Bible, the liturgy, Latin and vernacular lyrics, exact term inasmuch as not all theories of hymns and other church music, prayer books, biblical i. in either the Patristic or later periods sermons, missals, Biblical commentary, and the classified in a fourfold way. The common four• drama of the guilds; she reproduces photo• fold system-the literal or historical level, the graphs of church windows, illuminated manu• allegorical (theological), the tropological scripts, and woodcuts. Her primary aim is, of (moral) level and the anagogical (eschato• course, to present the evidence on which she logical) level-was not in fact widely accepted grounds her interpretations. But she also until the 12th c. wants to build up an apperceptive mass in At no time was the formula ever slavishly the reader's mind which will help him to re • applied, nor does it fit all or even most biblical spond to the poem's images with the imme• verses. Above all, it is more appropriate for diacy that characterized the response of Her• the Old Testament than the New. A more basic bert's contemporary readers. Such are the and satisfactory division, which we also often revitalizing services that iconology can render. find in fact , would be the literal as opposed to The adoption by some critics of iconological the spiritual or fuller C'plenior") meaning, aims and methods has resulted in a large body both of which were subdivided in many ways. of practical criticism that has thrown new The basic Christian argument for Jesus' di• light on the poetry of Chaucer, Spenser, Mil• vinity and the genuineness of his claims was ton, and their contemporaries. It has also led based in the New Testament itself on the to the further exploration of the ancient notion of a deeper meaning in the Old Testa• analogy of poetry and painting (see UT PICTURA ment to be discovered in the fullness of time. POESIS) . And it has created an interest in such Furthermore, i. of a highly regarded text was hybrid art forms as emblems (q.v.) and a re• normally "allegorized" to keep it current and consideration of the aesthetics of the produc• up to date. This last purpose is first systemat• tions of poet-painters like William Blake . ically applied in the Alexandrine exegesis of C.W. Morris, "Esthetics and the Theory of Homer. Alexandria, carrying on this pagan Signs," Jour. of Unified Science, 8 (1939), and Rabbinic tradition especially in Philo "Science, Art, and Technology," KR, I (1939), (d. ca. A.D. 54), developed a lively school of Signs, Language, and Behavior (1946), Signifi• biblical exegesis. This was christianized cation and Significance (1964); E. Panofsky, largely by Origen of Alexandria (d. 254). This Studies in Iconology (1939), Meaning in the school tended to emphasize the spiritual or Visual Arts (1955); E. H. Gombrich, "leones allegorical meaning as opposed to the Antic• Svmbolicae: The Visual Image in Nee-Platonic chene school which emphasized the literal and -[ 942 1- INTERPRETATION textual meaning. Allegory in the text of the ours which is seeking for both religion and Bible is usually typological or figural. in which relevance. See also ALLEGORY . the actions and events of the Old Testament F. W. Farrar, Hist. of I. (1886); B. Smalley. are seen to foreshadow true events in the New The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages Testament and in the future, a kind of hori• (2d ed ., 1952); R . W. Frank. "The Art of zontal allegory. Allegory on the Bible is more Reading Medieval Personification Allegory." frequently but by no means exclusively vertical ELH , 20 (1953); H. de Lubac, Exegese med;evale in which the one, two . three, or more levels . . . (4 v., 195~) ; Crit. Approaches to Medie• are found. However. a strict division between val Lit.• ed . D. Bethurum (1960; papers from typological and level allegory is not alwa ys the Eng. Institute 1958-59. esp, articles by possible. Donaldson, Kaske, Donahue); D. W. Robertson, One can only briefly trace here the develop• Jr.• A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval ment of biblical exegesis . Origen had a three• Perspect ives (1962); The Cambridge Hist, of fold system-somatic. psychic. and pneumatic the Bible, ed. P. R. Ackroyd et aI. (3 v., 196~ based on Hebraic and Greek psychology. Cas• 69; esp, II. 155-279); H. R. jauss, Entstehung sian (d. 435) was the first to take Origenic und Strukturumndel der allegorischen Dichtung and triadic allegory to the West when founding (1968); J. Pepin. Dante et la tradition de l'alle• southern Gaulish monasticism. Augustine in gorie (1971); M. W. Bloomfield. "Allegory as I.," his De doctrina christiana provided justifica• NLH . 3 (1971-72). M .W.B. tion to later times for the use of allegorical methods although his own system applied to INTERPRETATION. MODERN. In the most the Bible usually refers to the way Jesus Him• generally accepted sense, literary i. is explica• self taught rather than to current biblical tion and explanation of the meaning. theme. or exegesis . He. however. certainly distinguished significance of a work. Although sometimes the spiritual from the literal sense and pro• used as if it were synonymous with ..i.," the vided an aesthetic of allegory in which the word "hermeneutics," traditionally associated beauty of figurative and obscure biblical lan• with biblical exegesis. is now generally ern• guage is praised. Gregory the Great (d. 604), ployed to designate interpretive theory. Some especially in his Homilies on Ezechiel and critics think that i. need not be encumbered Moralia (a mo ralized commentary on Job). with discussion of methods and principles, in proposed a threefold method and was even that it is essentially an intuitive activity leading more influential in medieval biblical allego• in as many directions as literary study itself. rizing than Augustine. Various medieval But the purpose of relating practical criticism schools of exegesis flourished and carried on the to articulated theory is to secure agreement tradition: the Irish Monastic School. the Bene• concerning the results of i., not to determine dictines, the School of Laon, the Victorine how it should proceed. If a distinction between School , Scholastic exegesis , and above all a "an acceptable i." and "my i." is desirable, some "scientific" school from the 12th c. on which means must be found to decide what will count was remarkably open-minded and yet respect• as evidence for or against interpretive state• ful toward tradition. culminating in Nicholas ments. Of the many theories of literary i., five of Lyra of the 14th c., the great unifier of of contemporary importance have been selected exegetical traditions for subsequent Christi• for treatment in th is article. Philosophical and anity. Sermons in particular were much in• empirical aspects of interpretive theory as a debted to the exegetical biblical tradition and whole are discussed briefly in the concluding helped to make various interpretations well paragraphs. known. Pictures. illuminations. statues, and Proponents of what will here be called "au• stained glass were also instrumental in educat• tonomous i." assert that literary meaning is in• ing the medieval and early Renaissance masses trinsic and can be discovered only through in traditional exegetical interpretations. sensitive attention to the verbal structure of the In modern literary scholarship and theory, work itself. The articles on explication, criti• and discuss the medieval and Renaissance use of the so• cism-practical, imagery, metaphor doctrines and methods relevant to this theory. called fourfold system of allegory in literature In the most explicit formulations of new criti• has been much debated. Was there a "four• cism (q.v.) and contextualism.· autonomous i. is fold " meaning in the Romance of the Rose, associated with the following assumptions: (I) in Chaucer. in Chretien de Troves, and so on? " literary works are self·sufficient entities, whose It is certain that any literary work worthy of properties are decisive in checking interpreta• the name is polysemous. That biblical symbol• tions" (Beardsley); (2) complexity, within the ism and exegesis had influence on medieval limits of overall unity. is a positive aesthetic and Renaissance works there can be no doubt, value; and (3) when properly pursued, i. leads but the degree and extent of that influence is to statements concerning the themes. situations. difficult to establish, especially in an age like and attitudes embodied in literature. rather -[ 943 ]- SUPPLEMENT than to statements about propositional or emo• consequently, there is nothing in the definition tive "meaning" (didactic and propagandistic of the literary object to distinguish it from works are . in this view. sub-literary). The third natural objects. Burkhardt discerningly relates assumption is often accompanied by a distinc• autonomous i. (his term is "werkimmanente tion bet ween ordinary (referential) uses of Deutung'') to the interpretatio naturae of the language and the language of literature, which empirical sciences in their post-Reformation is autonomous because it does not entail refer• development. Both presuppose that their ob • ence in the usual sense. Cleanth Brooks. W.K. jects (literature and nature) contain within Wimsatt, M.C. Beardsley. and Murray Krieger themselves the laws in terms of which they are are the most articulate spokesmen of this theory to be understood. However, most advocates of of i., though important differences in their po• autonomous i., while denying the theoretical sitions are perforce blurred in a skeletal expo• relevance of "intentions," assume in practice sition. that literary works entail intentionality. Their These assumptions delimit a context of i. and explications are controlled by their awareness provide a means of validating its results. An that although some meanings ma y be elusive. immense variety of information may be brought others are apparent, and the whole work em• to bear in discussion of a literary work; if only bodies a consciously created theme. But if that contained in the work itself is considered their theoretical statements concerning the au• "decisive," the problem of i. is reduced to tonomy of the literary object are considered manageable proportions. Rules governing in• apart from their unstated assumptions, there terpretive practice are implicit in (I) and (2): is reason to interpret literature as the anthro• the elements of a work are presumably inter• pologist interprets taboos. or the psychoanalyst related in such a way as to attain structural dreams-as human products embodying mean• unity, and the interpreter will attempt to dis• ings of which their creators are unconscious. cover their internal coherence rather than their These considerations lead to a definition of correspondence to something outside the work. "i." as "explanation of the symbolic content of The theory enables us to discover the law a text:' A symbol means something more or whereby a literary work is a law unto itself. something other than its denotation (see the The rich and diversified body of interpretive articles on SYMBOL. MYTH. ARCHETYPE, and commentary produced by autonomous i. reveals CRITICISM-PSYCHOLOGICAL, all of which are that its assumptions have unanticipated conse • relevant to this conception of i.]. Through quences. In reducing the number of elements "explanation," a particular phenomenon is relevant to an i., assumption (I) eliminates ex• seen as exemplifying a class that can be ac• trinsic determinants of how these elements are counted for by a reference to a general law. to be construed (such as those that can be in• The domains of classification involved in sym• ferred from biography and literary history). Re• bolic i. are not exclusively literary; in this re• duction in the quantity and determinacy of in• spect it is opposed to autonomous i., since the terpretive factors leads to greater ambiguity• latter considers the aesthetic realm sui generis, which in turn, by virtue of assumption (2), ma y Symbolic i. is usually based on the following become a positive aesthetic value. If complexity assumptions: (I) literary works and their ele• is a desirable characteristic of literature, how ments are particular examples of forms and can it be increased, given a text of a certain symbols appearing elsewhere in literature and length? The obvious answer is that its elements in other sociocultural domains; (2) the pur• must acquire multiple functions or meanings; pose of i. is to identify the general categories and this can be achieved through ambiguity, in which particular literary works are properly paradox. irony. and (in general) heterogeneity. subsumed; and (3) symbols and forms of cul• The consequent problem is to determine how tural/literary expression themselves require ex• such a complexity can be subsumed in the plication because they are inherently equivocal "unity" required by assumption (2). and the and embody meanings of which their users answer lies in assumption (3). Unity is dis • are unaware. tinguished from un ivocity; complexity and in • The context within which interpretive prob• determinacy of meaning are subsumed in lems arise offers some evidence favorable to "sit uation" and "attitude." While most pro• this point of view. We undertake i. on encoun• ponents of autonomous i. believe that it is tering something we do not understand; other• desirable to secure agreement regarding the i. wise it is unnecessary. Literary texts entice us of a work, their method can lead to uncon• toward realization by appearing to conceal trolled proliferation of textual commentary. their meanings. It is difficult to draw a line A more serious difficulty results from the between the "implicit meaning" of autono• literary autonomy granted in (1). As in the mous i. and the "latent meaning" of symbolic Kantian tradition. the literary work is seen as i. because an y form of expression involving an object in its own right. It is not. however. concealment or duplicity raises the question seen as embodying Kantian "purposiveness"; of why the speaker hid what he would reveal, -[ 944 1- INTERPRETATION and this question cannot be answered within the methods it employs are so indeterminate the framework of the text itself. The speaker as to yield incompatible results in the hands may not be aware of why he conceals. or even of different practitioners. what he conceals. When propositional meaning Two reactions against symbolic i, attracted and explicit intentionality are considered inap• attention in the 1960's. In one of these. "i,' is propriate as the basis of i., all forms of cul• defined as "paraphrase; exact reproduction of tural expression are called into question. a text's meaning in different words," in ac• The 19th-e. attempt to apply the empirical cordance with an accepted philosophic sense methods of the natural sciences to the study of the term. In opposition to the interpretive of man made possible the modern emergence traditions discussed above. this one insists that of symbolic i, Once conscious intentions had a text's meaning is determined by its author's been eliminated as the decisive criteria govern• intentions. which are recoverable because the ing the i. of social and cultural phenomena. text objectifies his thought and emotions. and the stage was set for the emergence of what that literary meaning is not different in kind Ricoeur refers to as "the hermeneutics of sus• from nonliterary meaning. Originating in the picion," Marx. Nietzsche. and Freud invented biblical and classical hermeneutics of Schleier• interpretive methods based on the premise macher (1768-1854) and Boeckh (1785-1867). that generally accepted explanations of human what is here called (for convenience of refer• behavior were in fact illusions. "Hencefor• ence) "exegetical i." survived in the writings ward," says Ricoeur, "to seek meaning is no of Dilthey and re-emerged in recent works by longer to spell out the consciousness of mean• E. D. Hirsch and E. Betti. ing. but to decipher its expressions." While The Cartesian premises of the 19th-e. tradi• psychology. mythology. and cultural anthro• tion are retained in restatements of the theory. pology were among the earliest and remain the Understanding (Verstehen) is the mental act most influential disciplines employing this whereby the interpreter re-experiences or re• conception of i., it has recently influenced cognizes the text's original meaning; i. is the other sciences of man. M. Foucault has com• subsequent act of objectifying this understand• bined it with structural i. to identify the con• ing in language. Historical and linguistic ceptual categories that have controlled man's knowledge of the milieu in which the text was perception (and hence his i.) of reality. produced. together with an understanding of The diversity of the literary criticism based the life and works of its author. are indispen• on what is here generically called symbolic i, sable for accurate i, By knowledging the other• results from variations in the fundamental ness of the text. an interpreter can understand symbolic categories employed and the inde• its meaning in his own time; and through terminacy of its assumptions. Northrop Frye, knowledge of its historical context and its Leslie Fiedler, Gaston Bachelard, and Georg author. he can understand it better than did Lukacs are among its best-known practitioners, the author himself. Exegetical i. has been but no short list of critics can indicate its associated with the attempt to state rules or varied forms . (For a discussion of the critics who "canons" of i., but Boeckh and Hirsch doubt have contributed to the development of a that an y can be found which would be both "Marxist hermeneutic," see Fredric Jameson. useful and nontrivial. Most of the theorists in Marxism and Form, 1971.) Archetypal. psycho• this tradition distinguish ..i.... a restatement of analytic. Marxist. and mythic criticism differ inherent meaning, from "criticism," an attri• in the meanings they educe from literature, bution of significance to the text; the latter but their methods-which involve finding term would include all that is called "i.' in the something more or something other than autonomous and symbolic traditions. enthvmerne in the text-are quite similar. The Although they provide a rationale for the terms Freud used in his discussions of multiple methods of traditional literary scholarship. meaning (condensation. displacement, over• contemporary theorists of exegetical i. have elaboration. sublimation) identify specific tech• had little influence on interpretive practice. niques of symbolic i., and it is possible to en• Having burdened themselves with 19th-c. con • visage a lexicon of such terms correlated with ceptions of "subject," "object," and "intention," rhetorical devices on the assumption that lan• they have been unable to revitalize Dilthey's guage, rather than culture or the psyche, is distinction between the natural and humane the fundamental source of plurivocity (as sug• sciences. The concept of i. as synonymous re• gested by Jacques Lacan), However, even if statement of a text. which involved significant one accepts the assumption that literary mean• philological issues when the Bible and classical ing does not differ in kind from meaning in works were first subjected to textual criticism, general. symbolic i, has two besetting weak• today seems unnecessarily narrow. It would be nesses. It remains speculative, none of its pointless to apply i. in this sense to narrative. manifestations having gained more than and impossible to apply it to much modern skeptical tolerance in the social sciences: and poetry. However. two aspects of exegetical -[ 945 ]- SUPPLEMENT theory are of considerable importance. One is by the contemporary categories we (inescapa• its distinction between "explanation" and "un• bly) use in doing so, and they spring from a derstanding," which will be mentioned in the desire to dominate the past which distorts its concluding paragraphs. The other is its asser• voice. Meaning is always for here-and-now; it tion that since there is no logical or empirical cannot be other. justification for nonliteral readings of a text, Literature is misunderstood when placed in " I.' in the usual sense can be justified only by a special category called the "aesthetic"; liter• reference to con ventions. ary and ordinary language d iffer only insofar Structuralism (q.v.), which protean term will as the former embodies greater intensity. Lit• here be used to refer primarily to the writings erature speaks to us by disconfirming our ex• of Barthes and 'Podorov, carries the critique of pectations, and in this respect it is similar to interpretive practice even further. The struc• "experience," as opposed to mere habit. Herein turalist definition of "i.' is taken from logic , lies the explanation of why i. always begins in which a primitive term or sign, inherently from something we don't understand. In such without meaning, is accorded one arbitrarily. circumstances, we question the text. But the Where other interpreters would distinguish text itself is an answer; and if the question form from content, or fuse the two in a state• which it answers is a genuine one, we must ment regarding "theme," the rigorous struc• assume that other answers were possible. True turalist takes any identifiable meaning in a L is the act of going beyond the text to the work as a locus for further formal analysis. question that called it into being. If the in• Mean ing vanishes in the multiple elaboration terpreter opens his being to that which created of structures; every content is unfolded as a the text, his i. will differ from all others-not form . "I." is entirely arbitrary, and by implica• because of hi s subjectivity, and not because tion irrelevant to criticism. It would seem that the text has an infinite number of meanings, this view constitutes a logically final step in but because an infinity of texts and interpre• the analysis of i. But after the effort to dis• tive moments are the being of being from cover meaning has been turned inside out, which subject and object are subsequently the outside remains to be interpreted. constituted in philosophic speculation. In still another of its technical uses (in philos• Anglo-Am. philosophy has viewed the fore • ophy and semiology-d. Husserl, Ogden and going accounts of literary L with skepticism. Richards, C. W. Morris), "i.' means "the act Linguistic analysts think that there must be of using or construing an ything as a sign ." some reasonable explanation of what practical When we apprehend certain sense impressions critics are doing, regardless of what they think as stimulated by a chair, or recognize certain they are doing and the rationalizations of theo• sounds as a word, we are performing acts of L retical critics. C. L. Stevenson sees interpreta• In th is sense th e structuralist's structures, and tions as based upon normative recommenda• language itself, are interpretations. In order to tions regarding modes of response. M. Weitz understand how L is constituted, according to argues that many interpretations are in fact Heidegger, we must attempt to place ourselves explanations, by virtue of their appeal to in the moment at which we see an object as relevant general h ypotheses; interpretive dis • a chair, or use a word to mean something. agreements arise because of the variety of ex • Through hermeneutics, we elucidate "as " and planatory frameworks employed and the failure "to mean." Because all experience is condi• to recognize that these bear a provisional tioned and mediated by language, we are en• rather than essential relation to literary texts. dowed with an L of reality of which we become .J. Casey sees interpretations as explanations of conscious onl y in moments of rupture, when how to construe a text; guided by the skillful caught by the unexpected. Some of the literary critic, we come to see what he has seen . consequences of this view, as discussed in the J. Margolis and S. Hampshire say that the writings of H. -G. Gadamer, are summarized in existence of disparate interpretations of a the following paragraphs. work cannot be disallowed, so long as they are Because the linguistic and cultural experi• plausible. Few contemporary aestheticians ar • ence which we bring to a text have constituted gue that it is in principle possible to discover our very being and understanding, it is mean• the "correct i.' of a text. ingless to speak of i. apart from our hi storical Some problems that persistently vex inter• existence. "Objective" i. is impossible; we al• pretive theory deserve brief mention. Nearly ways understand literary works separated from all critic s assume that literary works are co• us in time through our own mode of vision , herent and that a satisfactory L should be which is largely unconscious and apart from complete-Le., that ever y part of a work which we do not exist. Yet since tradition has should be accounted for in relation to an in• constituted our being, we can, by opening our• clus ive un ity. Why? Burkhardt admits that onl y selves to the past, let it speak in our present. the greatest literature achieves unity; but Attempts to characterize the past are vit iated R. M. Adams argues that many great works - [ 946 ]- INTERPRETATION-INTUITION contain irreconcilable "strains of discord," and continue to prove the justice of Valery's re • Ihab Hassan sees deliberate fragmentation as mark that "there is no discourse so obscure, no characteristic of contemporary literature. There tale so odd or remark so incoherent that it is by no means agreement regarding where cannot be given a meaning," coherence is to be sought. An author's com• F.D.E . Schleiermacher, Siimmtliche Werke, plete works, or his works and his life may be Abteil. I. v. 7 (18!l8) and Hermeneutik (1959); posited as the unity requiring explanation. A. Boeckh, Encyclopaedic ... (1877; selections Rather than attempting to integrate the sur• tr. as On I. and Crit., 1968); W . Dilthey, "Die face of the oeuvre, many critics subject it to Entstehung der Hermeneutik," Gesammelte transformations in a search for deep structures. Schrijten, v (1924; tr. in NLH. 3 [1972]); C. L. Thus it is less usual to find interpretations in• Stevenson. " I. and Evaluation in Aesthetics," compatible than to find them incommensura• Philosophical Analysis, ed . Max Black (1950); ble. W. K. Wimsatt. The Verbal Icon (1954), Once a critic succeeds in showing that a work Hatejul Contraries (1965; pt. 4); E. Betti, Te• is unified, h is i. may be vitiated by circularity, oria generate della interpretazione (2 vols.• in that the whole has been explained by ref• 1955), Die Hermeneutik als allgemeine Metho• erence to the parts, and vice versa (Seebohm dik ... (1962); M. C. Beardsley. Aesthetics has analyzed this problem in detail: see (1958; chs . 3. 9). The Possibility 0/ Crit . bibliog.), Quite apart from this problem, there (1970); H . Lipps. Untersuchungen %u einer is the widespread feeling that the prolifera• hermeneutischen Logik (1959); The New Her• tion of incompatible interpretations can be meneutic, ed . J. B. Cobb and J. M. Robinson explained only by retreating to relativism . Al• (1964); M. Weitz, Hamlet and the Ph ilosophv ternative explanations are available (in in• 0/ Lit. Crit. (1964; chs, 13-18) ; A. Child, I.:A strumentalism, Pepper's contextualism, and General Theory (1965); H.-G. Gadamer, phenomenology). The extent to which recent Wahrheit und Methode (2d ed., 1965); P. philosophic speculation concerning language, Ricoeur, De l'interpretation. essai sur Freud the theory of meaning. and general herme• (1965; Eng. tr. 1970), Le Conflit des interpreta• neutics are of relevance to interpretive criti• tions (1969); R. Barthes, Critique et ver ite cism remains problematic. If philosophy can (1966). S/Z (1970); J. Casey, The Language 0/ provide a theoretical foundation for the dis • c-u. (1966); E. D. Hirsch, Validity in I. (1967); tinction between scientific explanation and hu• K.-O. Apel, Analytic Philosophy 0/ Language manistic understanding, its influence on the and the Geistesuiissenschaiten, tr. by H. Hol • theory of literary i. may be pronounced (see stelilie (1967); S. Burckhardt. "Notes on the bibliog.: works by ~pel and von Wright). Theory of Intrinsic Meaning," Shakespearian The history of practical criticism and of the Meanings (1968); E. Coreth, Grund/ragen der ways in which literary scholarship has influ-, Hermeneutik (1969); R. E. Palmer, Herme• enced i. remains to be written. Theoreticians neutics (1969); Hermeneutik als Weg heutiger who have little to say about scholarship should Wissenschajt , ed . V. Warnach (1971); G. H . recognize that it continues to transform inter• von Wright, Explanation and Understanding pretive practice. Robertson's A Pre/ace to (1971): T. M. Seebohm, Zur Kritik der herme• Chaucer (1962) is a case in point, and it rein• neutischen Vernunjt (1972); NLH. 3.4 (Winter forces the historicist's contention that in order 1972, Winter 1973). W .M. to understand the literature of any age, we can profit from an acquaintance with the in• INTUITION. Theories of poetry as a form of terpretive conventions that its authors used in i. are even today somewhat alien to our ways reading. It is evident that interpretive methods of thinking. In his book on Benedetto Croce, that were originally developed because of their G.N.G . Ors ini observes that Am. literary appropriateness to the literature of a particular critics are profoundly distrustful of their intui• age are often subsequently applied, with more tive capacities and. one might add, of the in• dubious results, to the literature of another tuitive power of poetry itself. Am . histories of age. An account of what contemporary inter• aesthetics do contain clear descriptions of the• preters of literature in fact do , regardless of ories of poetry as i., but their clarity depends what they say they do, might answer questions on their remoteness from that which they are that have been left unresolved by theorists. ostensibly describing. Even when most objec• Some contemporary critics have argued that tive . they seem to suggest that such theories literary i. is an ot iose art of divination that are simply untenable. Of course, the theories forestalls aesthetic response by turning it into may in truth be untenable. But because they something else. The technical innovations of have emerged in cultures with much richer contemporary literature can be seen as in part traditions of poetry and art than our own, we motivated by a desire to obviate i. and confute should reject them only with extreme caution. those critical theories that consider literature In its most fully developed form. the theory similar to other forms of discourse. But critics of poetry as essentially intuitive is based on the -[ 947 ]- SUPPLEMENT belief that lines like the following are exem• and its language may be words or song or draw• plary: "the dry sound of bees/ Stretching ing or gesture. It is knowledge. but of an im• across a lucid space" (Hart Crane, Praise for mediate kind, and thus it is prior to conceptual, an Urn) and "As a calm darkens among water judgmental, discursive knowledge. There is no lights" (Wallace Stevens, Sunday Morning). To claim in poetic i. that its world is either real be sure, any line of verse, according to this or unreal or that that world and the experienc• theory , is poetic only if it is intuitive. But the ing person are distinct; because it is not a self• lines quoted from Crane and Stevens seem to conscious experience. it does not even contain exhibit what is meant by poetic i. with unusual the claim that it is itself poetic i. Although it clarity and vividness. Even these lines, it is is possible to extract concepts and abstract ideas true, do not force the reader to respond to from a poem . in the poem experienced as a them as intuitive. The lines may be taken to poem, these ideas are fused within the i. Vico, be imitative of certain natural events or as who may be credited as the father of this concep• illustrations of visual illusions or even as in • tion of poetry, argued that Homer conceived of stances of rhetorical catachresis (q.v.), But if Achilles not as a courageous individual or as an the reader takes these lines in as they really example of courage or as courage itself, but as are-s-or so the theory goes-then he will ex• an utter fusion of all of these. In poetic i., in perience them as poetic intuitions, as an im• other words, individuality and universality are mediate fusion of feeling and image. The awe• identical. Poetic i., moreover, is radically dis• some stillness and brilliance of Crane's space, tinct from perception, which is the basis of strung together by the dry hum of golden im• empirical knowledge. If one perceives "the mortality, is at one with the poet's anguished green spot here and now," he observes it as part desire to eternalize the dead man he loves. The of a spatial and temporal and chromatic frame • reader is pulled into a new place and time and work, a structure already composed by con• becomes one with its desperate beauty. If he ceptual thought. It is, of course, possible to meditates within this intuitive moment, it will perceive rather than intuit poems, to consider enfold his whole world, Crane's world will be• their space and time as part of some large, come his world, and he will see everything conventional structure within which we live afresh, colored by a pain and lucidity as never our days. But to do so is to miss the poems as before. In experiences such as this , life and poems. Space and time are abstractions by language, the world and the word, are abso• means of which we think and perceive the lutely one. Further, the experience one has world. But poetic i. creates the world and with of the poetry and one's knowledge of the ex• it our living sense of space and time. The perience are identical. Poetry is immediate crudeness or fineness of our very ideas of space knowledge of individual experience. The po• and time is thus derivative from the quality of etry creates the experience-s-as a fusion of the our poetic, intuitive experience. Finally, in its world as experienced and of the person as purest form, the concept of poetry as i. is at experiencing-and gives knowledge of the ex• odds with the idea of poetry as self-expression. perience as an identity of world and person in In a poetic i., self and world, subject and ob• a single, seamless act of i. ject, are immediately identical. This is the way This theory does not equate poetry with the the world begins. This is the way the self be• creative act of God, for it views poetic i. not gins. On its basis alone we construct our dis• as a creation out of nothing but as the creation tinctions, self and world, space and time, real of man and the world, of language and being, and unreal, truth and error, even beauty and out of a material which is its prior condition. ugliness. But this condition is utterly formless ; it is So long as it was believed that a person only a hum and buzz, or a pure flux of sensa• could intuit an object and then express that tion . In effect, then, poetic i. discovers only intuited object without his act of i. or his act what it creates, it knows that which it itself of expression in any way affecting the nature makes. Moreover, in this theory, poetry as we of the object, i. was a useful idea, but not ordinarily think of it is only the highest form difficult, problematic, illuminating, or fruitful. of that creative experience in which each of In all naively realistic theories of knowledge, us becomes a human being living in a world. theories based on the belief that an object can Essentially the creative-knowing act of Stevens' be known, as it is, independent of its being Sunday Morning is the same as the act of a known , i. as immediate knowledge, both of mother singing to her baby, the very act in images and of ideas, occupied a comfortable which the mother evokes in the baby directed but uninteresting place. Of course, such a claim love and focused vision and discriminating can be argued, and, indeed, A. Grabar has hearing. argued that reverse perspective in medieval Poetic i. differs from sensation because it is painting-where the artist, losing himself in neither passive nor psychological; it is a one• the object represented, unfolds his vision out of ness of person and world expressed in language; the object rather than from his own standpoint -[ 948 ]- INTUITION -has its origin in Plotinus' conception of the Reason, where he developed the concept of L. soul's losing itself in a simple L of all reality or in the Critique of Judgment, where he con• ("Plotin et les origines de I'estetique medlevale,' siders art and poetry. Cahiers Archeologiques, 1945). And E. Panofsky In the history of thought, often the most has related the emergence in the art of Giotto popular theories are not creative discoveries and Duccio of a perspectival interpretation of like Kant's, but the regressive theories com• space to the Occamite notion that the quality posed out of fear of the originality of the great of reality belongs exclusively to particular thinker. The desire to associate i. with a divine "things," to those things which can be appre• instinct by means of which we become identical hended by not itia intuitiva (Gothic Architec• with God surely did not lapse because of Kant's ture and Scholasticism, 1951). Interesting as critical analysis of i. Schopenhauer, for ex• they are, these connections between theories of ample, identified artistic genius with intellec• L and certain forms of art have been made tual i.-which Kant found to be outside man's consciously only in our century. capacity-with the pure contemplation of Eter• Only with Vico and Kant, both of whom nal Ideas. Along with his uncritical notion of recognized that knowing involves making and the objects of i., Schopenhauer also regressed that therefore L must be considered as both an into old-time fancy with his claim that i. has no object and an act , does the idea of i, become active element. but is purely passive and con• helpful to our understanding of poetry and art. templative. For him the agent of i. ceases, in It is true that Baumgarten, who founded and effect. to be an agent. As a " pure knowing sub • named the discipline of aesthetics, established ject," he sees in such a way as to leave the the aesthetic sphere as cognitio sensitiva, a clear object seen unaffected by his seeing. His is "the but indistinct form of knowledge anterior to completest objectivity"; he strips off his in• logical cognition. But he found nothing intui• dividuality. becomes free of time and space . and tive in poetry, claiming that its knowledge is loses himself in the object. Such a Platonic simply unarticulated (clear but indistinct) log• notion of the annihilation of the viewer in the ical knowledge. Even Kant, for that matter, vision is still to be found in certain theories of does not make a significant connection between poetry as impersonally visionary. poetry and L But he does explicate L in such a Contrary to the opinion of T . E. Hulme• way as to make it possible for others to explore who translated Bergson's metaphysics into an that connection. According to Kant, men are aesthetics-Bergson's notion of i. is quite dif• incapable of intellectual intuitions and there• ferent from Schopenhauer's. For Bergson the fore cannot know noumena, or tkings in them• object of i. is not an Eternal Idea, but the flux selves, immediately. But men can know sensi• of life itself. It is an "intensive manifold"; as ble phenomena immediately. Now it is Kant's Hulme says. it is "an absolute interp enetra• explication of sensible, intuitive knowledge tion," " a complex thing which yet cannot be which is important for our purposes. He does. said to have parts because the parts run into it is true, insist, in a conventionally realistic each other. forming a continuous whole" sense, that phenomena are givens. are intuitions (SPeculations, p. 181). Moreover. there is an which we simply receive. But he discovers an active element in Bergson's L: it is a sympa• active element in the way we receive them. thetic and instinctive compenetration of actor Phenomena appear to us as they do because of and object and is the very opposite of Intel• the way in which we receive them. We do this, lectual thinking, which is exterior and frag• he finds, according to a priori principles of mentary ("Introduction a la metaphysique," space and time, principles which themselves are 18911). Such a notion of i. may be found as a not concepts, but intuitions. The phenomena of subordinate element in some recent Fr. criti• a concept are outside it. beneath it, as its in • cism, notably in that of Poulet, Also related to stances. The phenomena of space and time, as Bergsonian i. is J. Maritain's conception of a we intuit them rather than think about them, poet's i. as " an obscure gJ;ilsping of his own are embedded within those a priori forms . We Self and of things in a knowledge through see an object in space without reflection. im• un ion or through connaturalitv which is born mediately; space as a formative. determining in the spiritual unconscious. and which fructi• principle and the- given object are fused and fies only in the work" (Creative I. in Art and utterly at one as we experience them intuitively. Poetry. p, 115). Maritain, however, emphasizes As fused with their sensible content, space and "things" in a way alien to Bergson; he even time are empirical intuitions. Taken in them• argues that abstract art, by "breaking away selves. deprived of content, they are pure intui• from the existential world of Nature. from tions. From this innovative concept of i. as both things and the grasping of things," must fall active and passive it is no great leap to Croce 's short of the deepest purposes of art (p. 218). concept of poetry as pure i. or to Bergson's no• Neo-Thomism (q.v.) is evident in this twist tion of music as pure duree. Kant did not make given to i. as object. In the act of i., Maritain the leap himself, either in the Critique of Pure like Bergson finds a deep, pulsating self at -f 949 ]- SUPPLEMENT work, although, unlike Bergson, he finds that of the real and the unreal; in 1908, it is a the intellect, rather than being excluded from fusion of unrealized desire and realized action, i. as analytical, is caught up in its creative surge both experienced as feeling; in 1917, it is a and works in harmony with it. fusion of individuality and universality; and by Benedetto Croce brought the concept of 1928, it is a fusion of vitality and morality, so poetry as i. to its full fruition. Like Kant, he that poets wit hout moral preoccupations (like thinks of i. as an a priori formative principle. D'Annunzio) are found to be nonpoetic. Whereas Bergson had distinguished i. as an In Italy, Croce's theory of poetry as i. was inner, temporal sense from the exterior, spa • superseded as early as 19~2 , with the publica• tializing intellect, Croce conceives of i. as tion of Gentile's Philosophy 01 Art. But with superior to and prior to both our sense of their emphasis on tradition, most Italians have space and our sense of time and as creative of sought to retain as much as possible of Croce's both. Further, he rejects Kant's notion that the theory even as they went beyond him. Thus, as a priori intuitive form receives phenomena as Bergsonian intuition works within more ad• given . Abstractly speaking, he will call the vanced Fr . theories of poetry, so Crocian i. is flux of feelings the material of poetic i.; but still a ferment in It. theories of poetry as non• for him the flux takes its first form only within intuitive. Such efforts to sustain past achieve• the poetic i., and thus that i. is creative and ments when progressing beyond them are dis • not imitative. Even though it is creative, it is tinctive of cultures with rich traditions of also a form of knowledge. It is the one way in poetry. which one knows (as he creates) people, things, Brief mention must be made of E. Cassirer's even the world in their individuality and Kantian usage of i. It provides a basis for S. uniqueness. Croce emphasizes his belief that i. Langer's notion of poetry as immediate "knowl• involves both making and knowing by means of edge by acquaintance," as an imitation of the his formula of poetry as "intuit ion-expression." forms of psychic feeling, and also for E. Vivas' Throughout his career, Croce distinguishes i. theory of poetry as creation and discovery, as an sharply from an ything passive, like "sensation." object to be apprehended intuitively, by "in• One has an i. only if he expresses it, only if transitive attention." In England R. G. Colling• he articulates it fully. Against all who felt that wood developed a theory of poetry dependent he was slighting expression, externalization, all on Croce's, but he vacillated indecisively be• matters of technique and media and genre, tween the idea of poetry as intuitively immedi• Croce insisted that an i. is itself only if full y ate and a Gentilean notion of poetry as actively articulated as an individual and unique expres• mediate. Quite recently M. Oakeshott has sion . It could, he admits, happen in one's head; argued for what is a Crocean theory of poetry but distinctions like inner and outer, mind and freed of all cognitive claims. Croce no doubt bod y, insight and realization, are irrelevant to would have called this a theory of poetry as i. Indeed, so concerned was Croce to insist on pia y rather than i. the active, expressive element in his notion of A. Schopenhauer, The World as Will and poetic i., that from 1912 to 1917 he was advocat• Idea , tr . R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (~ v., ing the idea that poetic i. is an a priori synthe• 188~) ; B. Croce, The Essence 01 Aesthetic, tr, sis of feeling and image. This advocacy was D.Ainslie (1921), Aesthetic, tr. D. Ainslie (2d extremely disruptive for his theory, because an y ed., 1922) and Philos., Poetry, Hist., tr . C. such synthesis would of necessity involve media• Sprigge (1966); T. E. Hulme, Speculations tion and resolution, whereas poetic i., just as (1924); I. Kant, Critique 01 Pure Reason, tr. necessarily, is nonmediate, an immediate fusion N. K. Smith (2d print., 19~~) ; R. G. Colling• and identity. The result of Croce's effort to treat wood, The Principles of Art (19~); E. Cassirer, poetry as both an i. and an a priori synthesis was An Essay on Man (1944) and The Philos. of that the elements of the synthesis, the feeling, Symbolic Forms , tr . R. Manheim (n , 195~) ; S. the image, and the i., collapsed into each other Langer, Philos. in a New Key (1948); G. de even as he sought to distinguish them, just as i. Ruggiero, Da Vico a Kant (4th ed., 1952); J. and expression were collapsed into an identity Maritain, Creative I. in Art and Poetry (195~) ; in the earliest form of his aesthetics. Croce's E. Vivas, Creation and Discovery (1955); M. C. theory of poetry has been called an expressive Beardsley, Aesthetics (1958); H. Bergson, theory, but because of these collapses into im• Oeuvres (centennial ed., 1959); M. Oakeshott, mediate identity, the theory is always an intui• The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of tive one, even when appearances suggest other• wise. The most sign ificant changes in Croce's Mank ind (1959); G.N.G. Orsini, Benedetto theory occurred not in the act but in the object Croce (1961); J. Starobinski, L'Oeil vivant of i. The act remains at all times an immediate (1961); G. Svenaeus, Methodologie et specula · awareness which is a shaping, an "intuition• tion estetique (1961); G. Gentile, The Philos. expression." But the object, in 1902, is a fusion 01 Art, tr. G. Gullace (1972). M .E.B.

-[ 950 ]- INTUITION·METACRITICISM L

LAUREATE. See POET LAUREATE. M

METACRITICISM. The best use so far found tion within this class has come to be widely for the prefix "rneta-" is that to which it has acknowledged and employed: that between "in• been put by contemporary philosophers and ternal" and "external" statements. Among the logicians: it marks a step upward in the lan• remarks made about literary works are two ex• guage level, from what is talked about to what ternal sorts: (1) comparative statements, not• is talked in . There is the literary work, a dis• ing the likenesses and differences of literary course, or linguistic entity, which itself mayor works or of literary works and other cultural may not refer to the actual world and mayor products, and (2) causal statements about the may not (in some sense) say something about it. influence of antecedent conditions (including There is the discourse of the critic, which refers biographical and political conditions as well as to the literary work and (presumably) says previous literary works) , about the effects of something about it . And there is metacriticism, literary works on individual readers or social which is discourse about criticism. These dis • processes, and about the ways in which literary tinctions ha ve turned out to be no less crucial works and other objects and events may be in literary study than in those fields where symptoms of underlying conditions. These ex• they were first developed and are most firmly ternal remarks are frequently assigned to the entrenched: e.g. , mathematics vs. metamathe• province of literary history, which is thus dis• matics, science vs. philosophy of science. Nor tinguished from criticism defined, in its nar• are they invalidated even if many poems are rower sense, as consisting of statements about implicitly "metapoetic," or self-referring, as the internal properties of literary works (in• argued by Rosalie L. Colie, in "My Ecchoing cluding their semantical properties, if any) . Song"; Andrew Marvell's Poetry of Crit. (1970). This distinction need not commit us to any The task of metacriticism is the critical ex• assumptions about the logical connections, or amination of criticism: of its technical terms, lack of logical connections, between critical its logical structure, its fundamental principles statements and the statements of literary his • and premises. If the critic asserts that Keats 's tory: it is merely a preliminary way of sorting Lamia is a masterpiece because it embodies the things out and arranging a reasonable distribu• woman-into-serpent archetype (q.v .), the meta• tion of ta sks. The task of the critic would then critic will ask: How does the critic know this? be to tell us what he knows (or as much as is What sorts of evidence could establish such an worth imparting) about the form and content embodiment? Is the concept of archetype suffi• of individual works, and that of the literary ciently articulated to serve as a critical tool ? historian to trace its conditions and conse • Why is the presence of an archetype in a liter• quences. The question is left open (it is itself ary work a reason for judging it to be great? a metacritical question) whether, to what ex• These questions go beyond the scope of the tent, or in what ways, the performance of either critic's concern, which is with the work itself, task depends on the completion of the other. and which apparently must presuppose, rather If we think of criticism-in the narrower than provide, answers to them. sense from now on-as consisting of singular I. RELATIONSHIP TO OTHER DISCIPLINES. In a statements about particular poems, short stories, conveniently broad sense, literary criticism etc ., then we immediately wonder whether such (q.v.) can be said to consist of the class of all statements can be generalized into principles of existing statements about literary works of art, criticism and, if so, whether these principles whether or not made by professional critics. can be brought together into a system, in which And this class can be considered the subject some principles are seen as logical consequences matter of metacriticism. But a further distinc- of other, more fundamental, ones . The endeavor

-[ 951 ]- SUPPLEMENT to discover such principles and so connect them We must not expect all of these borders to belongs to the theory of literature, which is be precisely marked, nor require that every sometimes called "poetics" (q.v.). Two very question we ask be instantly and confidently different examples of this genre are Northrop pigeonholed. But the sorting out is extremely Frye's Anatomy of Crit. (1957) and Barbara important, and clarifies the nature of each of Herrnstein Smith's Poetic Closure (1968). In the enterprises. And developments in philoso• attempting such a theory, we are still on the ph y and logic and theory of language in recent same language-level as the critic; we have mere• decades have certainly enabled us to know ly moved (but it is a big move) from the par• what we are doing better than earlier theorists ticular to the general, and from isolated gen • could. I. A. Richards' Principles of Literary eralizations to system. How far criticism can Crit, (1925) was, in large part, a pioneering be, or ought to be, systematized in this way is work in metacriticism, though it also encom• itself an important (metacritical) question; but passed some critical theory and some criticism. it is hard to think of any eminent and produc• In his provocative first chapter on "The Chaos tive critic who has been content to utter only of Critical Theories," he listed a number of singular statements, without suggesting some questions: general principles and making an effort to justify them by appeal to other general prin• What gives the experience of reading a cer• ciples . tain poem its value? How is this experience Literary theory, moving toward the highest better than another? Why prefer this picture generality of which it is capable, impinges on to that? In which ways should we listen to music theory (e.g., L. B. Meyer, Emotion and music so as to receive the most valuable Meaning in Music , 1956), art theory (e.g., E. H. moments? Why is one opinion about works Gombrich, Art and Illusion, 2d ed., 1961), etc. of art not as good as another? These are the It therefore makes sense, though it may be fundamental questions which criticism is re• rather bold, to inquire whether the combining quired to answer, together with such pre• of these several theories could not yield gen• liminary questions-What is a picture, a eralizations (say, about form , or expression, or poem, a piece of music? How can experiences meaning, or truth) that would hold for works be compared? What is value?-as may be of art in all media. The search for such a required in order to approach these ques• general theory of art-undertaken in very dif• tions (pp , 5-0). ferent ways, e.g., by B. Croce (Aesthetic, 1902), T. M. Greene (The Arts and the Art of Crit. , Some of these questions are not easy to classify 1947), and N. Goodman (Languages of Art, without more context, but others clearly be• I968)-is often assigned to aesthetics, as a long to different logical realms, and, indeed, branch of philosophy. And this is not an un• one of the reasons for the failure of that most reasonable way of characterizing aesthetics (see remarkable book is precisely that so many T. Munro, The Arts and their Interrelations, diverse sorts of inquiry were lumped together 1949). as though they were of the same order. Cer• There is, however, another way, now more tainly, "Why prefer Pope's Rape of the Lock generally accepted by philosophers in Eng. • to Tennyson's Locksley Ham" is precisely a speaking countries who practice philosophical question for the critic. But "What makes one analysis. On this view, the problems of (philo• op inion about a poem better than another?" sophical, as distinct from psychological) aes• is a metacritical question, since it inquires into thetics are precisely the general and funda• the logic of critical judgment. And "What is a mental problems of metacriticism. No one is poem (i.e., what is the word 'poem' best taken quite happy about adopting this usage without to mean)?" is also a metacritical question, qualification, for, in the first place, some of the though, once the class of poems has been problems of aesthetics can arise in reflection on, marked out (if that can be done), then the say, our tendency to ascribe various beauties question what other properties poems always, and sublimities to natural objects, as well as or generally, have in common is a question for works of art; and, in the second place, not all literary theory. of the problems of aesthetics lend themselves 2. THE CLASSIFICATION OF CRITICAL STATE• readily to formulation as metalinguistic prob• MENTS. Criticism, even in the narrower sense, lems, i.e., as problems about the language of encompasses a variety of statements, and differ• criticism. Still, we might say that the central ent kinds of statement give rise to different role and dominant character of aesthetics de• metacritical problems. So the first, preliminary, rives from the fact that its main problems are task of the metacritic is to find the basic cate• those philosophical problems that arise when gories into which all critical statements can be we reflect critically on the meaning and logical sorted. There appear to be at least four such justification of critical statements (including, categories: of course, literary critical statements). (a) Descriptions. A critic, or anyone else talk- -[ 952 ]- METACRITICISM ing seriously about literary works, may say that a is not merely evincing his own feelings but is poem contains such-and-such words in such-and• making, or is prepared to make, a judgment of such syntactical combinations; that a poem has a (literary) value . Statements attributing such certain pattern of meter or rhyme; that a novel regional qualities as beauty, wit, tension, para• contains certain characters involved in certain dox, integrity, power to literary works are events at a certain place and time (see ANALYSIS) . sometimes classified as evaluations, and may More complex (and problematical) descriptions indeed suggest positive judgments; but they are those that classify literary works into cer• are probably best taken to affirm the presence, tain genres: this is a sonnet, a tragedy, a pas• not of literary goodness icself, but of grounds toral lyric. an epic. (See, e.g., Paul Hernadi, of literary goodness. This (basic metacritical) Beyond Genre, 1972.) issue is in dispute. (b) Interpretations. Using the term "inter• !l. SoME PROBLEMS OF METACIlITICISM . The pretation'ts in the broadest way, to encompass problems of metacriticism can be classified in any statement that purports to say what a lit• terms of the kinds of critical statement that erary work means, we can distinguish several give rise to them, or, more fundamentally, in interpretational tasks, each having its own terms of the fields of philosophic inquiry into special features and problems. (i) Unraveling which they lead the pursuer. Instead of at• an obscurity or complexity in the texture of tempting a systematic survey here, it will be the work: saying how a syntactical construction useful, and will help to clarify the concerns is to be read. or unpacking the meanings of a and methods of metacriticism, to list briefly a metaphor. This is called Explication (q.v.). (ii) representative selection of metacritical prob• Interpreting implicit motives or traits of char• lems. acter in the fictional world . This might be (1) When explications conflict, as they some• called Enucleation. (iii) Interpreting the sym• times do, the questions arise, first, which of the bols (q.v.) in a literary work or (what prob• incompatible explications is correct; and, sec• ably comes to the same thing) identifying its ond, by what procedure the critic can show themes . This might be called Thematic Eluci• that an explication is correct or incorrect. The dation. (iv) Saying what implicit propositions, second question invites inquiry into the "logic philosophical or political or other, are em• of explication"-whether, for example, appeal bodied in the work. This may be called Exege• to the author's intention (q.v.) is decisive. The sis. It has recently been argued (by Guy Sir• intentional theory is one (but only one) of the cello, in Mind and Art, 1972) that there is a nonrelativistic theories of explication; relativ• fifth kind of interpretation, (v) saying what ism denies that there is in fact any objective "artistic acts" are performed in the work: e.g., way of showing that one explication is better that the author has treated certain characters than another. These disputes lead into funda• or events sentimentally, coldly, compassion• mental questions in the philosophy of lan• ately, ironically. with calm detachment or with guage, such as the nature of meaning. moral indignation. (2) When the novelist makes up a story (c) Explanations. Some of the properties about nonexistent characters, he uses declara• found in literary works are "regional qualities," tive sentences, but his use of language differs in that they are qualities of the whole work or in puzzling ways from the use of language in, of some complex part of it: the overall metrical say, historical narration. What is distinctive character. its liveliness, melancholy, or wit (for and essential in the fictional use of language? the term "regional quality," see M. C. Beards• Are the sentences of a work of fiction simply ley. Aesthetics, 1958, ch. 2). Since these quali• false, like many sentences in works of non• ties are dependent on the (comparatively local) fiction, or "true" in some Pickwickian way properties of the subordinate parts, the critic about imaginary worlds, or neither true nor may ask: What specific features of the poem false, but exempt from these semantic cate• give it its metrical character, its liveliness, gories? melancholy, or wit? A critical explanation will (!l) When evaluations conflict, as they seem have the form: "It is the presence of such-and• very often to do, is there an objective pro• such details (devices) that makes (or helps to cedure by which the conflict can be resolved make) the poem have such-and-such a regional and one judgment can be shown to be more quality." reasonable or more acceptable than the other? (d) Evaluations. To say that a literary work Again, the relativist metacritical theory is that is a good or poor one, or is a better or worse no such procedure exists, at least in some cases literary work (or poem. or novel, etc.) than -perhaps (depending on the kind of relativ• another, is to offer an evaluation (q.v.). To say, ism) when the disputants are of different pe • on the other hand, "I like this poem," or "I riods, or cultures. or simply personal tastes. prefer this poem to that," or "The poem moves Nonrelativists tend to stress the role of reasons, me," is not to evaluate, though such remarks, in or criteria of evaluation, in critical discussion• certain contexts, may suggest that the speaker noting, for example, that the discovery of a -[ 958 ]- SUPPLEMENT high degree of unity (q.v.) in a poem is taken cism, in this sense, then metacriticism becomes by most critics to be a reason for saying that fairl y limited, though of course it is itself a the poem is good, and is never (or practically philosophical question whether there is a logic never) taken to be a reason for condemning a of criticism. It has sometimes been suggested poem-except, of course, that a highly unified that language works in a special way in critical poem may be weak on other grounds, just as a discourse, and that such key terms as "form" rather disorganized poem may have redeeming and "beauty" are cognitively meaningless; if merits. Whether critical evaluations can be sup• such a view could be made plausible, it would ported by genuine reasons is an extremely far• eliminate the first group of metacritical prob• reaching problem that leads (as Richards lems-unless so-called "emotive meaning" be notes in the quotation above) into fundamental considered a kind of meaning. It has sometimes problems about the nature of value, especially been suggested that critical statements work in that kind of value sought in literature. a special way-are not to be taken as true or (4) Whether or not the explicit sentences of false--and that critical argument is not argu• a work of fiction may be taken to be true or ment in the usual sense (i.e., the supporting false, many literary works seem to embody im• of a statement by reasons) , but onl y a way of plicit theses of a very general sort-religious, calling attention to features of literary works philosophical, etc. (see PHILOSOPHY AND POETRY). and communicating a response to them. If this The problem of truth in literature is (con• view could be sustained, then there would be cisely) whether the truth or falsity of such no such thing as a logical justification for the embodied theses has any logical bearing on the critic's remarks, and no call for an appraisal literary goodness or poorness of the work . This of it. Certainly advertising literary merits and problem is closely connected with, though not celebrating the importance of literature may identical to, the problem of belief (q.v.), which be considered important critical services, but it deals (roughly) with the connection between is hard to see how critics could perform these the reader's antecedent beliefs and his under• services if they make no genuine statements standing and evaluation of the work. or give no genuine reasons to back them up. (5) Analogous to the problem of truth is The metacritic's first enterprise-s-the analysis the problem of art and morality: whether any of meaning-raises a conflict within metacriti• facts about moral aspects of the work (its po• cism (or a metarnetacritical issue) concerning tentially undesirable political effects, its porno• the scope and limits of metacriticism. Semantic graphic nature) have a bearing on its literary descriptiuists take the technical terms of criti• goodness. Though the issues involved here cism as the critic uses them, and are content trouble the metacritic today less than at earlier merely to study, and make explicit, the way periods, they have perennial features and ar ise these terms are used-the varied senses of in new forms-as, for example, from time to "form," as it is contrasted with other terms; time when Ezra Pound has come up for an the concept of the "objective correlative" (q.v.) award, or when the constitutional problems as introduced by Eliot and applied or modified about obscenitv are publicly debated. by others. Semantic revisionists are uneasy 4. METACRITICISM AS PHILOSOPHY. Taken most about stopping there: they consider it part of broadly, as philosophy of criticism, metacriti• the metacriric's job to point out where critical cism deals with all aspects of criticism: its lan• vocabulary goes astra y (the ambiguities, the guage, its procedures, its presuppositions, its areas of vagueness, the inconsistencies in such functions and values . It may undertake a sys• concepts as that of the "objective correlative"), tematic classification of critical "approaches" or and where possible to recommend clearer defi• methods, or even devise and propose new strate• nitions or new terminology (e.g., that the word gies: see, for example, the "modes" of criticism "form" be used always for the set of relation• distinguished by Richard McKeon, "The Philo• ships within a work). Prescriptivists do not sophic Bases of Art and Criticism," in R. S. necessarily hope to standardize all critical lan• Crane, ed., Critics and Crit. (1953), pp. 530-45, guage, but they think that criticism would be and "Imitation and Criticism," in Thought, improved and much less discussion wasted if Action, and Passion (1954). But its central critics could use their key terms in the same concern is with the logic of criticism, whose clear and explicit senses. Those who conceive problems (as can be seen from the sample just of criticism primarily as a literary art are presented) fall into two large groups: those suspicious of such an aim. arising in the attempt to understand and clar• The metacritic's second enterprise--the log• ify the meaning of the key terms in which ical appraisal of critical reasoning-raises a criticism is conducted, and those arising in the second conflict within metacriticism, about the attempt to analyze and appraise the logical ultimate relationship between criticism and soundness of the critic's arguments in support philosophy. Does criticism rest on philosophic of his statements. (aesthetic) foundations, and does it require to If there is no such thing as a logic of criti- be justified (i.e., to be shown to be a reason - -[ 954 ]- METACRITICISM-MYTH CRITICISM able enterprise) by philosophic arguments? The mvthopoesis, or poetic making; whether or autonomist view (the view that criticism is not all poets make myths-some critics (such independent of philosophy) has been firmly as R. Chase) regard "m." and "poetry" as stated by Robert J. Matthews (Diacritics largely synonymous-m. provides an essential [Spring 1972], p. 28): "Criticism is all right as matrix of all , or at least much, poetry. Fo• it stands. It needs no justification:' The meta• cusing upon this mythical matrix, one may critic, on this view, has enough to do in getting say that "literature is only a part, though a and making clear the actual reasoning of the central part, of the total mythopoeic structure critic, bringing out his tacit assumptions, and of concern which extends into religion, phi• perhaps even helping him understand better losophy, political theory, and many aspects of what he is doing. But he does not need to jus• history, the vision a society has of its situation, tify criticism itself, or an y of its practices. destiny, and ideals, and of reality in terms of The heteronomist view is that criticism neces• those human factors" (N. Frye , 1967). Such a sarily rests on philosophical foundations whose reflection takes one less far from poetry than truth, or at least reasonableness, can be estab• might appear, since some of the basic ele• lished only by philosophic inquiry. If explica• ments that poetry derives from m, are recog• tion presupposes certain propositions about nizable in mathematics and the physical sci• the nature of meaning, if evaluation presup• ences (S. Buchman, E. Schrodinger), The very poses certain propositions about the nature of development of philosophy required discrimi• truth and value, then (on this view) the critic nation of mythos from logos, or thinking may talk nonsense, or go wildly astray in his about m. But it is only recently that thinking work, unless the propositions presupposed are about the mythical matrix of literature, and philosophically sound. Some of the issues in about mythical elements in it , assumed the the autonomyjheteronomy dispute are articu• form that has been called m. criticism. Such lated by W . K. Wimsatt and T. M. Greene in criticism expresses concerns felt strongly in a symposium, "Is a General Theory of the Arts the second half of the 20th c., but ground• of Any Practical Value in the Study of Litera• work for it was laid by many writers earlier, ture?" JAAC Gune 1950). including G. Vico, various of the German ro • In addition to the works already cited, see mantics, Friedrich Nietzsche, E. B. Tvlor, also: S. C. Pepper, The Basis of Crit. in the J.G. Frazer, Sigmund Freud, and C. G. Jung. Arts (1945); Abrams (ch. 1); W. K. Wimsatt, Indeed, since "m." embraces ancient and per• The Verbal Icon (1954) and Hateful Con• sistent human concerns, observations about its traries (1965); Wellek and Warren; M. C. relation to literature are to be found among Beardsley, Aesthetics (1958, esp. Intro.) and numerous earlier literary critics, for example, (ed.) Lit. and Aesthetics (1968); Aesthetics and Samuel Johnson, who has much to say about the Language, ed . W. Elton (1959); J . Stolnitz, aesthetic value of myths incorporated in po• Aesthetics and Philos. of Art Crit. (1960); etry. It may be useful to regard 2Oth-c. m. R. E. Lane, The Liberties Of Wit: Humanism, criticism as the outcome of a succession of Crit . and the Civic Mind (1961); J. Margolis, overlapping cultural moments, which help to The Language 01 Art and Art Crit. (1965); define its central concerns; a few names may J. Casey, The Language 01 Crit. (1966); E. roughly suggest th is development. Richard Olson, "The Dialectical Foundations of Crit. Wagner saw himself, as an artist, faced by op • Pluralism," Texas Quarterly, 9 (1966); M. C. posing claims of m , and history and consciously Beardsley, The Possibility 01 Crit. (1970); M. chose those of m.; and Friedrich Nietzsche's Peckham, "Theory of Crit.,' The Triumph of writings directly reflected kinds of experience Romanticism (1970); R. Wellek, Discrimina• that give rise to m. and prophesy, though tions (1970); F. Jameson, "Metacommentary," Nietzsche's Zarathustra declared that God was PMLA, 86 (1971); In Search of Lit. Theory, ed. dead. Writers exploring the possibilities of M. W. Bloomfield (1972). M.C.B. symbolism (q.v.) created hermetic personal poetry, which, according to some critics (in• MYTH CRITICISM. Much poetry is mythical cluding T . S. Eliot) drew upon the "primitive in the sense of being about supernatural psyche" expressed in the collective m. of earlier characters and events or of drawing upon them times. Despite Frazer's positivistic assumptions, as a frame of reference. And even when poetry his massive Golden Bough betrayed a fascina• is not overtly mythical-when it is, say, con• tion with mythical, magical, and religious cerned with merely human characters in a materials, which it served to retrieve from world without gods-it often has covert con• the cultural trash heap for writers reacting nections with myth (q.v.), as when 20th-c. against positivism. James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, poets describe die destruction of the world, D. H. Lawrence, Thomas Mann, and W. B. which is an ancient and widespread mvtholo• Yeats used m. in ways that demanded expli• gem or archetype (q.v.). Myth makers are cation. And the new criticism (q.v.), in dem• poets, and m. comes into being through onstrating not only the strengths but also -[ 955 ]- SUPPLEMENT the limits of a largely formalist approach to Knight, for example. have arrived at differing literature, led. as one reaction, to an emphasis views of such motifs in the poem (H. Zimmer. upon m. in literary criticism. As a result of J . Speirs. and C. Moorman). In discussing the tendencies suggested by these names, a number visionary landscape of medieval allegory,P. of critics came to feel that literature "cannot Piehler attempts to define allegory and its re• be limited to the working out of a pattern lations to m. Milton's Lscidas has been seen within the framework imposed by an art form, as conforming to a cycle of death and rebirth. but rather must be viewed as part of the to• expressed in vegetation sacred to fertility gods. tality of human experience. Thus the simple and in a descent into water and reemergence separation of form and content. intrinsic and from it. paralIeling the setting and rising of extrinsic values. or the like. falls away even the sun (R. P. Adams in Vickery). Keats's for the purposes of analysis-indeed. especially Endymion has also been seen as conforming for such purposes. From this central assump• to a cyclical m., consisting of the CalI to the tion it is but one further step to assert that Quest. Acceptance and Descent into the Under• literature is part of a social situation and world . FulfilIment of the Quest, and Return, that literary works must be approached pri• apotheosized by a sacred marriage (R. Harri• marily as modes of colIective belief and action. son in Vickery). Indeed. the m.-making pro• Myth and ritual, then, become. essential quali• pensities of the romantic poets-their m.-like ties of literary expression" (H. M. Block in constructions derived not so much from in• Vickery). And since m. and ritual also reflect herited colIective belief as from the impulse to the workings of the human mind, m. criticism individual symbol formation Gung)-have re• overlaps the criticism of psychology and po• ceived much attention (Frye, 1947, H. Bloom). etry .- And indeed, Frye has pointed to Blake as one As the name of Nietzsche will suggest. much of the main inspirations behind his own m. criticism has been directly or indirectly critical labors. concerned with the origin and nature of drama. The interests and ideas guiding the works The influence of the Cambridge Anthropolo• of exegesis reviewed tilI now have also found gists on literary criticism, heralded by G. expression in the critical system elaborated Murray's essay on Hamlet and Orestes (1914), by Frye. principalIy in his Anatomy of Crit , has been pervasive. Concern with elements of This work provides an all-embracing view of m. and ritual has led F. Fergusson, in an ef• literature, with special attention to modes and fective study. to see Hamlet as a celebration genres, to thematic and mythical recurrence of the mystery of human life achieved through in literature. and to the ways in which litera• ceremonious invocations of the well-being of ture. like m.• ultimately rests on preconscious society, these invocations being themselves the ritual. After a "Polemical Introduction," means of securing that welI-being. Though Frye's Anatomy goes on to "Historical Criti• Hamlet is in important ways modern and cism: Theory of Modes," an essay which sees skeptical. "even the most cutting ironies of the literary past as consisting of two cycles of Hamlet do not disavow the mystery which the five periods each, with each of these periods rituals celebrate, or reject the purposes that corresponding to a "mode," defined as a inform them" (Fergusson). J.I.M. Stewart has measure of the strength of the hero (for ex• seen Falstaff as a ritual scapegoat. and J. Hol• ample. of Achilles or of Leopold Bloom) in loway finds the scapegoat essential to Shake• relation to the world of the fiction in which speare's tragedies. More generally, H. Weisin• he occurs, this fictional world. in tum. reflect• ger has traced the conception of tragedy back ing the world of the audience for which the to its roots in m. and ritual in the ancient work was written. The second essay. "Ethical Near East. C. L. Barber has analyzed ways in Crit.: Theory of Symbols," discusses five which Shakespearean comedy achieves "clari• phases of symbolism-literal. descriptive, for• fication" related to that brought about by mal. archetypal, and anagogical-paralIeling folk festivals. The early studies of C. Still the five modes of the first essay. The third (1921) and G. W. Knight (1929) initiated a essay, "Archetypal Crit.: Theory of Myths," is continuing concern with mythical elements in concerned with the ways in which myths and Shakespeare's last plays. And various critics archetypal conventions undergo historical have studied such elements in Henrik Ibsen transformation, these elements often serving and more recent drama (0. Holton. K. Burk• as structural principles, which may affect the man). audience without its awareness. The transfor• Though m. criticism has been largely con• mations of these elements paralIel those of cerned with narrative, and especialIy dramatic, the hero and the symbol , discussed in the content rather than with details of poetic form first essays. The fourth essay. "Rhetorical and technique, several works of nondramatic Criticism: Theory of Genres," is concerned poetry have been seen as embodying mythical with genre as something based on its own motifs. Critics of Sir Gawain and the Green characteristic rhythm, which may be seen in -[ 956 ]- MYTH CRITICISM the overall, continuous flow of the epic or in N. Frye, R. Graves, and J. Campbell) frequent• minute prosodic effects. All of the elements ly aspire to a global view-for example and processes described in the Anatomy arise through the assumption of a universal Mono • from "displacements" of m., through which myth or Ur-m. that brings all m, and litera• m. is modified by culture so as to be logical, ture into a unity. M. criticism was especially plausible, acceptable in accordance with pre• prominent in a period which may be roughly vailing stylistic and other norms. But m, re• fixed between the dates of Frye's Anatomy, mains effective even in these "displacements," 1957, and of an excellent anthology by since "the structural principles of literature Vickery, 1966, which includes essays most of are as closely related to mythology and com• which were written within twenty years of parative literature as those of painting are to that date. But the mythical matrix of poetry geometry." is sufficiently well established and sufficiently The immense appeal of Frye's critical view• important that valuable work in this area will point lies, first, in its heuristic aspect-in the surely continue to be done. This sanguine way in which it invites the reader to see view is supported by such studies as that of parallels and interconnections among forms J. Armstrong, who regards the tree and the and devices and specific literary works usually snake in Sumerian and Greek mythology as a regarded as discrete, and second, in its insist• single form expressing a basic imaginative ence on the derivation of literature from m., polarity, and with critical sensitivity traces not simply as "poetry" but as a fundamental this form in Botticelli's Primavera , in three way of apprehending the world. Its appeal plays of Shakespeare, in Milton's Paradise Lost , was so great that in 1966 M. Krieger could and in Coleridge's The Ancient Mariner and claim that "in what approaches a decade since Kubla Khan. As Armstrong asserts, "Myths the publication of his masterwork, he has had are the most accurate means that the human an influence-indeed an absolute hold-on a mind has devised of representing its own im• generation of developing literary critics greater measurably complex structure and content. and more exclusive than that of anyone They are essentially poetic formations, and theorist in recent critical history." Frye's work express areas of thought and feeling where, as has been criticized-for being overly schematic, Blake puts it, 'ideas can only be given in their for neglecting style, for remaining too far from minutely appropriate words,''' a close reading of texts, for using common J. L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance literary terms in idiosyncratic ways, for sur• (1920); C. Still, Shakespeare's Mystery Play reptitiously gaining vital rhetorical effects (1921), The Timeless Theme (19!16) ;G. Murray, through such emotionally colored terms as The Classical Tradition in Poetry (1927); S. "archetype" where such plain words as "model" Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics (1929) ; would do as well-and some of the criticisms G.W. Knight, M. and Miracle (1929); N. of Frye shade off into criticisms that have been Frye, Fearful Symmetry (1947), Anatomy of raised against 20th-c. m. criticism in general. Crit. (1957), "Lit. and M," [bibliog.], in Rela• One of these is that m. critics find m. a flight tions of Lit. Study, ed. J . Thorpe (1967); R. from the reality of history, this flight express• Graves, The White Goddess (1948); H. Zim• ing certain social and political attitudes (P. mer , The King and the Corpse (1948); p .M. Rahv) , Another is that current interest in m. Stewart, Character and Mot ive in Shakespeare grants pleasant glimpses of transcendence (1949); R. Chase, Quest for M. (1949); F. Fer• without the bother of religious commitment gusson , The Idea of a Theater (195!1); H. Wei• and of the threat to intellectual integrity that singer, Tragedy and the Paradox of the For• such commitment might entail. Another is tunate Fall (195!1) ;E. Schrodinger, Nature and that m, criticism tends to remain on the level the Greeks (1954); Wellek and Warren; H. of coarse structure, comparing works on the Bloom, ShelleY'S Mythmaking (1957); J . Speirs, basis of broad similarities, without adequately Medieval Eng . Poetry (1957); C. L. Barber, accounting for specific poetic effects. And still Festive Comedy in Shakespeare (1959); C. another is that the basic concepts and issues Moorman, Arthurian Triptych (1960); M. and of m. criticism have not been adequately for• Mythmaking, ed. H. A. Murray (1960); J . Hol• mulated (Weisinger in H. Murray). In general, loway, The Story of the Night (1961); M. and "rn. criticism" names an area of interest, Symbol, ed. B. Siote (196!1); G. Durand, Les rather than a specific method or viewpoint; Structures anthropologiques de l'imaginaire indeed, modern criticism attributes a wide range of meanings to "m,"-R. Wellek and (196!1); G. Bachelard, The Poetics of SPace, A. Warren distinguish several-and m. critics tr. M. Jolas (1964), The Psychoanalysis of are most often heavily indebted to one or Fire, tr. A. Ross (1964); P. Rahv, The M. and more anthropologists, cultural historians, and the Powerhouse (1965); G. Hartman, "Struc• philosophers for their notably various ap• turalism: The Anglo American Adventure," proaches. Moreover , theoretical m. critics (e.g., YFS, !I6-!I7 (1966) and BeYond Formalism -[ 957 ]- SUPPLEMENT (1970); M. and ui.. ed . J. B. Vickery (1966); Last Plays (1970); H. Siochower, Mythopoesis Northrop Frye in Modern Crit., ed . M. Krieger (1970); K. Burkman, The Dramatic World of (1966); D. Hoffman, Barbarous Knowledge Harold Pinter (1971); P. Piehler, The Vision• (1967); J. Armstrong, The Paradise M. (1969); ary Landscape (1971); W. A. Strauss, Descent W. Willeford, The Fool and His Scepter and Return (1971); L. Feder, Ancient Myth (HI69); O. Holton, Mythic Patterns in Ibsen's in Modern Poetry (1972). w.w. N

NEGATIVE CAPABILITY. Keats himself de• character-it enjoys light and shade; it lives fines his famous phrase as "capable of being in gusto, be it foul or fair, high or low, rich in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without or poor, mean or elevated-It has as much any irritable reaching after fact &: reason." He delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen:' adds, "This pursued through Volumes would Keats's statement is an affirmation of the perhaps take us no further than this, that with self-contained integrity of art. Beyond this, it a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes is peculiarly characteristic of Keats's own hon• every other consideration, or rather obliterates est and deliberate tentativeness of approach, all consideration." Earlier in the same letter he had said that " the excellence of every and it strikingly expresses his preference for Art is its intensity, capable of making all dis• the objective and the dramatic modes of po• agreeables evaporate, from their being in close etry.-The Letters of John Keats, ed . H . E. relationship with Beauty &: Truth." Later on Rollins (2 v., 1958, I, 193, 387); W. J. Bate, he was to speak of the virtues of passive re• Negative Capability: The Intuitive APProach ceptivity, "budding patiently under the eye in Keats (1939) and John Keats (1963). R.H .F. of Apollo and taking hints from every noble insect that favors us with a visit :' Again, he NEW YORK POETS. See AMERICAN POETIC says of the "poetical character," "It has no SCHOOLS AND TECHNIQUES (CONTEMPORARY).· o

ORNAMENT. An embellishment or decora• between poetry and rhetoric (see POETRY, T~E­ tion. Its values are intrinsic rather than instru• ORIES OF [PRAGMATIC THEORIES]). In classical mental. It is praised for its grace, charm, rhetoric, "0:' is a part of the vocabulary of beauty, its capability of producing an imme• discussions of style (q.v.). After the content of diate pleasurable response in the spectator. a speech has been invented and outlined, it is (An o. may, of course, have incidental utili• dressed in language and, if desirable, decked tarian values, and a basically practical object, out in appropriate o. An ornate style is de• like a piece of furniture, may have ornamen• fined as an artistic deviation of considerable tal values added to it.) In certain ages and degree from ordinary usage in choice of words cultures, the fine arts, including poetry, have or word orders. Such deviations, because of been regarded as ornaments. They have been their artistry and novel ty, give pleasure to the associated with discriminating taste, refine• hearer (and may also contribute to the ora• ment, leisure, and a high level of civilization. tor 's persuasive purpose). The means for the At other times, a stress on the ornamental heightening and exornation of style that apply values of poetry has connoted superficiality, in oratory apply even more fully to poetry. frivolity, and the decadence of a period in Thus classical, medieval, and Renaissance which poets cultivate art for its own sake. theorists spent much time in identifying and Within poetics, the term "0:' has appeared classifying these " flowers," "gems," and "col• regularly in the long tradition of pragmatic ors " of expression. Distinctions were made be• criticism, particularly in those forms of prag• tween schemes and tropes, figures of speech matic criticism that see a close relationship (q.v.) and figures of thought, and "difficult" -[ 958 ]- NEGATIVE CAPABILITY-PERSONA and "easy" ornaments (as in Geoffrey of Vin• speeches. Indeed. almost any aspect of a poem sauf; also see TROPE). Also characteristic of which could be a separate source of pleasure rhetorical poetics was the attempt to deter• could be called an o. Neoclassical critics who mine the kind and amount of stylistic o. that stressed instruction. the other of the Horatian should be included in a poem. Although there twin aims of poetry. also continued to speak alwa ys have been practitioners and admirers of the "beauties" or "ornaments" of poetry. of the florid (a style which. since classical Pleasure. though a secondary aim. is the neces• times . has been known as "Asiatic"; see also sary sugarcoating to get the audience to swal• AUREATE LANGUAGE. EUPHUISM. and M ANNERISM). low the pill of instruction. most theorists sought to develop a set of prin• The theory of o, gradually disappeared duro ciples for guiding an author in the tasteful ing the 19th c. Romantic critics formulated and effective use of o, These principles in• theories of the interdependence or identity of volved considerations of decorum and genre form and content. thought and expression. and. most important. appropriateness to an au • Thus the term ..0 .... with its connotation of thor's subject. purpose. or audience. Thus. as adventitiousness. was no longer applicable. R. Tuve has pointed out. the justification in Similarly. in the 20th c.• theories of poetry as medieval and Renaissance theory for figura• organism (q .v.) explicitly oppose themselves tive language stressed the functional as well as to ornamentalist views. The possible intrinsic the ornamental values of figures . Figures are values of any part of a poem are declared un• good because they catch the reader's attention. important or irrelevant. and only functional keep him in a state of pleasurable anticipa• values are praised . Functional values are de• tion. and delight his imagination. They can fined in terms of the interdependence of the also have more directly functional values; they parts of a poem and their contribution to the can assist the persuasive process by clarifying organic unity of the poem. When. as in and vivifying the abstract. generating emotion. Cleanth Brooks . the organic unity is described and moving the will. The functional justifica• as a structure of meanings. metaphor and tion of figures was most complete in Platoniz• other figures are said to be functional only ing thinkers of the Middle Ages and the when they contribute to this structure. Or• Renaissance who considered some figures-no· ganicism refuses to praise any part of a poem tably allegory. symbol. and metaphor-to be as a source of independent pleasure. and the the indispensable means for revealing the term " 0 ." is regarded with suspicion. light. beauty. and harmony of sp iritual reality; G. Puttenham, The Arte of Eng . Poesie thus in a successful figure ornamental and (1589. esp. Book III. "Of 0 :); B. Croce. Aesthetic functional values coalesce . (1901); E. Faral, Les Arts poet iques du xiie et Neoclassical critics. particularly those who du xiiie siecle (1924); E. de Bruvne, lttudes stressed the intrinsic values of poetry. con • d'esthetique mt!dit!vale (3 v.• 1946); A. Coo • tinued to find use for the term "0:' As in maraswamy, Figures of Speech or Figures of earlier criticism. o. was used to refer not only Thought (1946); R. Tuve, Elizabethan and to figurative language but also to other parts Metaphysical Imagery (1947); W . S. Howell. of a poem. For example. the musical qualities Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 of language are pleasing accessories or added (1956); Weinberg; Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Dow• embellishments. Dryden speaks of adorning a mentum de Modo et Arte Dictandi et Versifi· poem with noble thoughts. Sometimes the plot candi. tr . R. P. Parr (1968) and Poetria Nova. of a dramatic poem is regarded as a naked tr . J. B. Kopp, in Three Med ieval Rhetorical structure which is ornamented with a variety Arts. ed . J. J. Murphy (1971); W. Wetherbee. of interesting characters. moving episodes (in• Platonism and Poetry in the Twelfth C. cluding digressions). and finely wrought (1972). F.G. p

PERSONA. An ancient d istinction. explicit in worth obviously intended that the speaker of Plato and Aristotle. is between poems or parts The Prelude be taken as h imself; just as ob• of poems in which a poet speaks in his own viou sly he intended that the speaker of The person and those in which a character that he Af]liction of Margaret be taken as a dramatic has created is speaking. Poets themselves have character. written in terms of this distinction : Words- In "The Three Voices of Poetry," T. S. -[ 959 ]- SUPPLEMENT Eliot has refined upon this distinction. When principal one is to supply the norms in terms a poet is speaking in his own person. he may of which the characters and their actions are be either speaking to himself (his meditative judged. The degree to which the implied voice) or addressing a real-life audience (his author reveals himself and the nature of the rhetorical voice). The rhetorical voice is heard norms that he espouses are dictated by the ef• in satire and other forms of didactic poetry. fects that the author wishes his work to have . It is also heard. according to Eliot, in the This is clearly seen in didactic works; for ex• dramatic monologue, whose peculiar aesthetic ample. Elder Olson shows how Pope's persua• effect is due to the reader's recognition that the sive purpose in The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot poet is not creating a true dramatic person• is served by his endowing the "p." of the ality but is merely mimicking a character. poem with admirable intellectual and moral whether historical or invented. He approves of qualities. According to Booth. the author of Ezra Pound's use of the term "persona" as a an imaginative or mimetic work must exercise name for the voice of the poet heard in the similar care in creating his implied author if dramatic monologue. He equates "p." with his work is to secure the intended emotional "assuming a role" and "speaking through a response from his readers. As in objectivist mask:' criticism. considerations of the sincerity of the Other modern critics have asked whether it author and the degree to which the implied is ever legitimate or desirable to say. as Eliot author does or does not represent the norms of does, that a poet is speaking in his own person the real-life author are relegated to biography. in a poem. For example, modern objectivist The reaction of modern criticism to ro• critics argue that this position is a relic of mantic expressionism is not the only cause for romantic expressionism (Wordsworth said that the present popularity of the term "p:' The the poet is a "man speaking to men"), which advantages that accrue to the artist from his sends critics off on wild-goose chases after au• use of a p. or mask or disguise have been thors' intentions. Further, whether a poem, widely discussed by Yeats and others. The dramatic or nondramatic, reflects its author's mask permits the poet to say things that for attitudes and beliefs is a question that belongs various reasons he could not say in his own to biography and not to criticism; frequently, person or could say only with a loss of artistic particularly with older or anonymous poems, detachment; the mask permits the poet to ex• it is a question impossible to settle. And . plore various life-styles without making an finally, the expressionist position inevitably ultimate commitment; it is a means for creat• raises the question of the author's sincerity (q.v.). ing , discovering, or defining the self; it pre• a standard of evaluation, beloved by the ro• vents the artist from being hurt by self-ex• mantics, whose correct application, however, posure or being duped by the limitations of seems to necessitate an act of intuitive insight. his own vision; it is a means for the expression Since a poem is good only if it is an entity of ideals that the poet may not be able to complete in itself. criticism of the poem realize in his personal life ; it is an indispensa• should proceed without reference to its author. ble condition for effective personal communica• Hence objectivist critics have recommended tion. Recent studies in psychology and sociology that all poems be regarded as dramatic fictions also have influenced literary critics in their and that the term ..p.... rather than the name use of the concept of p. Depth psychologists of the author, be used to refer to the speaker need the concept to talk about the relations be• of the poem (if it has one). Thus the lyric. tween the conscious and unconscious parts of which in the 19th c. meant a poem "directly the psyche Gung opposes the p., the self a expressing the poet's own thoughts and senti• man assumes to play his social role, to the ments" (O.E.D.), becomes assimilated to the anima, a man's true inner being) . Behaviorist dramatic monologue. And the term "p:' is psycholog ists stress the importance of role• applied indiscriminately to the speakers in playing for the development of personality and Browning's My Last Duchess. Rabbi Ben Ezra, for satisfactory adjustment to life. These ideas and By the Fireside. have required the formulation of new defini• Rhetorically oriented modern critics, like tions of "self," "personal identity," "hypoc• Wayne C. Booth. also recommend making a risy," and "sincerity," both for the purposes sharp distinction between the real-life author of psychology and literary criticism. See also and the "implied author" (the "second self" VOICE.- or "p.") that the real-lite author. consciously E. Olson, "Rhetoric and the Appreciation of or unconsciously, incorporates into his work. Pope ," MP, '!J7 (19'!J9) ; W.K. Wimsatt and M. C. The implied author. who mayor may not be Beardsley, "The Intentional Fallacy," SR, 54 the narrator, is a fictional personality present (1946); T. S. Eliot, "The Three Voices of in every literary work, even in a purely dra• Poetry," in On Poetry and Poets (1957); M. C. matic work like a Shakespearean play. His Beardsley, Aesthetics (1958); G. T. Wright, The presence may serve many functions, but the Poet in the Poem (1960); W. C. Booth, The -[ 960 ]- PERSONA·PHENOMENOLOGY

Rhetoric of Fiction (1961); W. J. Ong, The Bar• veals itself as essential in the phenomenon barian Within (1962); I. Ehrenpreis, "Per• (eidetic reduction)-or even in the pure stream sonae," Restoration and 18th-C. Lit., ed . C. of consciousness itself (transcendental reduc• Camden (1963); A. Cook, "Person" in his tion). Thus, as Monroe Beardsley has com • Prisms : Studies in Modern Lit. (1967); D. mented, the term "reduction" is in one sense Geiger, The Dramatic Impulse in Modern Po• mi sleading, since the phenomenologist "pro• etics (1967); L. Trilling, Sincerity and Authen• poses only to face, without management or ticity (1972). F.G. manipulation, experience in all its richness:' P. AND POETRY . The aims and methods of p. PHENOMENOLOGY. Modern p. presents it• have much in common with those of art: and of self as an epistemologically neutral instrument poetry in particular. First, insofar as p. ex· for inspecting the data of consciousness. Its plores through language the is-ness of experi• founder, Edmund Husserl, characterized it as a ence and the textures of the lived world, its "return to experience," insofar as it tries to quest might be construed as essentially literary. delineate the very textures of the lived world, P. here adumbrates an existential concern with the taken-for-granted orbit of immediate and the irreducibility of experience. Logical analy• concrete awareness. Husserl defined the goals of sis, as a philosophical method, may be seen as p. as twofold: (1) " a pure psychology, parallel a threat to the integrity of consciousness, as to natural science," in which the psychical in Maurice Merleau-Pontv's observation, "The would be cleanly separated from the physical; world is not what I think, but what I live:' and (2) a universal methodology for the re • Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and others structuring of all the sciences, a transcendental influenced by p. have been led to express many philosophy in the sense that it would disclose philosophical insights in poetic and fictional the fundamental structures or permanent cate• terms, to suggest that literature may represent gories of consciousness itself. the truest form of philosophy, and to use art As a starting point Husserl adapted Franz (especially poetry) as an important source of Brentano's axiom that all psychical being is information about perception and various men• "intentional": awareness exists only in terms tal states. All literature ultimately engages in of a relation between subject and object; analyzing the data of consciousness, and even mental states (even hallucinations) always have apparent records of subconscious activity are reference to a content. In Husserl's synthesis given in terms of conscious apprehension. this principle means that to be conscious of Some commentators have gone even further something is not simply to possess that some• in pointing out the aesthetic orientation of p, thing passi vely, as if consciousness were merely Fritz Kaufman defines art as a reformation of a kind of container. While an object may have consciousness, and thus as essentially phenome• independent existence, it has no independent nological in converting " the natural attitude intelligibility; it requires a consciousness to toward the experienced world" into a medita• give it genuine reality. Accordingly, Husserl's tive attitude toward one's experiencing of the exploration of phenomena is unconcerned with world. In the art work, as in p., the question a noumenal realm "behind" them: p. aims at of the existence or nonexistence of represented an acausal analysis that restricts itself to ex• objects is " neutralized ," and "reductions, me• haustive description of what is directly given thodically carried through in p ., happen to in awareness. find an automatic fulfillment in art:' Neal Such analysis can begin only when we move Oxenhandler, in a seminal essay on Mallarme, away from the " natural attitude"-in which we applies this insight more specifically to poetry. remain unreflectively oriented toward the ob• Every poet ma y be said to perform an epoche, ject-pole of our knowledge-and into " phe• suspending his belief in the spatio-ternporal nomenological meditation." Husserl proposed world " in order to consider objects anew within that p, proceed by means of a positive naivete, the field of pure consciousness:' Both p. and a mode of scrutiny in which common-sense as• poetry proceed from the assumption of the sumptions about reality undergo "suspension" priority of consciousness: p. tells us that "ob• (epoche). A phenomenon under consideration jects can be apprehended only as correlates of is "bracketed": all presuppositions, inferences, intentional consciousness"; and in poetry, lan• and judgments about it, including the issue of guage "summons or creates the world to live its spatio-ternporal existence, are held in abey• within itself." Mallarrne provides the paradigm ance. This purifying phase of meditation frees of the power of creative consciousness to con• the phenomenologist to examine the essential stitute a world by means of language: "I say: structure of the individual phenomenon. As he a flower ! and, from out of that oblivion to attends to the residual given, he may describe which my voice relegates any contour, insofar the object of consciousness in its multiple per• as it differs from the calices as known, musically spectives and attempt a series of "reductions," arises, idea selfsame and suave, the one that is focusing awareness so as to intuit whatever reo absent from all bouquets:' -[ 961 ]- SUPPLEMENT Oxenhandler claims that even literary "real• phys icalist and psychoanalytical oversimplifica• ism" is a form of p., because the relationship it tions of experience, and of arguing that the aes• posits between the imaginary world and the thetic object can constitute a self-sufficient world fact-world is always tentative, "as if we were of its own. Bachelard defines imagination as a directly regarding the world of contingent, fac• fundamental openness, even a mode of "escape," tual experience." But p. would seem to have and he sees its exercise as a means of psychic stronger affinities with literary works in which wholeness: "A being deprived of the function of the imaginary world has no primary connection the unreal is a neurotic just as much as one to the fact -world, but rather "a direct and im• deprived of the function of the real:' For mediate relationship to pure consciousness." Bachelard poetry can provide the fullest This would account for the popularized use of manifestation of imagination, but artistic the term "phenomenological" to describe some functions are not qualitatively different from contemporary experimental literature (e.g., the other imaginative acts . For Dufrenne, how• fiction of Alain Robbe-Grillet) in which the ever, aesthetic experience is correlated with experiencing mind is rendered as directly as a specifically "transcendental" imagination possible, without regard to conventional psy• which can create an autonomous spatio• chological interpretation or to standard expec• temporal field having no connection to our tations of point of view, character, or plot. previous experience. By means of imagination, More importantly, it would account for the at• an aesthetic object carries its own meaning traction of many phenomenologists and phe• completely within itself, so much so that all nomenological critics to lyrically subjective art could in a sense be characterized as non• poets (e.g., Mallarrne, Holderlin, Wallace representational. Stevens) whose works set up coherent imagina• Insofar as these theorists define imagination tive universes of their own. almost exclusively as a mode of freedom, they P. AND POETICS. The concerns of p. have in• undercut traditional emphases on the creative fluenced most modern Continental critics, espe• faculty as an essentially unifying and synthe• cially existentialists, and ha ve found an ex• sizing power. The fact is that phenomenological tremely vital application in the work of the critics are generally less concerned with formal Geneva School." But the clearest relations be• imagination than material imagination. Bach • tween p, and poetics have been drawn by three elard best exemplifies this tendency. Although theorists-Gaston Bachelard, Roman Ingarden, he describes his total critical endeavor as a " p. and Mikel Dufrenne-whose conclusions, al • of the imagination ," he proposes to say nothing though not full y consonant with one another, about how the poetic mind labors to bring converge on an aesthetic orientation to litera• a whole work to complet ion ; in examining ture. In the comparisons between p. and poetry a poem, he restricts himself to "the level of cited above, certain themes-such as the active detached images" and tries to gauge their nature of all knowledge, the autonomy of the dynamism, suggestiveness, and richness of am• aesthetic object and its invulnerability to para• bivalence. His exploration of the subjective phrase, and the disinterestedness of aesthetic structure of material images is presented in a experience-suggest analogies to the critical series of books on earth, air, fire, and water• position first developed by Immanuel Kant. considered not as objective substances, but as Bachelard, Ingarden, and Dufrenne provide in• archetypal cat egories of lived experience. Ma• teresting modifications of this position, and terial im agin ation can also be stud ied through their precise applications of p, ma y be ex • its manipulation of the categories of space and amined in terms of three traditional issues. time, a method epitomized in The Poet ics of l. Imagination. Because its descriptions of Space. Here Bachelard treats " images of felici• experience leave aside standard issues of caus• tous space" in literature, examining various ality, p. tends to use "consciousness" as an in• "worlds"-such as houses, wardrobes, and nests clusive concept and to avoid the vocabulary of -as lived spaces which have been seized on by faculty psychologies. The term "imagination" the imagination and invested with psychical would seem to be an exception, but it is in fact values (e.g., intimae) or openness).A similar used to designate a kind of act rather than a approach has been used extensively by the power. In this regard, p. emphasizes a radical Geneva critics, as in Georges Poulet's Studies in contrast between imagination and perception. Human Time or Jean Roussel's The Interior In his early work in p., jean-Paul Sartre char• and the Exterior. acterizes all functions of imagination (including 2. Poetic ontology. One analogue in Ameri• da ydream images) as negations of perception can criticism to the phenomenological analysis (making present what is absent, and absent what of imagination is John Crowe Ransom's neo • is present), and he offers th is capacity for "un• Kantian emphasis on "irrelevant texture" in realizing" as evidence of human freedom. Irnagi• poetry, by means of which the fullness and natlon-as-freedom is a major theme in phenom• richness of phenomenal particularity ("the enological poetics: it is a means of countering world's body") is returned to us. But the gen- -[ 962 ]- PHENOMENOLOGY eral tendency among Ransom's fellow new crit• the work: word-sounds, the meanings of the ics (see NEW CRITICISM) has been toward a words and sentences (which exist in a literary theory of formal imagination, and thus toward work only as quasi-meanings, because their the explication of whole poems in terms of function of affirmation has been "neutralized"), unity as an aesthetic value. Oxenhandler has the objects represented (people, things, inci• observed that the new -critical conception of lit• dents), and schematized images of these objects erary being is essentially Aristotelian-the (made more complete in the imagination of poem as a made object, having a discrete ex• each reader). Ingarden explores various liter• istence and a special ontology. For phenom• ary possibilities within each stratum, and he enological critics on the other hand, "the examines the progressive series of determina• poem does not have an independent existence. tions-from sound to sense to representation to It is simply part of consciousness; and in the appearance-that gives a sense of depth to the measure that it appears to us, within conscious• aesthetic object. When he finally argues that the ness, it has being-it is:' "polyphonic harmony" of all of these elements This contrast accounts for some of the most is a key aesthetic value, Ingarden establishes a striking features of Geneva criticism: una• standard of coherence at least vaguely analogous bashed affectivity; a "sympathy" that blurs the to that of Aristotle or the new critics. distinction between the creative and critical 3. Aesthetic Experience. Although p. does acts; a de-emphasis of the wholeness of anyone not encourage evaluation in criticism, it does text, in favor of the consistency and uniqueness provide an excellent set of concepts and terms of the imaginary universe projected through• for the celebration of aesthetic experience in out an author's total body of work.A sharp general. First of all , it characterizes literary contrast with new criticism, however, does not response as fundamentally active: a process of fully illuminate the somewhat ambiguous po• "bracketing" in which the reader leaves aside sitions of Dufrenne and Ingarden on the ques• all presuppositions and attends to the aesthetic tion of poetic ontology. Both propose to deal object as directly given, becoming fully ab• not with the "work of art" as such, but with sorbed in it . Poulet describes this openness as the "aesthetic object"-i.e., the work as incar• a healthy kind of surrender which gives at nated in experience. Both then proceed to dis• least the sense of true intersubjectivitv: "W hen cuss this object as if it were a coherent entity I read as I ought, i.e. without mental reserva• with a special mode of being. Dufrenne denies tion, without any desire to preserve my inde• that a work of art has an ideal existence, but pendence of judgment, and with the total he asserts that the aesthetic object, unlike other commitment required of any reader, my com• objects in our phenomenal field , can step out of prehension becomes intuitive and any feeling the ordinary world of space and time. It has proposed to me is immediately assumed by not only an "outside" but an " inside": an au• me." In this state "I am persuaded . .. that I tonomous spatio-temporal world of its own . am freed from my usual sense of incompatibil• Moreover, it has an "expressed" world; a ity between my consciousness and its objects:' un ique soul that permeates and gives life to These comments accord with Bachelard's the matter of the work. Thus the object is also presentation of imagination as a liberating a quasi-subject. Dufrenne, ascribing to it "the transformation of our ordinary sense of reality. coherence of a character," seems to grant it Bachelard discusses aesthetic experience as a some measure of aesthetic integrity. mode of "reverie"- not a nebulous dream state, Ingarden, accused by Dufrenne of "rational• but a condition of repose (like phenomeno• ism:' goes even further toward a rapprochement logical meditation) in which consciousness is with the Aristotelian conception of literary be• fully engaged and finely focused. Moreover, he ing. He claims that Aristotle was "naive" in treats this experience as archetypal-a return giving a pseudo-empirical account of literary to the primordial images and structures of con• objects, but that the Poetics is genuinely sig• sciousness-and thus as a special fulfillment nificant for its unremitting attention to general and refreshment of our humanity. structural features of works. Aristotelian analy• Dufrenne points out the paradox in aesthetic sis is akin to p. insofar as it encourages exhaus• experience of a psvchological detachment co• tive description of a work's inherent qualities existing with a profound involvement, and he and their organization, before attempting (if at sees th is as an affirmative response of the whole all) to relate the work to the world external self. Although meaning in art remains com• to it . pletely im manent, aesthetic experience is a For Ingarden a poem is an "intentional ob • valid form of knowledge-ultimately a self• ject" which achieves distinctness and self -pres• epiphany . The object's aura of imaginative ence only as it is concretized in a direct ex• freedom evokes a response of imaginative free • perience b) a reader or listener. But the nature dom, and the object's depth reveals a corre• of this experience is in part governed by quali• sponding depth within the self. ties and relationships in the four "strata" of Ingarden's account of aesthetic experience is -[ 963 ]- SUPPLEMENT grounded in a consideration of representational Le Poetique (1963). "Critique Iitteraire et literature. He attributes "value-qualities" to phenornenologie," Revue internationale de phi• each stratum of a work , but the most im• losophie,69 (1964); M. C. Beardsley. Aesthetics portant are those emanating from its repre• (1958). Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the sented world. Ingarden identifies them as Present (1966); J. H. Miller, Charles Dickens : aspects of life itself (e.g.• the tragic, the seduc• The World of Hi s Novels (1958); H . Spiegel• tive . the charming) which suffuse a whole work berg, The Phenomenological Movement (2 v.• with a generic character or distinctive tone. In 1960). "On Some Human Uses of P.,'· in P. in calling these qualities "metaphysical," Ingarden Perspective, ed. F. J. Smith (1970); N. Oxen• suggests that meaning in literature does not re• handler. "Ontological Crit, in America and main merely immanent. One value of aesthetic France," MLR , 55 (1960), "The Quest for Pure experience is that certain aspects of life . includ• Consciousness in Husserl and Mallarme,' in ing those which might cause distress if en• The Quest for Imagination. ed . O. B. Hardison countered in personal experience, can be con• (1971); R . Ingarden, "A Marginal Commentary templated in serenity and detachment, and we on Aristotle's Poetics ," tr. H . R . Michejda, may thus arrive at new insights into our ex• JAAC, 20 (1962). Das literarische Kunstwerk (4th istence. (Again, Ingarden's position is analogous ed., 1972); M. Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non• to Aristotle's.) sense, tr . H. L. and P. A. Dreyfus (1964). Signs, The critical themes which have been sketched tr, R. C. McCleary (1964); P. Brodtkorb, Ish• here--imagination as a source of freedom and mael's White World (1965); P. Ricoeur, Hus• as an act grounded in material categories. the serl, tr. E. G. Ballard and L. E. Embree , (1967); literary work as an autonomous intentional ob• S. N. Lawall. Critics of Consciou sness (1968); G. ject. the experiencing of the work as a humanly Poulet, " P. of Reading," NLH. 1 (1969); E. F. fulfilling meditation-all suggest the funda• Kaelin, Art and Existence (1970); W. Gass, Fic• mentally aesthetic orientation of phenomeno• tion and the Figu res of Life (1971); R. Magli• logical poetics. This same orientation is evident ola, "The Phenomenological Approach to Lit.: in other applications of p.• both direct and in• Its Theory and Methodology," Language and direct: the lively practical criticism of the Style ,5 (1972). K .K . Geneva School; the elaboration in modern fic• tional theory of such traditional concepts as PLAINT. See COMPLAINT. the authorial self. symbolism. and character (e.g.• by J. Hillis Miller, Paul Brodtkorb, and POETIC CLOSURE refers most broadly to the William Gass, respectively); and analyses of arts manner in which poems end or the qualities other than literature--most interestingly. the that characterize their conclusions. More spe• treatments of film by Ingarden, Eugene Kaelin. cificallY. the term is used to refer to the and some contemporary "auteur critics." The achievement of an effect of finality, resolution. rhetoric of p. gives priority to such aesthetic and stability at the end of a poem. In the latter qualities as intensity or elan, novelty. univer• sense. p.c. appears to be a universally valued sality. and complexity of texture. But equally quality, the achievement of which is not con• significant is the readiness of phenomenological fined to the poetry of any particular period or critics to delineate all that is given in aesthetic nation. Its modes and the techniques by which awareness, to speak as if even the most tenuous it is secured do. however, vary in accord with features of a work-what Beardsley calls "hu• stylistic. particularly structural. variables. man regional qualities" (e.g., warmth. elegance. Closural effects are primarily a function of plenitude)-were no less "real" than those the reader's perception of a poem's total struc• qualities we normally think of as objective. ture; i.e.• they depend upon his experience of E. Husserl...P.... tr . C. V. Solomon. in En• the relation of the concluding portion of a cyclopedia Britannica (14th ed., 1927), Ideas , poem to the entire composition. The generat• tr. W.R.B. Gibson (1931). Cartesian Medita• ing principles that constitute a poem's formal tions. tr , D. Cairns (1960); F. Kaufman. "Art and thematic structure characteristically arouse and P.," in Philosophical Essays in Memory of in the reader continuously changing sets of ex • Edmund Husserl, ed . M. Farber (1940); G. pectations. which elicit from him various "hy• Bachelard, L'Air et les songes (1943). The potheses" concerning the poem's immediate Poet ics of Space. tr . M. Jolas (1964), On Poetic direction and ultimate design. Successful clo• Imagination and Reverie, ed . and tr.C. Gaudin sure occurs when. at the end of a poem. the (1971); J. ·P. Sartre, The Psychology of Imagina• reader is left without residual expectations: his tion, tr . B. Frechtman (1948); M. Heidegger, developing h} potheses have been confirmed Erliiutetungen w Holderlins Dichtung (2d ed .• and validated (or, in the case of "surprise" 1951), Being and Time, tr. J. Macquarrie and endings. the unexpected turn has been accom • E. Robinson (1962); M. Dufrenne, Phenome• modated and justified retrospectively). and he nologie de l'experience esthetique (2 v., 1953; is left with a sense of the poem's completeness, Eng. tr. by E. S. Casey and others in 1973), which is to say of the integrity of his own -[ 964 ]- POETIC CLOSURE-POETRY & OTHER ARTS experience of it and the appropriateness of its critical and poetic m inds and challenge and cessation at that point. puzzle philosophers. Closure ma y be strengthened by certain spe• Persistence of numerology and number-sym • cifically term inal features in a poem , i.e., things bolism in Western thought is important in cer• that happen at the end of it. These include the tain aspects of interrelationship between poetry repetition and balance of formal elements (as and the other arts. The chapter of Mario Praz's in alliteration and parallelism), explicit allu• Mnemosyne entitled "Sameness of Structure in sions to finality and repose, and the terminal a Variety of Media" shows the significance of return, after a deviation, to a previously es• the domination of Greek art by Pythagorean tablished structural "norm" (e.g., a metrical and Platonic ideas with their mystical cosmo• norm). Closural failures (e.g., anticlimax) logical number-symbolism. In such terms Hans usually in volve factors that, for one reason or Kayser has equated the structure of a Greek another , leave the reader with residual expecta• temple to music, and Praz considers it equally tions. They may also arise from weak or in • appropriate to compare it to the structure of a compatible stru ctural principles or from a sty• Greek tragedy. He traces in similar fashion the listic discrep anc y between the structure of the influence of th e Pythagorean tradition during poem and its mode of closure. Weak closure the medieval period in the building of the ma y, however , be deliberately cultivated, and Gothic cathedrals and cites Willi Drost and it has been observed that much modern poetry Erwin Panofsky as seeing " a perfect corre• shares with modern works in other genres and spondence between the Gothic cathedral and artforms a tendency toward apparent " anti• scholastic philosophy." According to medieval closure," i.e., the rejection of strong closural theories of numerical structure, as R . A. Peck effects in favo r of irresolution, incompleteness has observed, "things measured by the same and, more generally, a quality of "openness."• numbers were thought to be in some way cor• B. H. Smith, Poetic Closur e: A Study of How respondent" and could therefore help one to Poems End (1968). 8.H.S. comprehend something of the patterning of God's creation. Thus numerology and number• POETRY AND THE OTHER ARTS. PARAL• sym bolism (drawing upon the famous phrase LELISM AND INTERRELATIONS. At the beginning from the Wisdom of Solomon, 11:21: "sed of his Poetics Aristotle sees various art-forms omnia in mensura et numero et pondere dis• as having in common an essential representa• posuisti "-"But You [God] arranged all things tion of life or mimesis; and Cicero later reo in proportion and number and weight") per• marks generally in his Pro Archia (1.2) upon meated medieval man's theory of poetics as " the subtle bond of mutual relationship" well as his theory of Nature and served with among the arts. More specifically, Simonides of their attendant religious orientation to pro• Ceos (ca. 556-468 B.C.) is cited in an early work vide a powerful uniting force between poetry of Plutarch (De Gloria Atheniensium 3.347a) and all the other arts. Ernst Robert Curtius as calling poetry "a speaking picture" and re • has remarkable sections in his European Litera• ferring to painting as "silent poetry: ' Horace, ture and th e Lat in Middle Ages (1953) on "Nu• in a famous pa ssage (Ars Poetiea 361), sim i• merical Composition" and " Nu merical Apo• larly likens a poem to a picture (see UT PICTURA thegms" which demonstrate at least something POESIS) and further urges "the labor of the file" of the superficies of the matter and show the (Iimae labor ) in the fashioning of verse. persistent influence of a philosophic and mys• If poetry, in the terms of Horace and Si• tical numerically controlled form in poetry . rnonides, thus has certain affinities with paint• In a less m ystical and less philosophical ing and the plastic arts in general, its rela• sense , it is obvious that poetry frequently bor• tionships with music are deeply rooted in the rows from the other arts and that they in turn very concept of lyric poetry (or iginally con• borrow from poetry. A few examples will serve ceived among the Greeks to mean poetry sung here to suggest how rich this interchange has to the accompaniment of the lyre). In medieval been. Poetry draws striking effects from paint• Europe this immediate interrelationship sur• ing or th e plastic arts generally in such fa• vived in the troubadour poets of Provence and mous examples as Homer's description of the the German minnesingers; but, with continu• shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.478-608) and Ver• ing development of music as a discrete art• gil's of the shield of Aeneas (Aeneid 8.625-731) form, music and poetry lost much of the im• -the paintings on the garden wall in Guil• mediacy of their earlier communion, while a laume de Lorris's first part of Le Roman de la somewhat confusing voca bulary of related Rose-Dante's " visible speech" in the lovel y terms (mus ic, harmony, rhythm, etc .) survives sculpture of the Annunciation and the sculp• in relation to both arts to perplex us even tures of David and Trajan in the tenth canto today , Yet music and poetry continue their of the Purgatory-Chaucer's description of the mutual in spi ration, and many of the parallels monuments to episodes from the Aeneid in The and interrelations between them still fascinate House Of Fame (1.119-467)-and, in more -[ 965 ]- SUPPLEMENT modern times, Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn parison can lead, and Maurice Souriau has and Gautier's and the Parnassians' numerous called for rigorous definition in such discussion transpositions d'art . Examples are lim itless. and avoidance of metaphor, which he terms Jean Hagstrum has even shown how descrip• "[la] peste de I'esthetique comparee: ' Yet there tive poets created romantic landscapes by turn• are memorable parallels and correspondences ing into verse the themes of such seventeenth• expressed; and one can hardly allow the claim century painters as Claude Lorrain and Salvator that the intuitive impressions of poets and Rosa. A gallery of pictures drawn from po• critics are of no value here and that the only etry could be similarly impressive in illustra• voices worth heeding are those of aesthetic tions for the writings of such poets as Homer, philosophers or descriptive analysts. Vergil , Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, La Fon• Examples of supposed parallelism between taine, Goethe, and Byron. Baudelaire, one of poetry and other arts provide an odd assort• the finest of literary art critics, wrote that the ment of plausible and implausible relation• best critical account of a painting ma y be a ships. A.W. Schlegel, for example, saw classical sonnet or an elegy and offered in his poem Les literature as sculpturesque in nature, and mod• Phares eight notable impressionistic quatrains ern and romantic poetry as pictorial. Pope's on the work of eight separate painters and couplets have been elaborately compared to sculptors. Palladian architecture, and relationships have Poets have written fine poems inspired by been proclaimed between Gothic architecture music, like Fray Luis de Leon's Oda a Francisco and poems as different as Spenser's Faerie Salinas and Dryden's two Songs for Saint Ce• Queene and an Old Fr. epic. For Sir Herbert cilia's Day (1687, 1697); and innumerable Read the meter of the Anglo-Saxons is com• poems have been set to music (as an extreme parable with their ornaments, and an early example one may cite Les papillons by The• landscape by Gainsborough recalls Collins' Ode ophile Gautier for which 4!l different compos• to Evening, while his later landscapes recall ers are listed by Spoelberch de Lovenjoul), As qualities of Wordsworth. Impressions of ba• for relations in poetic form , Calvin Brown has roque architecture are discovered by F. W . shown through a detailed analysis of Walt Bateson in Thomson, Young, Gray, and Col• Whitman's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard lins ; and the poetry of John Keats has been Bloom'd that, though the poem has no specific compared variously with sculpture, painting, musical structure, it yet conforms to certain and music. The parallels between the Ode on general structural principles which he finds a Grecian Urn and sculpture are obvious "more musical than literary:' Many poems enough even in the poem's inspiration; but this (like Lamartine's Preludes) have inspired inde• is only a beginning. Keats 's blue has been pendent musical compositions; and Mallarme's likened to the blue of Re ynolds; his Ode to a L'Apres-midi d'un jaune was the inspiration Nightingale has been related to the andante for illustrations by Manet, music by Debussy, movement of Brahms' First Symphony; his ef• and a ballet by Nijinsky which was presented fects have been compared to Turner's; and in 1912 with decor, costumes and setting by Yeats once wrote to his father that Keats Bakst, under the overall direction of the great "makes pictures one cannot forget and sees impresario Diaghilev, them as full of rhythm as a Chinese painting:' On the subject of subtle correspondences be• In the present century Mario Praz finds re• tween poetry and the other arts and between markable parallels between pa inting and po• the arts in general there has been long con• etry. He sees Rimbaud and Lautreamont along troversy, and critical and impressionistic dis• with Freud in the background of Picasso and cussion on the subject has been pursued with Dali, compares with surrealist painting the undiminished interest over the years. In A nine lines of Eliot's The Waste Land beginning Parallel of Poetry and Painting (1695), Dryden "A rat crept softly through the vegetation," equated "bold metaphors" in poetry with and discovers abstract art already in Apol • "strong and glowing colors" and saw similar linaire's Calligrammes.· The poems of E. E. effects resulting from certain tropes and figures Cummings remind him of the paintings of in poetry and lights and shadows on a painter's Mondrian, Kandinsky, and Klee; and he calls canvas. Lessing, on the contrary, in his Laokoon Cummings' technopaignia "poetry and paint• (1766), distinguished sharply between temporal ing at the same time, a new application of the and spatial forms in art and the different ef• Alexandrian principle ut picture poesis. . . ." fects of their internal structures, and later The whole problem of the interrelationships Irving Babbitt, in The New Laokoon (1910), of poetry and the other arts is still unsettled inveighed against the confusion of the arts; but and seems likely to remain so. Paul Maury, their obvious interrelationships continue to while seeing great var iet y in formal aspects of tempt literary critics into many winding paths. the different arts, would seek an explanation Rene Wellek and G. Giovannini have shown of their harmony in their common socio-ideo• some of the excesses to which this sort of com - logical origins; but G. Giovannini contends -[ 966 ]- POETRY & OTHER ARTS-POETRY READING that the relation of the fine arts to reality is century that they all aspire to the condition very delicate and complex and that their his • of music, and in the abbe Bremond's' more tory seems to show that "reality is often merely recent rejoinder in La Poesie pure (1926) as a a suggestion for design" and is, at all events, prelude to his Priere et poesie that, on the con • extremely variable. Rene Wellek urges that trary, they all asp ire to the condition of prayer. current methods of comparing the arts are See also Batteux, Les Beaux arts reduits Ii of little value, that they should be studied un meme principe (1746); P. Maury, Arts et rather in the structural relations between them litterature compares (1934); R. Wellek, "The and not through metaphor and analogy. But Parallelism between Lit. and the Arts ," EIE, this will call for a new system of aesthetics. 1941 (1942); E. Souriau, La Correspondence Wellek considers misleading the once-popular des arts: Elements de l'esthetique comparee idea of a unitary time-spirit pervading all the (1947); C. S. Brown, Music and Lit.: A Com• arts of a given period and notes pertinently parison of the Arts (1948); G. Giovannini, that the arts "do not evolve with the same "Method in the Study of Lit. in Its Relation speed at the same time." He would stress the to the Other Fine Arts," JAAC, 8 (1950); H . importance of genuine parallels between the Hatzfeld, Lit. through Art:A New Approach to arts, and he remarks that norms of art are Fr. Lit. (1952); j, H. Hagstrum, The Sister "tied to specific classes" so that revolutions Arts: The Tradition of Lit. Pictorialism and bring changes in aesthetic values. Clive Bell, Eng. Poetry from Dryden to Gray (1958); R . G. on the other hand, implies that if the arts are Saisselin, "Ut Pictura Poesis: Du Bos to Dide• one it is primarily in their absolute detach• rot," JAAC, 20 (1961); M. Praz, Mnemosyne: ment from life. The Parellel between Lit. and the Visual Arts Etienne Souriau urges that in the imitative (1970); R . A. Peck, "Numerology and Chaucer's arts it is the design rather than the representa• Troilus and Criseyde," Mosaic , 5 (1972). A.G.E . tional element that gives pleasure, so that the study of harmony among the arts should be a POETRY READING. The formal presentation study of their isolable formal elements. For of poetry read aloud either by its author or by th is, according to Souriau, one must take each an actor-interpreter. Settings for a p.r, can be a art in its own idiom and carefully and pa• literary salon , a poetry workshop, an invita• tiently establish the lexicon of translations and tional event like johann Wolfgang von Goethe's not hesitate at need to write int raduisible. (1749-1832) readings from his work before the Thomas Munroe in the second edition of The Court of Weimar, or a quasi-theatrical per• Arts and Their Interrelations (1967) includes formance at which a poet, poets, or interpreters a systematic classification of "Four Hundred of poetry address a wide public. By extension Arts and T ypes of Art," which shows some • to the electronic media, p. readings can also thing of the extent and nature of the problem. take place via radio or television broadcasts, In Feeling and F01'm (1953), Susanne Langer as well as through phonograph records and urges the need to recognize " the deep di visions electromagnetic tapes. It is assumed, however, among the arts ... that set apart their ver y that work presented in a p.r. has been com • worlds" and to examine their differences and mitted to writing and may be available in trace their distinctions as far as this is pos• published form. Thus defined, the p.r. is dif• sible. But she sees ultimately a limit to such ferentiated from oral poetry (q.v.: "composed di stinctions and expresses a belief that "the in oral performance by people who cannot symbolic function is the same in every kind read or write"), from productions of a poet's of artistic expression" and that all divisions dramatic works, and from the classroom read• end at a final depth in unity-a point which ing of poetry for teaching purposes. recalls Croce's insistence in La Poesia (1937) Occidental p. readings from the Greeks to the that the ultimate aesthetic concepts are the 19th c. centered on invitational performances same in all the arts. in courtly settings. This tradition appears also It seems unlikely that 20th-c. aestheticians in read presentations of Chinese and japanese will be able to alford for the problem anything poetry (qq.v .) and continues in 20th c. japan. like the encompassing framework of a Charles It is likely that p. readings took place at the Batteux in the 18th c., who (in an age gov• Alexandrian court of the Ptolemies (ca. 325-<:a. erned at the highest cultural level by the gen• 30 B.C.) and in the aristocratic residence of C. eral idea of " taste") could reduce all the fine Cilnius Maecenas (d. 8 B.C.), who encouraged the arts to the single principle of the imitation of work of Vergil (70-19 B.C.), Horace (65-8 B.C.), "beautiful naturev-e-or that of medieval nu • and Propertius (ca. 47-15 B.C.). Trimalchio, in merology, whose mathematical bases for the the fiction of Petronius' (d. A.D. 66) Satyricon, first arts bound them so firml y into religion and writes, then recites his own "poetry" to the mystical philosophy. Yet we have recurrent ex• guests at his banquet. Written poetry was re• amples of the urge to bring the arts once more cited at the 13th -c. court of Frederick II (see together in Pater's statement within the last SICILIAN SCHOOL), in the Florentine circle of La- -[ 967 ]- SUPPLEMENT renzo de'Medici (1449-92) and, according to La rhapsodic recitation. His poetrv was written to Bru yere (1645-96) , in the late 17th-c. salons of be read aloud. Disciples permitted to partici• the Princes de Conde. Within Goethe's long pate in the p .r.were obligated to follow George's life , the p.r, changed from a courtly to a pub• style of reading both for h is and for their own lic function. As a young poet of the late 1770's, work . As the Kreis became, during World War Goethe read his work at the Weimar court of I and after, ever more consciously German and Carl August; on the occasion of a production xenophobic in outlook and as the poet's style of Faust to commemorate his eightieth birth• of dress and demeanor grew increasingly remi• day in 1829, he personally coached the actors niscent of Richard Wagner's, the p. readings in the elocution and delivery of lines. Public approached ideals implied in Die Me ister• recitation of their work by poets and their ad• singer even more closely than the practices of mirers became commonplace in the 19th c. Mallarrne's "Tuesdays." The format was generally quasi-theatrical. Ed• Some of these ideals carried over to modes of gar Allan Poe (1809-49) in America, Victor p.r, characteristic of the first half of the 20th c. Hugo (1802-85) in France, and Alfred, Lord William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) was much Tennyson (1809-92) in England are examples concerned with having his work sound spon• of major poets noted for the dramatic quality taneous and natural. Though his style of read• of their readings. The work of Robert Brown• ing was dramatic and incantatory, he deliber• ing (1812-89) was recited in meetings of the ately revised some poems so that they would Browning Society (founded 1881), an organiza• sound like an ordinary man talking under tion which produced hundreds of offshoots in normal circumstances. By contrast, T . S. Eliot's the U.S. of the 1880's and 1890's. A Goethe (1888-1965) p. readings were aristocratic and Gesellschajt (founded 1885) brought readings cultic in style. The Wagnerian prescription of from the poet's work to places as distant from having the reader seem at once spontaneous in each other as St. Petersburg, Manchester, and expression but, in his person, remote from an New York, for each of which an 1890 member• audience had its most splendid 20th c. exem• ship list shows a sizeable potential audience. plification in the p. readings of Dylan Thomas Richard Wagner's (1813--83) opera Die Meister• (1914-53). Thomas's regal, dramatic stance, and singer von Niirnberg (musical version, 1867) sacral incantations offered sharp contrast to brought the late medieval German tradition of the secular, conversational p, readings of Rob• p. readings by members of craft guilds to the ert Frost (1875-1963) and W . H. Auden (1907• attention of a vast international audience. 74), in which the poet presents himself as if Centered on the historic figure of Hans Sachs in dialogue with his audience, to whom he of• (1494-1576), Wagner's work favors "spontane• fers commentary and aside s in the course of the ous" oral poetry in the tradition of Greek reading. Auden's and Frost's style of presenta• rh apsodists, Provencal troubadours, and Ger • tion became normative for many modes of p.r. man minnesingers (qq.v.) over a reading of developing in the second half of the 20th c. poems written by others than the poets. Wag· Dadaism and surrealism (qq.v.) also helped ner stresses the superiority of national over for• shape the conventions of the later p.r. These eign idiom, of aristocratic over bourgeois poetic vanguardistic European movements of the sec• voices (Stolzing vs. Beckrnesser), and of desira• ond and third decades of the century generated bility of correlation between the physical ap • presentations in which p, readings were staged pearance of the poet and the quality of his simultaneously with music, dance, or film. The work. at least apparently unplanned, spontaneous Wagner's poetics, as expressed in Die Meister• character of dadaist and surrealist events in • singer, is central to symbolist conceptions of fluenced p . readings of the 1950's and 1960's the p.r. Stephane Mallarrne (1842-98) read his in their function as components in both multi• poetry to a select audience of never more than media presentations and random artistic " hap• twelve , on designated "Tuesdays" at which the penings." P. readings held during World War I poet himself played both host and reader in and in the decade to follow as vehicles of so• quasi-cultic, priestly style. While Mallarrne's cial protest and as revolutionary proclamations poetry was anything but spontaneously written, were models for similar presentations in the his oral presentation as part of the dramatic second half of the century. This was true not monologue which characterized his "T uesdays" onl y for dadaist and surrealist p , readings but both personalized and socialized the work. also for those held in early post-revolutionary Stefan George's (1868-1934) mode of reading Soviet Ru ssia (see RUSSIAN POETRY). Vladi• poetry was consciously influenced by Mal • mir Mayakovskv (1894-1930), self-proclaimed larme's: the audience was restricted to the "dru mmer of the October Revolution" sang its poet's circle of disciples (Kreis) and the oc• praises in h rics written to be read aloud. casion of the p.r. was perceived as cultic and Mayakovskv 's di amatic p. readings attracted sacral. While George read from manuscript, mass audiences not only in the U.S.S.R. but he followed a self-prescribed, strict mode of also in Western Europe and in the U.S. His -[ 968 ]- POETRY READING

use of the p.r. as a forum of political declama• linghetti. The German poet Peter Riihmkorf tion has been internationally emulated into the (b. 1929), the Austrian Ernst Jandl (b. 1925), 1970's. In the U.S.S.R. itself, the politicized the Dutch Simon Vinkenoog (b. 1928), and the p .r, has been institutionalized through the ob• Russian Andrei Voznesensky (b. 1933) are servance, since 1955, of an official, annual " Po• strongly connected to European p.r. presenta• etry Day" held in Moscow, Leningrad, and tions in the San Francisco style. other large cities. During World War II, the Whatever the style or era, the problem B.B.C. broadcast p. readings by poets exiled arises whether the actual audience reception from countries then occupied by the Germans of a work coincides with its intentions (q.v .), for the specific purpose of sustaining national As the examples of Dylan Thomas and Robert consciousness. Frost show , a poet's own staging of his work Since the 1950's, the p.r. on the Western side can make it appear more meaningful and com • of the Iron Curtain has been overwhelmingly manding than a reader might gather from the an Am . phenomenon. Its tone is "democratic," printed page. Whether the poem is read by ranging from polite conversational idiom to himself or by another, there is no guarantee street language. P. readings by one poet only that a p.r. audience will hear what was " in• ha ve been increasingly rare; the more usual tended" in the making of the poem. Ways of format ranges from two to six, with marathon assessing refraction between poetic intentions p . readings by a multitude not uncommon. and what is heard in a p.r. have only begun to The separation of the poet from his audience be studied. Widely different approaches to the has all but van ished. Conversation between problem by descriptive linguists (Seymour stage and auditorium in the course of the p.r. Chatman, Samuel R. Levin), on the one hand, is usual; " open p. readings" are events to which and by phenomenological critics (Georges anyone ma y bring his work to read. Locales Poulet, Wolfgang Iser) on the other, agree that and audio-visual dimensions for p. readings identity between poetic intentions and what are diversified : church basements, coffee houses, emerges from the act of reading is highly un• and public parks serve as often as theaters, likely. For phenomenologists a poem achieves college auditoriums, and private homes. In a true existence only as it is "animated" within many p. readings the physical presence of the consciousness of a reader. The principle either poets or live actors is unnecessary, since applies even if the reader is the poet himself: cassette tapes, loudspeakers, phonograph rec• when he approaches his poem at any moment ords, radios, or television sets can transmit the other than that of its inception, he is incarnat• work presented. Moreover, language is no ing the text in a new way. Linguists see the longer the p. reading's sole medium of com• necessary choice of one particular interpreta• munication, since jazz or rock music, electronic tion for reading purposes as a barrier between visual effects, and spontaneous dramatic pres• identity of intention and performance; also, entations ("happenings") may accompany the they note that phonetic differences between event. Costumes for poets reading are arbitrary, written text and spoken delivery, constrained ranging from business suits and evening dress by the range and pitch limitations of the hu • to coveralls and, occasionally, total nudity. In man voice often make impossible oral replica• spite of what may appear a partial merging tion of texts in the p.r, The strong 20th-c. of the p .r. with a variety of other social and popularity of the p .r ., which seems greater than cultural phenomena, it has not lost its sacral general interest in reading poems from the character. Many audiences consider the p .r , a printed page in private, is probably more cultic group experience, a sharing of special deeply rooted in the dramatic-sacral character sentiments. Features beyond the presentation of the event than in the literary quality of of poetry itself (e.g., reading it naked, to the poetry presented. M. v. Boehn, "Faust und die accompaniment of bongo drums) are perceived Kunst," in J. W. v. Goethe, Faust (Centennial as reinforcements of this sharing. Consumption Ed ., 1932); H. Mondor, La Vie de Stephane of mind-altering drugs and alcohol during the Mallarme (1941); E. R . Boehringer, Mein Bild p.r. is not uncommon for the same purpose. von Stefan George (1951); K. Wais, Malla rmc Prominent innovators were the beat poets (2d ed., 1952); E. Salin, Urn Stefan George (2d (q .v.), notably Allen Ginsberg (b. 1926), Greg• ed., 1954); S. Chatman, "Linguistics, Poetics, ory Corso (b. 1930), and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Interpretations: The Phonemic Dimen• (b. 1919), all participants in an important 1957 sion ," Quarterly Jour. of Speech, 43 (1957); San Francisco p ,r . to the accompaniment of Evergreen Review, I , no. 2 (1957); A. B. Lord, jazz. In the 1960's and 1970's, New York and The Singer of Tales (1960); The Penguin Book San Francisco have been the two ma jor Am . p.r, of Russian Verse, ed . D. Obolensky (1962); S. centers, with London, Amsterdam, and West Levin, "Suprasegrnen tals and the Performance Berlin constituting European counterparts, of Poetry," Quarterly Jour. of Speech , 48 these latter marked by contacts and actual p. (1962); K. T. Loesch, " Lit. Ambiguity and readings involving Ginsberg, Corso, and Fer- Oral Performance," ibid., 51 (1965); D. Lever- -[ 969 ]- SUPPLEMENT tov, "Approach to Public Poetry Listenings," and of Holderlin. Novalis, and Schiller in Ger• Virginia Quarterly R eview, 41 (1965); E. Lucie• many reflects the course of events in France, Smith, "Wild Night," Encounter , 25 (1965); moving from exalted hopes for a regained The New Russian Poets 1953-1968, ed. G. paradise to growing bitterness and disillusion • Reavey (1966); Ein Gedicht und sein Autor, ment. The Gr. nationalistic movement for in• ed. W. Hollerer (1969); G. Poulet, "Phenome• dependence from the Turks in the late 18th nology of Reading," NLH, I (1969); P. Dickin• and early 19th c. stirred not only the Gr. poets, son, "Spoken Words," Encounter, M (1970); Rhigas Pheraios and Dion ysios Solomos, but The San Francisco Poets , ed. D. Meltzer (1971); also Bryon and Shelley in England and Holder• The East Side Scene, ed. A. De Loach (1972); lin in Germany. In Russia the Revolution in • W. Iser, "The Reading Process: A Phenomeno• spired some of the poems of Alexander Blok logical Approach," NLH, 3 (1972); S. Massie, and Andrey Bely (in which apocalyptic notes The Living Mirro r: Five Young Poets from were heard).A much stronger response was Leningrad (1972); P. Turner, "Introd.' to R . that of the futurist poets, many of whom saw Browning, Men and Women 1855 (1972). the revolution as a fulfillment of their dreams W.B .F . about the future. A response equally intense but of a different nature was inspired by the POETRY THERAPY. See PSYCHOLOGY AND Sp , Civil War. Bitterness, indignation, and POETIl.Y.· harsh condemnation of country propels the poetry of the Sp. poets, Leon Felipe and Luis POLITICS AND POETRY. Poetry deals with Cernuda. man's whole sentient being, with his ideas In general, of all the kinds of attitudes and and with his response to what is happening situations that stimulate the writing of politi• in the world around him, and it is not sur• cal poetry, the most consistently compelling prising that for centuries poets have attempted forces in all ages have been love of country to shape into art their understanding of po • and response to war. Unfortunately, patriotism litical ideas or to render permanent their per• has more often generated the kind of strained ception of the political process. Briefly, politi• and vociferous national ardor one finds in the cal poetry may be defined as poetry that deals works of , for example, Gabriele D'Annunzio of with public themes or public figures, with Italy than the reasoned patriotism of Aristoph• events that extend be yond the concerns of the anes or the understated, tender love of coun• individual self. try apparent in The Soldier by Rupert Brooke. While such poetry has been written in vari• Often the pressure of war causes a poet to ous historical periods and has never been con• change his d irection. In response to the Sp . fined to an y particular country, it is more Civil War, Raphael Alberti, a poet of consider• abundantly called forth in times and places able power, forsook his surrealistic poetry of of intense political activity. Although the inner conflict for more conventional methods Middle Ages, for example, was, as a whole, not that would allow him to deal successfully with productive of political poetry, one particular public events. Similarly, the fall of France and period of political ferment, the late 12th and the German oc cupation stung the surrealistic early 13th c. in Germany and France, produced poets Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard into po• a great concentration of political lyrics. The etry of protest. In Aragon's case , in particular, history and politics of these times were dom• his political poetry is far more powerful than inated by major struggles-feudal struggles in his poems of private ex perience. " 'hile the France, imperialistic struggles in Germany, and contemporary Am. poet Robert Bly has always continuing struggles between the Pope and been concerned with social and political secular rulers. Aside from numerous minor themes, the recent war in Viet Nam has driven poets who wrote political songs, the events of him to substitute for his earlier expressionistic the time led two major poets, Bertran de Born mode a poetry of more direct and plangent in Southern France and Walther von der Vo• protest. gelweide in Germany, to write a substantial The degree to which politics and art mingle body of political lyrics. Sometimes in response in an y poem depends upon the approach as to particular events but more often to particu• well as competence of the poet. When trans• lar figures worthy of attack, Bertran and muted int o poetry, political attitudes ma y Walther wrote poetry that was intensely par• merge into the texture of a poem to produce, tisan and pragmatic. as in Yeats's Easter , 19/6, a complex blending Similarly, the nationalistic struggles and of personal and public passion. Equally per• revolutions of later times generated much po• vasive in political poetry is the specificity and litical poetry. The Fr. Revolution provided explicitness one finds, for example, in the war the master theme of the epoch for poets in poems of Karl Shapiro or Richard Eberhart, as England and Germany. The poetry of Blake, in his well-known Fury of Aerial Bombard• Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley in England ment; in Blv's current work, particularlv in -[ 970 1- POETRY THERAPY-POLITICS & POETRY such a poem as The Teeth-Mother Naked at the poets who wrote in England in the second Last (1970): in most of the poetry of Yevtu • half of the 19th c. Filled with the available shenko; or in some of Aragon's poems, one of cliches of the time, the political poetry of, which begins, for example, "Salut a toi Parti for example, Tennyson, Browning, or Swin• qui nias la misereJEt montras l'homme frere burne relies on a public manner, on vatic ut• a ses freres arrnes" ("Hail to you Party which terances, and on emotional impact to achieve denied miseryJAnd showed man as a brother finally a kind of comfortable didacticism. The to his brothers in arms" [Les Yeux et la me• similar dependence on vague rhetoric and moire, 1954]). cliche in some of the poetry of the thirties in Aside from obvious distinctions to be made this c. and in much of the contemporary between good or bad poets, the question that verse produced in the U.S.S.R. by such poets , remains is what causes or constitutes the suc• for example, as Nikolai Asevev, Andrei VOl• cess or failure of political poetry. One may nesenskv, or Alexander Mezhinov, springs clarify the range of the relationship between from the same desire to reach and speak for politics and poetry by reference to two poems large masses of people and again illustrates the of varying success by William Wordsworth, debilitating effects of attempting to shape both inspired, in part, by political responses, poetry to suit conventional public sentiment The Prelude, which we will discuss later, and and to reflect accepted doctrine. All this is the Ode, 1815. not to suggest that there is an unbridgeable In the Ode, 1815 Wordsworth's nationalistic gap between poetry and politics but to point fervor responded to Wellington's victory over out that poetry seldom submits with success Napoleon in an apostrophe to God: to conformity of ideas or feelings. To understand what successful political po• But Thy most dreaded instrument, etry seems to require, we may turn now for a In working out a pure intent, brief look at those books of Wordsworth's Is Man-arrayed for mutual slaughter, Prelude that deal with political and social -Yea, Carnage is thy daughterI conflict. What is striking about these books (11. 106-109) is the completely personal yet wide-ranging vision against which the poet measures the Although Wordsworth later deleted these lines, political, economic, and utilitarian creeds of the vatic strain and the static, unreasoned at• his time, as well as the major event of the titude displayed in them and in much of the age, the Fr . Revolution. Because Wordsworth Ode , in general, is illustrative of the kind of examines doctrine and event in terms of values pitfall into which a poet may fall when he based on a personal vision of the potential writes on political subjects. within the human mind, the political poetry Only in Greek society, where the poet saw in The Prelude successfully avoids the static himself as a characteristic member of his so• or cloudy attitudes of the Ode, 1815 or of Vic• ciety and where poetry acquired sufficient so• torian political poetry and exhibits rather a cial status to become a determinant of social susceptibility to experience and a dimension and political forces, could poetry actually de• of intellectual effort that Shelley had in mind rive its strength from the poet's assumption when he observed that poets are "the unac• of a public manner and from his conviction knowledged legislators of the world" (Defense that he spoke for the mass of men. In later of Poetry, 1821). times , and particularly after the 18th c., the What Shelley seems to have meant is that poet writing upon public events has had to poets influence politics insofar as they carry address an audience which may no longer the seminal ideas that finally determine human share his convictions and has had to deal with history. Whether or not a poet writing on a scale of action and event that exceeds the politics speaks to the great issues of man and grasp of his own personal experience. Like answers them finally , whether or not he has Wordsworth in the Ode , 1815, the poet, ma y the power to inform the thoughts of men in attempt to overcome these barriers to commu• later times, the success of his political verse nication by choosing to deal with standardized will depend upon the extent to which he responses and beliefs, rel ying upon his display brings both his own personal insight to bear of emotion and on technical virtuosity to reach upon public issues and a purview that ex• and overwhelm his audience. His assumption tends beyond any particular issue or event. of a public manner allows him to cloak with This approach is evident in the best politi• an air of importance and validity the common• cal poetry of all ages, in Homer and in Aeschy• place notions of political life, the actual va• lus; in Dante, whose Div ine Comedy is as po• lidity of wh ich he need not attempt to probe. litical as it is theological, and in Shakespeare, Such an approach to political poetry is particularly in the later political plays like sometimes apparent in the abundant political Richard II and Coriolanus. Milton's political poetry of Victor Hugo and is characteristic of sonnets are sometimes flawed by dogmatism, -[ 971 ]- SUPPLEMENT

but Paradise Lost successfully incorporates the More Essays on Gr. Hist. and Lit. (1962) ; political issues of liberty and tyranny into the I. Howe, A World More Attractive: A View larger questions the poem raises about human of Modern Lit. and Politics (1963); M. Adler, nature. The Eng. romantics as a group are per• Poetry and Politics (1965); A. Mazzeo, Ren• haps the most successful in their search for naissance and Revolution (1965); C. M. Bowra, poetic ways of harnessing political impulse. Poetry and Politics 1900-1960 (1966); M. Ade• They generally bring to their political poetry reth, CommItment in Modern Fr. Lit. (1967); commitment, vision, and the ability to face M. Mack , The Garden and the Cit y: Retire• conflicts. Political satire, pervasive in the verse ment and Politics in the Poet ry of Pope (1969); of the 18th c. as well as our own, seems to G. McNeice, Shelley and the Revolutionary create its own limitations since its end often Idea (1969); T. R. Edwards, Imagination and is to carry the reader to an acceptance of a Power:A Study of Poetry on Public Themes one-sided case. The strength or maturity of (1971); K. W. Klein, The Partisan Voice: A political satire depends on whether the poet Study of the Political Lyric in France and can convey a feeling for what is attacked or Germany, 1180-1230 (1971); J. Lucas, Lit. and a sense that he is defending values of society Politics in the 19th C. (1971); V. J . Scattergood, and civilization rather than of a particular Politics and Poetry in the 15th C. (1971); cause or group. In this sense, Pope's political H. J. Cargas, Daniel Berrigan and Contempo• satire is more successful than that of Dryden, rary Protest Poetry (1972); L. C. Knights, Pub • Auden's than that of Aragon. Generally, con• lic Voices (1972). J.Q.K. temporary political poets, particularly the "committed" poets, seem each to veer between PROJECTIVE VERSE. P.v. is a kind of free the extremes depicted in the two poems of verse . It is like other free verse in that it repre• Wordsworth. Poets like Spender, Ginsberg, sents "open" or "field" composition. It is not Neruda, Mavakovsky, Yevtushenko, and Zbig• "closed" verse; that is, it does not depend on niew Herbert, sometimes produce static po • meter and stanzaic patterns for its form. It litical rhetoric unredeemed by imagination and differs from other fre e verse in that it is said sometimes poems of remarkable strength to be energized by the poet's breath (his life which cut through the clouded abstractions force) and moves without excessive modifica• that dominate modern political life . tion or ornamentation by a series of content• To paraphrase Lionel Trilling, a poet writ• heavy lines, many of them of a run-on sort. ing on public issues must organize a union The word "projective" suggests the propulsive between our political ideas and our imagina• character of this kind of verse . Charles Olson, tion (The Liberal Imagination, 1953), and he the chief theoretician of the p.v. movement, succeeds in doing so to the extent that he is declares that a poem must be a " high energy• deeply concerned with values in the realm con struct and, at all points, an energy-dis• beyond politics. Politics itself, after all , has charge." He also insists-in his influential es• to do with the "binding allocation of values" say "P.V.," first published in Poetry New York (D. Easton, A Frameuiork for Political Analy· in 195(}.-that "form is never more than an sis, 1965), and it becomes the poet's task to extension of content," a precept he attributes negotiate between particular political fact and to Robert Creeley, and that "one perception the ultimate values that politics are intended must immediately and directly lead to a to serve. further perception," a dictum that he credits ANTHOLOGIES : Political Poems and Songs Re• to Edward Dahlberg. lating to Eng. Hist., ed . T. Wright (1859); The birth of the verse line, according to Poems on Affairs of State, 1660-1714 , I-VI Olson, occurs as a combined operation of the (1963-72); Of Poetry and Power, ed . E. A. head and the heart. The head, by way of the Gilkes and P. Schwaber (1964); The Eloquence car, creates the syllable: it is there that logo• of Protest: Voices of the 70's, ed. H. Salisbury poeia, the dance of intellect among words, (1972). takes place. The heart, by way of the breath, CRITICISM: C. Brinton, The Political Ideas creates the line: "And the line comes (I swear of the Eng. Romantics (1926); M. Schorer, it) from the breath, from the breathing of the William Blake: The Politics of Vision (1946) ; man who writes, at the moment that he A. P. d'Entreves, Dante as a Political Thinker writes, and thus is, it is here that, the daily (1952); D. V. Erdman, Blake: Prophet against work, the WORK, gets in , for only he , the man Empire (1954); F. M. Todd, Politics and the who writes, can declare, at every moment, the Poet : A Study of Wordsworth (1957); C. V. line its metric and its ending-where its Wedgewood, Poetry and Politics under the breathing, shall come to, termination." Stuarts (1960); B. Snell, Poetry and Society in This emphasis on breathing has produced Ancient Greece (1961); C. Woodring, Politics what is called the "breath line." The poet in the Poetry of Coleridge (1961), Politics in organizes his poem in terms of breath units or Eng. Romantic Poetry (1971); A. W . Gomme, explosions of breath. He pauses momentarily -[ 972 1- PROJECTIVE VERSE-PSYCHOLOGY & POETRY at the end of a line, inhales, and proceeds to PSALM. See HEBREW POETRY. the next line, with its own push of content. When reading his work aloud, the p .v, poet PSYCHIC DISTANCE. See AESTHETIC DISTANCE. sometimes exaggerates this pause for breath, interrupting the natural, propulsive character PSYCHOLOGY AND POETRY. That poetry of the language of the poem.A sensitive read• and psych. impinge upon one another is obvi• ing permits only a short pause, a "semi• ous, since sensations, thoughts, feelings, and comma," to use Denise Levertov's word. P.v. fantasies provide much of the necessary stuff of is sometimes called "breath-line poetry." poetry, and since the psyche is necessary as an The poets of the p .v. movement are also organ of response to it. Less obvious are the called "The Black Mountain School" because limits of this impingement and the extent to the three major figures-Charles Olson, Robert which they demarcate a special area of critical Creeley, and Robert Duncan-taught at Black investigation. This is so because it is difficult Mountain College in North Carolina in the to draw the boundaries either of poetry or of early 1950's and published the Black Moun• psychology. If one regards all mental contents tain Review there. They drew the attention and processes, up to the point at which they of Denise Levertov and other lively talents of hypothetically become either pure instinct or the time, including Paul Blackburn, Joel pure spirit, as psychic, then all of reality that Oppenheimer, and Edward Dorn. And they can be known is psychic; and every aspect of provided the aesthetic rationale for at least poetry might in principle be the subject of one of the beat generation poets, Allen Gins• psychological investigation. And indeed, any berg. piece of criticism that respects " th e reality of In the history of poetic movements of the the psyche" (C. G. Jung), to which poets have 20th C. , p .v. can be seen as a reaction against borne witness throughout the ages, may in a the new criticism (q.v.) of John Crowe Ran• broad but sometimes telling sense be psycho• som, Allen Tate, and Cleanth Brooks, which logical. Moreover, the meeting between psvch., had dominated Am . poetic theory and prac• even in a narrower sense, and poetry has from tice from 1935 to 1950 and emphasized the the outset been complex. Thus when S. Freud virtues of irony, paradox, and meter. But p.v . turned to an ancient tex t of dramatic poetry was not without antecedents. One can trace a for the name of a concept, the Oedipus com• plex, he was deriving psych. from literature line of development from the Am . transcen• and myth; the story and the pattern of mean• dentalist theories of organic form-the idea ing that he perceived in it not only preceded that a poem should be as natural in its shape but colored the scientific concept. Matters are as a tree is-to the practice of such poets as also complicated by the fact that many valuable Walt Whitman, Ezra Pound, William Carlos psychological observations about poetry have Williams, and the Objectivists (see OBJECTIV• been made in passing or by implication in ISM) of the 1930's: Louis Zukofskv, George works about literature not specifically poetic or Oppen, and Charles Reznikoff. The idea of in works even more generally about art and "open" as opposed to "closed" form Olson may the artist. Thus " psychological" may be fairly have derived from Poesie ouuerte, Poesie thought to describe qualities derived from any [erme, a critical work by the Fr. critic Rene of several forms of " knowledge of the psyche," Nelli. rather than a distinct critical area or approach. Some aspects of projectivist theory are shaky But in what follows the focus will be on con• -especially the insistence on the "breath line," scious attempts to cultivate such qualities by since both poet and reader breathe whenever bringing criticism into conformity with psych. they like, without reference to the verse line• as a science striving to be empirical. but it has served to energize a whole generation Every age has its psych. in the sense of a more or less systematic view of the workings of of poets and has produced a remarkable body the human mind; such a view is either assumed of poems that are much closer to the idiom or countered by the poet, and a knowledge of and speech rhythms of the Am . people than it may elucidate his work, for example, as the work of the poets of the 1940's was . If, in knowledge of Elizabethan doctrines of the soul pragmatic fashion, one judges the consequences elucidates Shakespeare (Anderson) or as knowl• of theory rather than the theory itself, one edge of W. James's Principles of Psychology must say that the p .v. movement has been a (1890), with its treatment of "stream of con• success . sciousness," does modern poetry and fiction . S. Stepanchev, Am. Poetry since 1945: A And J. L. Lowes ' study of S. T. Coleridge demo Critical Survey (1965); M . L. Rosenthal, The onstrates that criticism may say much about New Poets, Am . and British Poetry since World the workings of the poetic mind without being War II (1967); J. Dickey, Babel to Byzantium: continuously buttressed by psych. as a systema• Poets and Poetry Now (1968). s.s. tized discipline. But the bulk of criticism using -[ 973 ]- SUPPLEMENT psych. to illumine poetry is derived from psy• from releasing or economizing on energy nor• choanalysis, which first came to literary atten• mally used to keep ourselves logical; we ex• tion with Freud's The Interpretation of perience a sudden sense of psychic energy to Dreams (1900). Indeed, psychoanalysis reflects spare, a sudden psychic profit from cutting a historical moment that is also a moment in down expenses" (N. Holland, 1966, summariz• the life of literature. As K. Burke observes, ing Freud). "In great eras of drama, the audience know More recent criticism has reflected later de• why characters act as they do ," and as H. J . velopments in psychoanalytic theory, effected Muller elaborates, "Stable cultures bring stable by Freud from the 1920's on, by A. Freud, and standard patterns of behavior; motives are H. Hartmann, E. Kris, M. Klein, and others. as socialized as manners. Although characters These developments have largely been con• may be momentarily confused and bewildered, cerned with the powers of the ego to maintain or rebellious, they finally perceive their motives itself and to achieve some sort of viable bal• as clearly as the audience always do ." In a ance amid the forces act ing upon it from period of cultural breakdown, in which a both within and without. Reflect ing these in • novelist and poet such as D. H. Lawrence could terests, psychoanalytic criticism has come to claim to be turning his attention from " the see the literary work not only as a disguised old stable ego" to "allotropic states" of the expression of forbidden wishes but also as a same psychic element, Freud was of enormous reflection of various strategies of the ego for importance in supplying a new socialization of dealing with such wishes and with the moral motives. And psychoanalysis allowed literary feelings they awaken. Manifest content thus critics to concentrate on elements of poetic reflects the transformation of unconscious fan• creation and response that had not received tasies ; and form and meaning, rather than be • attention before. ing merely a disguise, serve the process of that Although Freud did upon occasion write transformation. Art effects the shift of psychic about literary art, as in a book-length study energy from one level to another, and this is of W. jensen's Gradiva, much psychoanalytic in itself pleasurable (Kris), Moreover, these theory about literature developed from sugges• transformations and shifts resemble successful tions in his treatment of religious and cultural sublimations of illicit unconscious fantasy. history , of jokes, of slips of the tongue, of the Literary form "acts out defensive maneuvers uncanny, and especially of dreams. In ap• for us: splitting, isolating, undoing, displacing proaching literature, along with other prod• from , om itting (repressing or denying) ele • ucts of mental life , through the dream, Freud ments of the [pleasurable but anxiety-provok• was following a path partly adumbrated by ing] fantasy." These same principles operate ideas of L. Tieck, A. Schopenhauer, J. Paul, more specifically in the sound structures of F. Nietzsche, F. Vischer, W. Dilthev, and others, poetry (Holland, 1968). Among the more im• who had seen parallels between dreaming and portant psychoanalytic concepts relating to po • artistic creation. In the psychoanalytic view, etic form are those of condensation, when an dreams provide hallucinatory satisfaction of image or character expresses more than one instinctual impulses, and art occupies "an in• psychic tendency, and displacement, when one termediate territory between wish-denying re• psychic tendency is given more than one em • ality and the wish-fulfilling world of fantasy" bodiment, as in Freud's view (following (Freud). Like the dream, the work of art has L. Jekels) of the Macbeths as aspects of a not only manifest content but also latent con• single personality. Used with discretion, these tent derived from the instinct-charged uncon• concepts may illumine poetry, as they do in scious , and much early psychoanalytic criticism G. Hough's discussion of The Faerie Queene. aimed at revealing the dynamism latent within Much psychoanalytic criticism has really the literary work. Thus Freud, and later been a form of what has come to be called E. Jones, saw Hamlet as being about the hero's psychobiographv, often occupied with ferreting incestuous longings for his mother and his out (and in moments of zeal, conjuring up) ambivalence toward his father, and as achiev• "facts" not clearly present in the biographical ing much of its dramatic and poetic effect by record but inferable in accordance with psy• activating and giving expression to Oedipal choanalytical theory. In some literary biog • feelings in the audience. Meaning, in this view, raphies, such as B. Meyer 's of Joseph Conrad, primarily serves to satisfy the mind's demand pschoanalysis convincingly affords important for sense and logic , thus permitting the saris• glimpses into obscure parts both of the writer's faction of forbidden wishes while allaying ob• life and of his work . Several poets have been jections to them. Similarly, "The real pleasure treated extensively in this way, including Edgar in artistic form comes from illogic and non• Allan Poe by M. Bonaparte and Emily Dickin• sense, which, in turn, represent 'the economy son by J . Cody, who bases his conclusions on of psychic expenditures or alleviation from the psychoanalytic theory and on recent develop• pressure of reason.' Our sense of pleasure comes ments in clinical psychiatry. Suggestive refine- -[ 974 ]- PSYCHOLOGY & POETRY ments of th e psychoanalytic approach to po• often expresses contents that have not yet been etry ma y be fou nd in P. Dettering's study of known to consciousness but that have been Rainer Maria Rilke, whose essential poetic full y formed in the unconscious. These con • motives are traceable not only to the classical tents have a compensatory character, providing Oed ipus complex but also to the pre-Oedipal not only the artist but also his age with ma • ph ases of development with which psychoanaly• terials necessary to correct a one-sided world sis has been concerned in recent decades. view and to restore contact with the life-giving Rilke's "narcissism" is seen as a complex mo • unconscious matrix of consciousness. The ar• tivational pattern, expressed in a complex, tist ma y indeed have psychopathological traits, variable and de veloping set of poetic symbols, but this fact does not explain his work, which including that of the angel. Moreover, such in the psychoanalytic view serves the artist's writers as Kris , Holland, and A. Ehrenzweig ego by strengthening its mastery over forces have in recent years dealt more subtly with that threaten it . Rather, Jung sees the artist questions of literary response than earlier as disturbed because his gift and his calling critics had. Psychoanalysis has touched on require the exaggerated development of cer• areas still awaiting exploration that may turn tain psychological functions at the neglect of out to be important for the criticism of poetry, others important to normal life. T . Chouinard for example, the area suggested by J.A .M. (1971) has used Jung's concept of the anima in Meerloo's undeveloped hunch (in Leedy) that an analysis of T. S. Eliot's poetry-G. Hough, poetic rhythm expresses infantile archaic re • incidentally, has commented more generally on sponses of the organism, the innate biological "Poetry and the Anima"-and Chouinard has signal code. Another area is suggested by also (1970) tried to clarify use of the term H. Kohut's description of a narcissistic self "archetype" in Iiteraw criticism and analytical prefiguring and then underlying the devel• psych . The Jungian approach might seem more opment of the ego and, by implication, visible promising for criticism than for literary bi• in certain forms of creativity and of its dis • ography, but K. Wilson has used Jungian ideas turbance. Still another is suggested by Ehren• in a sensitive discussion of Keats's Ode to a zweig's attention to ordering processes beyond Nightingale and of its importance in Keats's conscious control that contribute to artistic life . In her view that poem was based upon form. Moreover, in the fullness of its elabora• an experience of the archetype of the self, the tion as a system , psychoanalysis often has no deepest center of the personality, an experi• rivals in offering at least some psychological ence which resulted in a transformation of explanation of im portant literary phenomena. Keats's view of poetry and his relation to Aside from Freud, the psychologist who has sources of inspiration within himself. The same figur ed most largely in psychological criticism cr itic also uses Jung's typology of psychologi• is Jung, though in it he appears more often as cal attitudes and functions to elucidate specific a name for an attitude or set of ideas than -as qualities of Keats's poetic language. And G. an acti ve influence. Unlike Freud, Jung's ma in Bachelard follows Jung in seeking to create a interest was in the transpersonal elements in partly transpersonal "phenomenology of the lit erature; th e focus of that interest was the sou}." For Bachelard the poetic image is a archety pe (q.v.), Since archetypes belong product of "the dreaming consciousness," in roughly to th e realm of what Aristotle called which " the duality of subject and object is iri • formal causes, as distinct from the efficient descent, shimmering, unceasingly active in its causes studied by psychoanalytic literary criti• inversions:' cism, the concept of the archetype ma y help The ideas of such Gestalt psychologists as the psychological critic to bridge lower and K. Koffka have occasionally been used by higher levels of poetic organization. The liter• critics (Muller), but they have not found an ary artist is for Jung vatic, and his view of abiding place in literary discussion. Continuing art puts him in the line of Plato, Sidney, and and extending the interest of the Gestalt psy• those romantics who stress the relations be• chologists in the holistic qualities of percep• tween poetry and prophecy. His prospective tion, M. Peckham has developed a comprehen• or finalistic view of PS) chic processes, and his sive view of art, including poetry. In his view, view of the unconscious as being composed man "desires above all a predictable and or • of collective as well as personal elements, sug• dered world, ... But because man desires such gest a different relation of the poet to the a world so passionately, he is very much in• unconscious than that described by psychoa• clined to ignore anything that intimates that nal ysis. It is largely the archetype, in its form• he does not have it. And to anything that dis• creating capacity and its numinosit y, that ac• orients him, an ything that requires him to ex• counts for the form of the work and its effect perience cognitive tension he ascribes negative upon the reader (M. Bodkin). Art doe s not, value. Only in protected situations, charac• then, gain its effects primarily through a terized by high walls of psychic insulation, can partial lifting of repression; rather, the artist he afford to let himself be aware of the dis- -f 975 1- SUPPLEMENT parity between his interests, that is, his ex• and poetry, and more generally, upon ques• pectancy or set or orientation, and the data tions concerning the sources, nature, and func • his interaction with the environment actually tions of the fantasy essential to poetry. Some produces." Art, in Peckham's view, offers this of these views have had little resonance in experience. J . O. Love has analyzed mythopo• literary discu ssion ; this fact may suggest some• etic aspects of Virginia Woolf's fiction in ac• thing of the range of possibilities .yet to be cordance with ideas drawn from developmental explored in psychological criticism. cognitive psychology. And psvcholingulstics, Psychological critics often assume more which has some claim to the first half of its agreement about first principles than exists; name, has begun to be used in the critici'sm infelicities of tone in some of their writings of poetry. Since poetry is rich with insights often seem expressions of defensiveness about into the human condition, and since it evokes the conflict of scientific paradigms (T. S. moods and provides models for dealing with Kuhn). Standing his ground, the literary read• them, poetry has been used as a means of er may take heart from a remark by C. S. psychotherapy (Leedy) . But it is largely the Lewis, "that the ease with which a scientific consolatory, homiletic qualities that poetry theory assumes the dignity and rigidity of shares with prose that are emphasized in these fact varies inversely with the individual's scien • efforts, rather than the qualities of epiphany tific education," and from Jung's contention, that make poetry subjunctive rather than indic• in his Tavistock lectures, that every psycho• ative, a matter of being rather than of be• logical viewpoint contains an important ele• coming (Lawler); the student of literature will ment of subjective confession and that the time learn very little from them. has not yet come for a general psychology to The implicit parallels between dreaming, on be possible. Moreover, the literary reader may the one hand, and literary creation and re• feel that on the whole the psychological critic sponse, on the other, continue to be suggestive, does better, for example, with the primitive as may be seen in the fact that both Burke and infantile impulses of sex and aggression and N. Frye have used "dream" as a critical in King Lear than with the level of what term. Moreover, views of dreaming that diverge Aristotle would call theor ia, or knowledge as from those of Freud have been developed by a form of ethical action, in the play. But even Tung, A. Adler, E. S. Tauber, K. Horney, B.S. if such q ualifications sometimes deserve atten• Robbins, E. Fromm, W. Bonime, and others, tion, and even if the first exhilaration of psy• and these views supply a useful perspective on choanalytic criticism is past, the interrelations some psychological criticism. Thus for Jung, between psych . and poetry have by now been "The dream is an experience in self-confronta• well established as a fruitful and ab id ing area tion. Its intent is to reveal rather than con• of critical concern. ceal. The symbols exist not as subterfuges and R. Anderson, Elizabethan Psych. and Shake• disguises but as metaphorical referents" (M. speare's Play.! (1927); J. L. Lowes , The Road Ullman in Bonime, summarizing Jung). In to Xanadu (1927); K. Burke, Counter-State• Jung's view of dreams Freud's distinction be• ment (1931); M. Bodkin, Arch etypal Patterns tween latent and manifest content is largely in Poet ry (1934); K. Muller, Modern Fiction ignored; neither the content nor the structure (1937); M. Bonaparte, The Life and Works of is regarded as arbitrary, but both are thought Edgar Allan Poe (1949); E. Jones, Hamlet and to have the kind of necessity that governs the Oedipus (1949); E. Kris , Psychoanalytic Ex • materials of drama, and the dream is thought plorations in Art (1952); S. Freud, Standard not primarily to provide wish -fulfillment but Ed. (1953-64), lit, IV, Vlit, IX ; F. Hoffman, Freud• to serve the self-regulation of the psyche, and ianism and the Literary Mind (2d ed., 1957); the integration of the personality by compen• W. Bonime, The Clin ical Use of Dreams sating a one-sided conscious viewpoint. Oung (1962); G. Hough, A Preface to The Faerie did not write a single, major study of dreams Queene (1962) and "Poetry and the Anima," comparable to Freud's, but there are good Spring (1973); T . S. Kuhn, The Structure of systematic treatments of dreams from a Jungian Scientific Revolutions (1962): W. Kiell, Psycho• viewpoint by C. A. Meier and H. Dieckmann.) anal)'sis, Psych . and Lit. (1963; bibliog.):G. For Adler and several others, "the dynamic Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, tr . M. Jobs meaning of the dream could be preserved (1964); M. Peckham, Man 's Rage for Chaos without the concept of the unconscious as a (1965); K. Wilson, The Nightingale and the reservoir of aggressive and libidinal impulses. Hawk (1965); N. Holland, Psychoanalysis and ... The peculiarities of dream thought are to Shakespeare (1966) and The Dynamics of Lit. be understood as a particular mode of presen• Response (1968); C. G. jung, Collect ed Works. tation of one's experience and not as the xv (1966) and Analytical Psych .: Its Theory eruption of an unconscious mode of thought" and Practice (1968; the Tavistock Lectures); (Ullman). Such views would seem to have a F. C. Crews, "Lit. and Psych ." [bibliog.], in bearing on the ancient analogy between dream Relations of Lit. Study, ed . J. Thorpe (1967) -r 976 1- PSYCHOLOGY & POETRY-PUERTO RICAN POETRY and Psychoanalysis and Lit. Process (1970); tivities at the Atheneum, and all the important A. Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art writers of that time participated in these pro• (1967); B. Meyer, Joseph Conrad (1967); grams. Following the trends prevalent in P. Dettmering, Dichtung und Psychoanalyse Spain, romantic lyricism dominated the scene , (1969); J. Leedy, Poetry Therapy (1969); from the most passionate nuance to the most T. Chouinard, in the Jour. of Analytical Psvch ., subtle and refined. Some of the best known 15 (July 1970), 16 (Jan. 1971); L. Edel, " Psych. poets wrote about love, but they also excelled and Lit.,' in Encyclopedia of World Lit. in in revealing their patriotism and rejoicing in the 20th C., ed. W. B. Fleischmann, JII (1970); the beautiful landscape of the tropical para• J. O. Love, Worlds in Consciousness (1970); dise. Alejandro Tapia y Rivera (1826-82), Lola J. Starobinski, La Relation critique (1970); Rodriguez de Ti6 (1843-1924), and Jose Gau• H. Kohut, The Analysis of the Self (1971); tier Benitez (1851-80), are the best representa• J.G. Lawler, in Psychiatry, 35 (Aug. 1972); tives of the poetry of the romantic period. C. A. Meier, Die Bedeutung des Traumes Tapia exalted the past and wrote the most (1972); N. Holland, Poems in Persons (1973). extensive poem of the 19th c. in Puerto Rico , SELECTED READINGS: Art and Psychoanalysis, La Sataniada. The thirty cantos in 8-line ed. W. Phillips (1957); Freud, On Creativity stanzas of the composition are reminiscent of and the Uncon scious , ed. B. Nelson (1958); Espronceda's El Diablo Mundo. Lola Rodri• Hidden Patt erns, ed. L. and E. Manheim guez de Ti6 was the first outstanding woman (1966). in the literature of the island. Her love poetry JOURNALS: American Imago (1939- ); Lit. is subtle and delicate, while her patriotic verses and Psych. (1951- ; valuable annual bibliog, are full of vigor and fire. She lived for some beginning with v. 18, which covers 19~5). years in Caracas and in New York as an exile, w.w. and considered Cuba, where she died, her second homeland. One of her contributions to PUERTO RICAN POETRY. The island of the culture of her country is the lyrics that Puerto Rico has been a fertile ground for she wrote for the national anthem, La Borin• poetry since the early 16th c. The Sp. conquis• queiia. Gautier Benitez was a refined and sen• tadores and the church prelates who wrote timental poet whose tender and moving chants their impressions of the land left the mark of to Borinquen are comparable to Becquer's their emotional encounter with this Carib• Rhymes . The I}ricism of his poems expressing bean colony in verse and in poetic prose. Juan the melancholy of being absent from his birth• de Castellanos (1522-1607) dedicated the sixth place and the happiness of the return to the of his Elegi es of Illustrious Men of the Indies shores of his homeland are considered master• to Juan Ponce de Leon a-id Borinquen (Puerto pieces of romantic P.R. poetry: Rico), while the first P.R. born poet, Francisco de Ayerra y Santamaria (1630-1708), excelled Borinquen, nombre al pensamiento grato as a baroque poet in Mexico . The popular como el recuerdo de un arnor profundo ballads, couplets, and traditional religious bello jardin, de America el ornato, songs dedicated to the Epiphany, the cere• siendo el jardin America del mundo. monies of Passion Week and other Catholic inspired festivities, mingled with the music Borinquen, a name loving to the mind and the rhythms of the black slaves and the as the memory of an intense love, remnants of the choral Taino Arevto, survived beautiful garden, flower of America, in a rich oral folklore of poetic enchantment. America being the garden of the world. By the 19th c. Puerto Rico had developed a varied and interesting literary life in wh ich At the close of the century the first impulse poetry was the most important of all the toward a renovation of style and an introduc• genres. Young poets gathered their verse in tion of metrical innovations was already pres• anthologies called "Aguinaldo," "Album," or ent in the works of Jose de Diego (1866-1918), "Cancionero"; the custom of reciting poetry an outstanding member of the generation that and improvising verse in public and official experienced the tr ansfer of Puerto Rico from ceremonies became widespread; poetry con • the domain of Spain to that of the United tests were celebrated with all the adornments States. De Diego is celebrated for both his of the gallant art of love, and the disputes and patriotic verse and love poems . The symbolism sati rical criticism provoked by social and po• attached to the flag, the anthem, the birds and litical problems left their mark in some poems trees of the landscape of the island are some of the period. The founding of the Atheneum of his favorite topics. in 18'13, to serve as the intellectual center to Modernismo (q.v.) in Puerto Rico , besides express the creative urge of the writers, marked following the aesthetic credo of Ruben Dario's a very important step in the development of musical poetry, enriched with new rhythms poetry. Lectures and recitals were regular ac- and beautiful imagen, served the purpose of -[ 977 ]- SUPPLEMENT expanding the creative horizons of the island's childhood memories and her passionate love poets in search of universal values. Luis Llo• for P.R. independence; Juan Antonio Corret• rens Torres (1878-1944), Virgilio Davila (1869• jer (1908- ), political leader and poet deeply 1943), Luis Pales Matos (1898-1959), and Eva · involved with the essence of the Indian and risto Ribera Chevremont (1896- ) represent Sp. roots of the culture of Puerto Rico; Fran• this period, although they surpassed the mod• cisco Matos Paoli (1915- ), a refined voice ernistic movement and opened the way to• in search of spiritual and transcendental mean• ward the Vanguard modalities after the First ings, and Luis Hernandez Aquino (1907- ), World War (1914-18) . Llorens Torres founded a scholar whose poetry reveals his quest for a literary magazine, Revista de las A ntillas the cultural soul of his people. (1913), which became the vehicle for innova• Poetry magazines published for a short time tions in style and the defense of the Sp. cul • (Mester, Versiones , Lorca) and the literary reo tural traditions of the land. The ideal of views Asomante and Sin Nombre have served Antillean unity was a profound motive of in• the purpose of publishing many poems by spiration present in two of his best poems: young writers who have already been acclaimed Song 01 the Antilles and Mare Nostrum. Luis by the critics. Some P.R. poets have done their Pales Matos became a master of Afro-Antillean work in New York City, and this group repre• poetry in his famous book Tun Tun de Pasa y sents the continuity of what their peers have Griieria (1937), in which the mythology of been doing in the island. Although some may black culture is re-created with magical ca• have spent most of their lives in the United dence and artistic enchantment. States, they continue to write in Sp. and their principal concern is to express their feelings Calab6 y bambu and their attachment to the homeland. Diana barnbu y calab6 Ramirez de Arellano (1919- ), Juan Aviles Es el sol de fuego que arde en Turnbuctu (1904-), Graciany Miranda Archilla Es la danza negra de Fernando Poo (1910- ), and Clemente Soto Velez (1905- ), EI alma africana que vibrando esta have written most of their books in the United en el ritmo gordo del mariyanda. States, where a younger generation, represented by Victor Hernandez Cruz, is exploring new Calab6 and bamboo areas of expression, writing in Eng. but creat• bamboo and calab6 ing new speech patterns by introducing Sp. It's the iron sun that burns in Timbuctoo and Am-Sp, terms. It's the black dance of Fernando Poo Perfect integration of a culture leads to stag• The African soul that is vibrating, nation. Every cultural complex is itself a micro• in the thick rhythm of the mariyand:l.. cosm, in which opposing factors are constantly meeting and clashing so that sometimes one, In other poems Pales expresses the pessimism sometimes its opposite, prevails. This is ap• of his generation, and in his last da ys he wrote plicable to the way in which poetry has been moving poems of love and death. developing in the literature of P.R., and it is Many Vanguard movements, all short·lived evident that the theater, the essay, and modern but impressive in their manifestos, have sue • fiction , especially the short story, have been reo ceeded one after the other during the decades vitalized in the 20th c. by poetry itself, the following modernismo. Some of the theories genre par excellence in P.R . letters. were influenced by the European and Am. ANTHOLOGIES: Poesia puertorriqueiia, ed. L. poets of the 20th c., although insistence in Hernandez Aquino (1954); Aguinaldo lirico de defending the identity of P.R. culture has la poesla pu ertorriqueiia, cd . C. Rosa-Nieves never been absent from their poetry in this (3 v., 1957); Antologia de [ouenes poetas, ed . century. The Sp. names of some of these move • J.M. Torres Santiago (1965); Poesia Ilueva ments are significant: "noismo," based on the puertorriqueiia, ed . L. A. Rosario QUiles (1971); concept of the negative NO; "trascendenta• The P.R . Poets, ed . A. Matilla and I. Silen lismo," suggesting the impulse toward the (1973). metaphysical and the beyond; and "atalayis• HISTORY AND CRITICISM : L. Hernandez Aquino, mo,' a bold and forceful attempt to empha• Movimientos literarios del siglo XX en P.R . size the extravagant side of every possible (1951) , Nuestro aventllm literaria (1966) and idea. The relation with ultraism, cubism, da• El modernismo e ll P.R. (1967; also an anthol.): daism (qq .v.), and other avant-garde groups, E. Rivera, La poesia en P.R. antes de 1843 besides the nationalistic themes used by some (1965); M. T . Babin, [ornadas literarias (1967) of the poets, characterized these movements in and The Puerto R icans' Spirir (1971); C. Rosa• Puerto Rico. Among the most important poets Nieves. PIlIIIlas estelares ell las tetras de P.R . related to them are Francisco Manrique Ca • (v. I, 1967); J. E. Gonzalez, La poesia con• brera (1908- ), author of Poemas de mi temporanea de P.R ., 1930-1960 (1972); M. D. Tierra, Tierra; Julia de Burgos (1914-53), Hill and H.B. Schleifer, P.R. Authors:A who wrote exquisite poems inspired by her Bibliographic Handbook (1974). M.T.B. -[ 978 ]- PUERTO RICAN POETRY-ROCK LYRIC R

fashion a poetry of "soul"--or softened, as in RECANTATION. See PALINODE. the lyrics of Smokey . Robinson, into romantic r. poetry. By the end of the decade black lyri• ROCK LYRIC. From the middle of the 1950's cists such as Marvin .Gaye and Curtis Mayfield to the early 1960's r.I. meant any set of words were using r. lyrics to articulate new subtleties used in conjunction with r. and roll music of social awareness. which had as a distinguishing feature a strong, The major thematic development in the r. evenly accentuated beat most often in four• lyrics of the 1960's was a complete broadening quarter but occasionally in three-quarter time. of subject matter. Coexisting with the by now These lyrics rarely made any claim to poetic traditional treatments of music and love were status. Nevertheless, taken as a whole, they I}rics reflecting rapid changes and dislocations projected the problems and fantasies of post• in society itself, including a growing rejection Korean war adolescence. It is in this sense that of middle-class attitudes. Drug experience be• Richard Goldstein characterizes Chuck Berry came a common topic in r. lyrics , as in Jimi as the " mythmaker" for millions of young Hendrix's Purple Haze. Lines such as the listeners: Berry's lyrics both reflected and cre• Beatles' "She's leaving home after living alone ated a world of fast cars and sexual rivalries for so many years" described the actions as well (Mabellene), mild protest against adult institu• as the wishful dreams of thousands of teen• tions (School Day), and ultimate fulfillment agers . After writing protest songs, which took through the new music (Reelin' and Rockin'). on the status of anthems for the youth counter• Perhaps the main theme of early r. lyrics was culture (Blowin' in the Wind, The Times The)' in fact r. music itself, a celebrating of its sense Are A-Changing), Bob Dylan brought about a of primal energy and the new kinds of dancing fusion of folk and r. Such albums as Highway it made possible. 61 Revisited mingled elements of protest with The other major theme of these lyrics was, of nightmare visions of the modern industrial course, love. Most early r. songs maintained the landscape. Such lyricists as Joni Mitchell and romantic attitudes of the Tin Pan Alley popu• Paul Kantner often transformed protest into lar lyric (the sorrow of unrequited love, the the vision of a new beginning, another Eden. certainty of happiness through true love), In addition to a broadening of themes, r. adapting these to a teen-age audience in simple lyrics of the 1960's were distinguished by a forms designed to fit a steady r. beat. But the more self-consciously literary tone.A number blues tradition within r. allowed for more of traditional poems (Dover Beach, Richard realistic portrayals of love relationships, and Cory) were adapted to r. music, and original many r. lyrics (Money Honey, Hound Dog) ex • lyrics took on , often superficially, elements of pressed cynical, hostile, or abrasive tones pre• modern poetry. (I) The use of archetypal nar• viously underdeveloped in popular music. rative frameworks: Eric Clapton's Tales 0/ Moreover, within the blues tradition, the word Brave Ulysses, David Crosby's Guinnevere. (2) "rock" (like the word "jazz") had often referred Alienation as objectified in a dissociated mod• to sex (as in the traditional Rock Me, Baby), ern sensibility: Paul Simon's The Dangling and some r. songs introduced a new sexual di• Conversation , Dylan's Desolation Row (which mension in the popular lvric-e-either directly refers specifically to Pound and Eliot). (3) A (Work with Me, Annie) or through innuendo corresponding reliance on fragmentation, dis• (Let the Good Times Roll). sonance, and disjunction in verbal surface of Through the 1960's r. lyrics continued to the lvric: the Beatles' A Day in the Lije. (4) draw much of their vitality from the blues Surrealism-used either to render a sense of tradition. In England such groups as the Roil• social chaos (Dylan's Memphis Blues Again) or ing Stones relied heavily on an earthy, frank to reflect strange, perhaps psychedelic, visions sexuality, epitomized in Satisjaction, But in (the Beatles' Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds). America black lyricists like Ray Charles and (5) Ambiguity and allusion, especially in deal• Otis Redding were adding new complexity to ing with drugs: the Jefferson Airplane's White standard themes, and using the traditional Rabbit (which combines double entendres blues technique of the repeated line in more about pills and hashish with references to Alice intricate ways. The toughness of blues could in Wonderland). (6) Obscure, personal sym• be combined with secularized gospel lyrics to bolism that resists paraphrase: the Beatles'

-[ 979 1- SUPPLEMENT

Strawberry Fields Forever . (7) Highly complex Auden (R efugee Blues), some contemporary wordplay and intricate rhymes: Dylan's Subter• poets have either been influenced by r . lyrics ranean Homesick Blues. (8) The development (William Matthews' Ball and Chain) or, like of an ironic mode, analogous to the dramatic Leonard Cohen and Michael Benedikt, written monologue (Randy Newman's Political Sci• r . songs of their own . At present, however, the ence), and adaptable to use in serious drama r.l . has borrowed much more from modern (as in the interpolated sardonic rock commen• poetry than vice-versa, and there remains the tary of Sam Shepard's play Operat ion Side• question of how well r . lyrics can survive on the winder). (9) A tendency toward sustained printed page . With increasing frequency, an• compositions, in which whole groups of songs thologies of contemporary poetry are including form an aesthetic unit (the Beatles' Sergeant lyrics by Paul Simon, Bob Dylan, and the Pepper) or even a "rock opera" (the Who's Beatles. But Allen Ginsberg has suggested that Tommy). the r.l. should be taken together with its music At the beginning of the 1970's the r. opera as a un ique poetic construct: because many Jesus Christ Superstar explored two themes r. lyricists "think not only in words but in mu• which were incipient in many lyrics of the sic simultaneously:' they have created a new 1960's, and which have since become more pow• genre of "personal realistic imaginative erful in r . The first is an overt religious affirma• rhymed verse." tion, with the 1'.1. serving as prayer or hymn. The Age of R ., ed . J . Eisen (1967); The The second is the examination of superstardom Poetry of R., ed . R. Goldstein (1969); R . Christ• as a contemporary cultural phenomenon, the r . gau, "R. Lyrics Are Poetry (Maybe):' Cheetah, star's rise and fall (together with his roles of I (1967); H . Davies, The Beatles (1968; ch. 30); troubadour, sex symbol, and Byronic hero) J. Carey, "Changing Courtship Patterns in the serving as a mythic paradigm . Two other re• Popular Song:' Am. Jour. of Sociology, 74 cent developments in the subject matter of the (1969); L. Roxon, Lillian Roxon's R. Encyclo• r.l, are dev iant sexuality and science-fiction, pedia (1969); Bob Dylan:A Retrospective, ed . both exemplified in the lyrics of David Bowie. C. McGregor (1972); F. Kermode, S. Spender, At the same time many contemporary lyricists seem to be attempting to return to the roots of " Bob Dylan: The Metaphor at the End of the r ., either through 1950's nostalgia or the still Tunnel:' Esquire, 77 (1972); R . Joffe, "Is R . 'n ' vital blues tradition. Roll R eally Here to Stay?" Village Voice, June Just as at an earlier time the popular song 14, 1973; B. Sarlin, Turn It Up (I Can't Hear and the blues influenced modern poets as di • the Words) (1973); D. Swanger, The Poem verse as Eliot (Fragment of an Agon) and as Process (1974). s

SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE. See AMERI• temporary C. S. Peirce (1839-1914) had inde• CAN POETIC SCHOOLS AND TECHNIQUES (CONTEM• pendently worked out an elaborate typology of PORARY).- signs and a metalanguage for discussing them, but his s. was conceived as an expansion of SEMIOTICS (or semiology). The science of logic , and since most work in s. has looked to signs. Considering social and cultural phe• linguistics rather than to logic as a model, nomena as signs, s. studies the systems of rules Saussure has been the more influential figure. and conventions which enable them to have A behaviorist s. associated with Charles Morris meaning. In the field of literary criticism, s. has also been developed, but its stimulus-re• involves the analysis of literature as a use of sponse psychology has made it less useful to language which depends upon supplementary the literary critic than a semiology based on conventions and which explores the signifying linguistics. properties of various modes of discourse. Linguistics might serve as a model for semi• Although reflection on the sign has a ven• ology, Saussure argued, because it stresses the erable philosophical history, s. or semiology in conventional nature of the sign and thus pre• the modern sense dates from Ferdinand de vents the analyst from assuming that non• Saussure (1857-1913), who argued that lin• linguistic signs are in some way "natural" and guistics should form part of a general science require no explanation. By considering cultural of signs, which he called semiology. His con- phenomena as the products of various "Ian- -[ 980 1- SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE-SEMIOTICS guages" one is led to study the systems of con• is to explain what are the conventions which vention which enable them to have meaning. produce the new signs responsible for this sup• Certain types of signs which lack this conven• plementary meaning. When the following sen• tional basis are thus generally taken to fall tence is set down on the page as a poem outside the field of semiology. If the relation• ship between form (or signifier) and meaning As the cat (or signified) is causal rather than conventional climbed over (those clouds mean rain; those spots mean the top of measles), one has an index. which is properly studied by the relevant science. If the relation the jamcloset be one of natural resemblance or representa• first the right tion (a photograph of a horse signifies a horse). forefoot one is dealing with an icon·, which might be treated by a philosophical theory of represen• carefully tation. If the relationship be motivated• then the hind grounded in properties of the signifier and stepped down the signified-c-one has a symbol, which falls within th e domain of semiology but which into the pit of can be analyzed by noting the basis of the the empty relationship between individual signifier and flowerpot individual signified (given the role of the cross in Christianity, it is a motivated symbol it acquires meaning it would not have as part of Christianity). Finally, if the relationship of a description in a novel, and to account for is unmotivated and purely conventional (as this meaning we must try to state the conven• in the case of words in natural languages), tions which enable readers or critics to give it one is dealing with signs proper, which can meaning. Among those that make possible an be explained only by reconstructing the sys• interpretation of this poem are the following: tem from which they derive. The relationship the convention of reference-that the meaning between the form and meaning of "relate" of a lyric is not restricted by ostensible refer• is itself arbitrary, but it can be explained with ence (e.g., to a particular cat); the convention reference to the morphological rules of the of coherence-that all the parts should be language which place it within a system that shown to relate to the effect of the whole; the includes relate : relation, dictate: dictation, nar• convention of mimetic form-that we may read rate: narration. etc. line endings as spatial or temporal gaps (sus• Semiological explanation takes objects or acts pense, isolation, stepping down); the conven• as the parole (speech acts) of an underlying tion of significance-read a short, apparently langue (linguistic system) whose "grammar" banal lyric as a moment of epiphany; the con• must be analyzed. One must attempt to isolate vention of symbolic extrapolation-make the• the minimal units which the system employs, matic capital of the emptiness of the flowerpot determine the contrasts between units that pro• and the careful stepping of the cat; the con• duce meaning (paradigmatic relations) and the vention of self-reflexlvitv-e-one way of giving rules of combination which enable units to be poems thematic coherence is to read them as grouped together as constituents of larger struc• about poetry. If the poem is given a meaning tures (syntagrnaric relations). The semiological other than that of the prose sentence, it is study of literature is an attempt to analyze becanse conventions of this sort, which consti• literature as a system of signs and thus to tute the institution of poetry, produce supple• determine what conventions enable literary mentary signs. A semiology of poetry attempts works to have meaning. By seeing what varia• to analyze the signs of this particular semiotic tions in internal structure or context would system. produce differences of meaning, the analyst iso• The task of a semiology of poetry would be lates the functional units and operative con• to make explicit, as conventions of the institu• ventions of literature. tion of literature, the implicit assumptions Poetry is a second-order semiological system which govern the production of meaning in in that items which are already signs in the poetry. These conventions are of various kinds: first-order s}stem of the Eng. or Fr. language first, those which govern the ways in which are organized according to supplementary con• formal features, such as enjambment, caesura, ventions which give them meanings and effects metrical deviation, rhyme, and repetition of other than those they would have in ordinary sounds, may become signs and contribute to prose. If one takes a prose sentence and sets it poetic effect; second, the conventions of genre, down on a page as verse, its linguistic meaning which by permitting or excluding certain sub• is not altered, but it acquires considerable liter• jects, tones, and linguistic modes, enable the an meaning; and the task of the serniologist poet to produce meaning by conforming to -[ 981 ]- SUPPLEMENT them or deviating from them; third, the gen• questionable, though they may well be the very eral expectations concerning the ways in which conditions of meaning and hence unavoidable. poems may cohere or the types of structures F. de Saussure, Cours de linguistique gene rale which readers are trained to look for (e.g., the (1916); W. Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity irony and paradox which new critics [see NEW (1930); C. Peirce, Collected Papers (1931-58); CRITICISM] sought in lyrics) ; and finally the con• C. Morris, Signs, Language and Behaviour ventions of symbolic reading (of plausible and (1946), Writings on the General Theory of implausible extrapolation) which enable read• Signs (1971); R. Barthes, "Elements de semiolo• ers to make poems into unified structures ex• gie ,' Communications, 4 (1964), Svsteme de la pressing complex attitudes. The conventions mode (1967), Sade, Fourier, Loyola (1971); T . which constitute poetry as a semiotic system Sebeok, ed . Approaches to S. (1964), S. (forth• change, of course, from one period to another. coming); A. J . Greimas, Semantique structurale The Waste Land and Un Coup de des seem (1966), Du Sens (1970), ed. Essais de semiotique less incoherent now than they once did because poetique (1971), ed . Sign , Language, Culture conventions for reading. them have been de • (1971); L. Prieto, Messages et signaux (1966); veloped. Indeed, changes in ways of reading J. Derrida, De la grammatologie (1967), La provide sem iology with some of its best evi• Dissemination (1972), Marges de la philosophie dence about the conventions operative at (1972); U. Eco, La struttura assente (1968), " La particular periods. critica serniologica,' I Metodi attuali della Semiological studies may thus bear on the crit ica in Italia, ed . M. Corte and C. Segre functioning of particular poetic devices, such (1970); M. Serres, Hermes, ou la communica• as metaphor, synecdoche, repetition of sounds, tion (1968); Hermes 11: L 'Interjerence (1972); line endings, and on the implicit poetics of P. Sollers, Logiques (1968); E. Benveniste. various historical periods. One important result " Semiologie de la langue," Semiotica, I (1969); of seminological study has been the renewal of G. Deleuze, Logique du sens (1969); Proust et interest in rhetoric, as an earlier attempt to les signes (1970); N. Goodman, Languages of formalize the operations of poetic signs, and Art (1969); J. Kristeva, Semiotike: Recherches the desire to reorganize rhetoric in accordance pour tine semanalyse (1969), ed. Essays in S. with modern linguistics. (1971); N. Mouloud, Langage et structures A semiology of literature is interested in the (1969); C. Segre, I Segni et la crit ica (1969); ways in wh ich literary signs differ from those of D'A . S. Avalle, L'Analisi letteraria in Italia: other types of discourse, and consequently one Formalismo, strutturalismo, semiologia (1970) ; specialized form of semiology has developed .1 . Dubois et al. (Groupe de Liege), Rhetorique which considers literature as an activity which gen erale (1970); G. Mounin, Introd. a fa se• foregrounds and questions other types of signs. miologie (1970); " Recherches rhetoriques," This semanalyse, as Julia Kristeva calls it, op• Communications, 16 (1970); P. Guiraud, La poses the traditional theory of the sign which Semiologie (1971); E. Meletinsky and D. Segal , takes the sign ifier as the expression of the "Structuralism and S. in the U .S.S.R.," Dioge• signified and argues instead that the reality of nes, 73 (1971); J. Pelc, Studies in Functional the sign lies in its form, its signifier, which Logical S. of Natural Language (1971); G. holds out the promise of a meaning but does Wienold, Semiotik der Literatur (1972); P. not express it. The meaning does not lie " be• Zumthor, Essai de poetique medieuale (1972) ; hind" the signifier, as something which the Recherches sur les svstemes signifiants, ed . J. speaker originally "had in mind" and which Re v-Debove (1973); J. Culler, Structuralist the reader must recover; rather the signifier Poetics (1974). holds out the promise of a meaning which the JOURNALS: Centrum; Communications; Jour. reader must try to produce. Literature, and of Lit. Semantics; Poetics; Semiotica; T'ezisy especially poetry where the priority of the text dokaladov letnei shkolv po vtorichnym mode• to its paraphrase has long been obvious, has lirujushchim sistemam; Trudy po znakovym always explored the ways in which the "work sistemam, J .D.C. of the signifier" could lend to the open-ended production of meanings rather than to the SHAPED VERSE. See PATTERN POETRY . recovery of "a" meaning. In this sense , litera• ture can be studied as a form of discourse STANCES. Fr . verse form often confused with which undermines the conception of the sign strophes (which are Eng. "stanzas"), but differ• that seems appropriate to ordinary discourse, ing therefrom by its restriction to lyrical where the signifier is the means of access to a themes and, in conformity with its etymology communicative intention. Semanalyse is a crit• (It. " stopping places"), a more definite pause ical semiology in that it works on systems of at the end of each division. Introduced from signs while attempting to show that both the Italy in the second half of the 16th c. to des• systems themselves and the analyses of semiotic ignate a less ambitious form than the ode with systems are based on premises which are highly its strophes, st. continued well into the 19th c. -[ 982 ]- SHAPED VERSE-STRUCTURALISM

(e.g., Musset, Sully Prudhomme). They reached poetic discourse. One might say, for example, their climax however in the early 17th-c. thea• that in his sonnet Two loves I have of comfort ter, particularly tragedy, where they were uti• and despair Shakespeare takes the opposition lized as highly organized lyric monologues; good/evil and explores it through a variety of their thematic density, varied meters, and com• codes : the religious (angel/devil, saint/fiend), plex rhyme schemes contrasted vividly with the the moral (purity/pride), and the ph ysical alexandrine couplets of dialogue. About 1660 (fair/colored ill). st. were banished from the theater in the name Structural analysis of this subconscious logic of verisimilitude: that characters should possess of the concrete is related to semiology (see such poetic skill when in the throes of violent SEMIOTICS), the study of sign systems. Indeed, emotion was no longer considered logical.e-P. one might say that the two fundamental in• Martinon, Les Strophes (1912, appendix II); J. sights on which s. is based are (1) that social Scherer, La Dramaturgic classique en France and cultural phenomena do not have essences (1950, 2" partie, ch . 6). A.E. but are defined both by their internal struc• tures and by their place in the structures of STRUCTURALISM. In literary crincism s. is the relevant social and cultural systems, and a method of analysis and a theory of literature (2) that social and cultural phenomena are inspired by developments in structural lin• signs : not physical events only, but events with guistics and structural anthropology which meaning. One may try to separate the struc• reached its height in France in the 1960's. It tural from the semiological-the study of pat• has been assimilated and developed in various terns from the study of signs-but the most ways by practitioners in other countries, but successful structural analyses isolate those it remains, in its most distinctive and charac• structures which permit phenomena to func• terizable form , a Fr . movement whose principal tion as signs. figures are Roland Barthes, Gerard Genette, S. in literary criticism began as a revolt Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, and A. J. against the particular types of erudition• Greimas. The work of Roman Jakobson, Gilles literary history and biographical criticism• Deleuze, and Jacques Derrida ma y also be con• which dominated the Fr. university orthodoxy. sidered structuralist, and outside the literary S. sought to return to the text, but unlike field the leaders of the movement are Claude Anglo-Am. new criticism (q.v.) it assumed that Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, one could not study a text without preconcep• and Louis Althusser, tions, that naive empiricism was an impossible In general terms, s. can be opposed to an critical position, and that in order to discover atomism which attempts to explain phenom• structures one required a methodological ena individually. .Ferdinand de Saussure (1857• model. The goal of s. was not interpretation 1913), the founder of modern linguistics, dis• of texts but rather the elaboration, through tinguished between concrete speech acts (pa• encounters with particular texts, of an account role) and the underlying system of a language of the modes of literary discourse and their (la langue), arguing that the latter was a operation. Roland Barthes distinguished be• formal entity whose clem ents had no positive tween a criticism which places the text in a or essential qualities but must ·be defined particular context or situation and assigns solel y in rel ational terms. Language must be meaning to it and a science of literature or studied as a formal system of interrelated ele• poetics which stud ies the conditions of mean• ments. Claude Levi-Strauss, who is regarded by ing: the formal structures which organize a many as the central figure of s., adopted this text and make possible a range of meanings. perspective in anthropology and rejected at • Translation of the Russian formalists (see RUS• tempts to explain social and cultural phe• SIAN FORMALISM) in the late 1960's gave struc• nomena in piecemeal fashion, especially by ex• turalists analogues to their own work and planations of a psychological kind, preferring stimulated, in particular, the study of litera• to treat them as manifestations of underlying ture as an autonomous institution with its formal systems. His studies of primitive logic , own modes of self-transcendence, but the prin• totemism, and myth were attempts to recon• cipal model was linguistics. Two versions of s. struct a " logic of the concrete": instead of re• can be distinguished by their different uses of lating particular practices or tales to the be• linguistics: as a technique applied directly to liefs they imply, one should consider them as the description of the language of texts or as elements in conceptual systems which enable the model for a poetics which would stand to people to think about and organize the world, literature as linguistics stands to language. The various codes by which myths operate are The first strain involves above all study of sets of binary oppositions drawn from different the patterns formed by the distribution in the areas of experience which can be used to ex• text of elements defined by phonological and press a variety of contrasts, and they thus syntactic theory. Roman Jakobson's characteri• bear striking resemblance to those operative in zation of the poetic function of language as -[ 983 ]- SUPPLEMENT " the projection of the principle of equivalence motivate the connection between signifier and from the axis of selection into the axis of signified so that meanings seem natural and combination" led to study of the ways in which not the result of convention; literature may items which are paradigrnatically equivalent therefore be described according to the ways in (related by membership of a grammatical, lexi • which it resists or complies with this process . cal, or phonological class) are distributed in Interpretation is itself a mode of naturalization linguistic sequence (on the axis of combina• or recuperation: the attempt to bring the text tion). Jakobson's own analyses of poems focus within a logical discursive order by making it on symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns of the expression of a meaning. We read texts in distribution which unify the text and throw accordance with a series of codes which pro• certain elements into relief. It has been argued vide, on the one hand, models of human be• that many of the patterns he discovers are havior (coherence and incoherence of per• irrelevant to the meaning and coherence that sonality, plausible and implausible relations readers experience, but the reply would be that between action and motive, logical and illogical formal patterns need not contribute to mean• chains of events), and on the other hand, models ing in order to have a unifying effect, albeit of literary intelligibility (coherence and inco• experienced subconsciously, and that they are herence, plausible and implausible symbolic objectively present in the poem. Others, such extrapolations, significance and insignificance) as Nicolas Ruwet and Jacques Geninasca, which enable us to make sense of texts by or• though working with Jakobson's theories and ganizing their elements into coherent series . techniques, have preferred to concentrate on These codes are models of the vraisemblable, in ways in which linguistic patterning supports the broad sense in which structuralists use the semantic effects (see LINGUISTICS AND POETICS). term-models of the natural and intelligible-; This version of s., though it has revealed the and a work which lends itself to this process intricacy of poems' formal organization, tends of recuperation is lisible (readable), whereas to separate the structural from the semiologi• one that is unintelligible in terms of our tradi• cal and has been a less important mode of tional models is scriptible (writable): it can be s. than the attempt to develop a poetics written but not read, except in a kind of vi• modeled on linguistics. carious writing. A structuralist analysis of a Structuralist poetics is founded on the belief work aims less at interpreting and thereby re• that while literature uses language it is also cuperating it than at examining the ways in itself like a language in that its meanings are which it responds to the reader's attempts to made possible by systems of convention. Ana• make it unified and coherent. The critic does lyzing a literature is analogous to analyzing a not discover its structure so much as observe language, and one must develop a series of its structuration, and he therefore attends to concepts designed to account for the operation its difJerance (difference/deferment): the play of literature as a system . The work of Kris• of its signifiers which defer meaning by offer• teva , Derrida, and especially Barthes, has ing material which is different from and in contributed to an elaborate metalanguage excess of meanings that can be assigned them which serves both as a theory of literature and (in poetry, meter, rhyme, and sound patterns as the outline of an analytical method. gene rally are instances of the surplus of the Literature is not just sentences but sentences signifier). The play of the signifier is the pro• made signs in a second-order literary system. ductivity of the text because it forces the read• The same sentence, for example, will have very er to become not the passive consumer of an different meanings, depending on whether it is intelligibility he need only recognize but the used in a lyric poem or in a newspaper report. active producer of meaning and participant in And thus within the literary system the sen• the exploration of possible modes of order. tence, itself a linguistic sign , becomes a form This series of concepts leads to a critique or signifiant whose signifie is its special mean• of the representational aesthetic (which locates ing in literary discourse. The conventions values in what is represented) and to stress on which give the sentence additional meanings the literality or materiality of the text as lin• and functions are those of an ecriture: a par• guistic surface. The play of language is valued ticular mode of writing which involves an im• for the ways in which it leads to a questioning plicit contract between author and reader. The of the relationship between language and ex• system or institution of literature is made up perience; and hence critics attend to effects of of a series of ecritures which constitute its his• intertextuality: the interaction within a text torical or generic moments. In reading a sen• of various modes of discourse or of languages tence in a lyric differently from a sentence in drawn from other literary texts and from dis• a newspaper report one is implicitly recogniz• course about the world. Whereas the Russian ing and employ ing the conventions of a par• formalists saw the text as a way of "making ticular lyric ecriture. strange" ordinary objects or activities, struc• Cultures tend to naturalize their signs, to turalists emphasize the "making strange" of -r 984 1- STRUCTURALISM discourses which order the world and which conventions, always threatened by naturaliza• the work puts on display. The value of litera• tion. and poetic texts. ture is thus related to its recognition of the BIBLIOGRAPHIES: S.: A Reader, ed . M. Lane arbitrary nature of the sign: undermining cui• (1970); J. Harari, Structuralists and Structural• ture's attempts to make meanings natural. it isms (1917); Roman [akobson, A Bibliog, of asserts its own status as artifice and produces His Writings (1971); Tel Quel, 47 (1971); in the reader a self-conscious exploration of J. Culler. Structuralist Poetics (1974). ways of ordering experience. R. Barthes, Le Degre zero de l'ecriture Although structuralist criticism has focused (1953), Mythologies (1957), Essais critiques primarily on the novel, there is a body of (1964). Critique et verite (1966). S/Z (1970); work on poetry which may be grouped under C. Levi-Strauss, La Pens ee sauuage (1962). Le several subheadings. (I) The reconstruction of Cru et le cuit (1964); S. Levin. Linguistic poetic codes or systems: Gerard Genette has Structures in Poetry (1962); M. Foucault, Ray• described baroque imagery as a system of in • mond Roussel (1963); "Recherches serniolo• terrelated items defined less by individual con• giques," Communications . 4 (1964); M. Ple ynet, notation than by oppositions and has analyzed Com me (1965); "Analyse structurale du recit," images of day and night as a poetic code; Paul Communications. 8 (1966); G. Cenette, Figures Zumthor has reconstructed the codes of medie• (1966). Figures II (1969). Figures III (1972); val poetry. from the generic types of discourse A. J. Greimas, Semantique structurale (1966); to systems of topoi (see TOPOS) . rhythmical ..S-" YFS. 36-37 (1966); J. Derrida, L'Ecriture formulae. descriptive schema, and conven• et la difference (1967). La Dissemination tionalized knowledge. (2) The correlation of (1972), Marges de la philosophie (1972); "Struc• particular structures with the interpretive op• turalismes: Ideologic et methode." Esprit. 35 erations they require: Michael Riffaterre has (1967); "Colloque de Cluny." La Nouvelle cri• analyzed a variety of poetic devices. from the tique. spec . issue (1968); U. Eco, La strut/ura revitalized cliche to the extended metaphor of assente (1968); "Linguistique et Iitterature," surrealist poetry; Samuel Levin's theory of Langages, 12 (1968); M. Lorman, Lektsi po couplings shows how phonological or gram• struktural'noi poetike; uuedenie, teoriia stikha matical equivalence affects semantic interpreta• [Lectures in Structural Poetics: Introd., Theory tion; A. J. Greimas and his followers have at• of Verse] and Struktura khudozhestuennogo tempted to show how a level of coherence or teksta [Structure of the Artistic Text] (both isotopic is attained in the interpretation of Providence. R.I .• 1968 and 1971, Brown Univ. poetic sequences. (3) The rehabilitation of Slavic reprints. 5 and 9); D. Roche, Eros en er• rhetoric: Genette, the Groupe de Liege, and gumene (1968), t.e Mecrit (1972); P. Sollers. others have redefined rhetorical figures in lin• Logiques (1968); Tel Quel, Theorie d'ensemble guistic terms and opened the way to a theory (1968); "Le Vralsernblable," Communications. which would treat the figures as instructions II (1968); Qu'est-ce que Ie structuralismei ed. for symbolic reading. as sets of conventional F. Wahl (1968); J . Kristeva, Semiotike: Re• operations which readers may perform on po• cherches pour une semanalyse (1969); C. Segre, etic texts. (4) The reinvention of poetic arti• I Segn i e la critica (1969); "La Stylistique," fice: Julia Kristeva, Jacques Derrida, Philippe Langue irancaise, 3 (1969); G. Deleuze, Proust Sollers. and poets of the Tel Quel school (Mar• et les signes (1970); J . Dubois et al. (Groupe celin Pie} net. Denis Roche) have undertaken de Liege). Rhetorique generaIe (1970); The readings of poets designed to show how they Languages of Crit, and the Sciences of Man . undermine by their formal invention the tra• cd . R . Macksey and E. Donato (1970); "Lin• ditional operations of the sign and have em• guistique et texte Iitteraire," Langue [rancaise , phasized the need for contemporary poets to 7 (1970); "Recherches rhetoriques," Communi• question and write against the codes and im• cations. 16 (1970); ..S.... Twentieth C. Studies. plicit contracts of poetry; Veronica Forrest• 3 (1970); V. Forrest-Thomson. "Levels in Po• etic Convention." Jour. of European Studies, 2 Thomson stresses the constructive rather than (1971); J . Geninasca, Analyse structurale des destructive aspect of their project, arguing that Chimeres de Nerual (1971); Essais de semio• only the invention of new conventions and tique poetique, ed. A. J. Greimas (1971); M. explicit artifice can enable poetry to play its Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique structurale traditional role of investigating and criticizing (1971); T. Todorov, Poet/que de la prose our unexamined ordering of experience and (1971), "Introduction a la svmbolique," Poe • our assumptions about the relationship be • tique, II (1972): F. Jameson, The Prison-House tween language and the world. Generally. the of Language: A Critical Account of S. and' structuralist study of poetry investigates the Russian Formalism (1972); N. Ruwet, Langage, implicit conventions which enable poetry to mus/que, poesie (1972); P. Zurnthor, Essai de be read and understood and focuses on the poetique medieuale (1972); R . Jakobson, Ques• un settled dialectical relationship between these tions de poetique (1973). Selected Writings. -[ 985 ]- SUPPLEMENT

JII (forthcoming) ; J. Culler, Structuralist Po• historical facts dealing with the wars of th e etics (1974); R. Scholes, S. in Lit. (1974); S. Prophet Mohammed after the Hegira. Some around the World, ed. T. Sebeok (forth• of the shorter tendi are related to Arabian coming). Maulid literature, dealing with the birth and JOURNALS : Poetique, passim ; Tel Quel, early life of the Prophet. passim. J.D.C. The most popular verse form in S. for topical and lyric themes is verse of 8 hemi• SWAHILI POETRY. S.p. can be traced directly stichs, each of 8 syllables, with rhyming pat• to Arabic models of Islamic verse from the tern abababbc, the terminal rhyme of each Hadramawt and the Persian Gulf. The de • stanza being repeated throughout the poem. velopment of S.p. in the 19th c. shows the Although in the scripts verse of this type is Africanization of a foreign medium by the written either as a single line or in two lines, coastal community of East Africa. The earliest it is generally referred to by scholars as a extant S. manuscripts are from the early 18th quatrain. There appears to be no generally c., namely, al-Hamziya, a S. version in 460 accepted name for this verse form in S., and stanzas of al-Btisiri's Arabic poem Umm al• it owes much less to Arabian sou rces for form Qura (Mother of Villages [Medina», and Tam• and subject matter than the ut endi or the buka or Herekali, 1,150 stanzas dealing with takhmis. There are variations in the syllabic the war between the Arabs and the Byzantines measure, but innovation is not encouraged. from A.D. 628 to 636. S.p. is still written in The outstanding exponent of S. quatrains is modified Arabic script, but only for private Mu yaka bin Haji al-Chassaniv of Mombasa circulation by Muslims belonging to tradi• (1776-1840), who encouraged the Mazrui gov• tional Muslim-S. societ y. Most S.p. now appears ernors of Fort Jesus, Mombasa, in opposing in roman script, in books , and in the press. the overlordship of the Sultan Muscat. Mu • The most important prosodic features in yaka's extension of S. poetry to the expression S.p. are rhyme and fixed patterns of syllabic of attitudes arising from contemporary events measure. The earliest extant weddi ng songs , was an important step toward the seculariza• serenades, and praise songs are in indetermi• tion of S. verse. nate long measure of at least 15 syllables. An• Most modern S. poetry in quatrains is secu • other early form is the takhmis, in which each lar, but conservative. The prestige of Shaaban stanza is of 5 lines rhyming aaaab and with no Robert (1909-62) as a transitional writer is medial rest . The Hadrami Saiyids occasionally related to the political prestige of the S. lan • adopted this form , e.g., the version in the guage in T anzania. He was the first to widen British Museum (No. Or. 4534) of th e Liyongo the literary uses of S. in forms borrowed from legend by Sheikh Saivid Abdallah bin Nasir Eng. literature, e.g., the essay, th e novele tte. (1725- 1820). The Hadrami Saiyids in descent the autobiography. His poetry remains con • from Sheikh Abu Bakr bin Salim, who died ventional and therefore acceptable. Mathias in A.D. 1584, had considerable influence on the Mnyampala (1919-69) was among those Tan• development of S.p. The author of al-Hamziya zanian poets invited by Pres ident Nverere in was Saiyid Aidarus, great-grandson of Sheikh 1968 to use their talents to familiarize the Abu Bakr; Sheikh Saiyid Abdallah bin Nasir peasants with national politics. Mn yampala in • also wrote the utendi poem al-Inkishafi (Self• itiated the public performance of S. song poems examination), an extremely popular work on (ngonjera) with th e express intention of teach• the passing of the Arab cit y states on the East ing "good conduct, indigenous culture and African coast; Sheikh Saivid Mansab showed national politics." This attempt to put versifi • skill in composing acrostic and homiletic cation into national service ma intained the poems of varied form. functional aspect of much S. poetry. In contrast, The utendi verse form consists of 4 short poetry sung in the S. musical clubs of coastal hemistichs of which the first 3 rhyme together East Africa was, and still is, topical, deeply and the fourth carries a rhj me repeated as the allusive, close to oral tradition. The female terminal rhyme of each stanza. This verse singer, Siti binti Saad (1880-19 50), is perhaps form was employed for wr iting long narrative the best -known S. artist from that milieu. poems embody ing oral tradition, e.g., the story Ahmad Nassir bin Juma Bhalo of Mombasa of the legendary hero Liyongo, as well as for is a genuine contemporary S. poet whose poetry circumstantial accounts of historical and con • has features common to other early literatures temporary events, e.g., the Maji-Maji rebellion of the world, and yet its composit ion and per• of 1905, or the recent struggle for independ• formance on the radio is contemporary. The ence in Kenya and Tanzania. Some of the poems are chanted by a professional singer 10 longer tendi derive from the Arabian narra• a pattern of melody based on one of the tives , mostly in rhymed prose, called Maghazi Arabian modal scales, a traditional manner of literature (Arabic mattlzi, raids), consisting of presentation. The verses are heavily gnomic, legendary accounts based on a modicum of and the poet has the same specialized task (If -[ 986 1- SWAHILI POETRY-THEME

"orating" as the th yle (orator, statesman) of value comparable to that of poems from S. the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. As he says: traditional society. walumbi haya lumbani COLLECTIONS: Diwan i ya [Collected Works of] ni mimi simba marara ningurumaye chakani. Mu yaka bin Haji, ed . W. Hichens (johannes• burg. 1940); A. Nassir , Poems from Kenya. ed . o orators. come then. orate! L. Harries (1966); Mw. Shabaan et al., Waim• it is I. the ro aring lion I who roar in the bu sh. bail wa [uzi (Singers of Yesteryear. 1966), ed. A.A. Jahadhmy et al. ; Diwani ya Shaaban, ed . Ahmad Nassir's poems are in the Mvita d ia• J .W.T. Allen (1968); Malenga wa Mvita (Mom• lect, are full of local allusions. and so are basan Poet. 1971). S. Chiraghdin; S. is • difficult to interpret. even for Africans who ed. lamic Poetr y (1971) and An Anthology of S. speak S. well. but who do not belong to the S. coastal community. Love Poetry (1972), both tr. and ed . J. Knap• pert; [ohari za Kiswahili (series of edited The de velopment of S.p. as a part of the national literatures of Ken ya and Tanzania is tenzi, publ. by the East Afr . Lit. Bureau). largely dependent upon the status of S. as a HISTORY AND CRITICISM : L. Harries, S. Poetry national language. At the present time the (1962) and "S. Lit. in the National Context." cultural background within the national con• Review of National Literatures. II (1971); text has its counterpart only in national poli• J. Knappert, Traditional S. Poetry (1967); tics. This may not be enough to guarantee Ucham buzi wa Maandishi ya Kiswahili (Analy• within the national context compositions of a sis of S. Writings. 1971). ed . F. Topan, L.H. T

TENZI. See SWAHILI POETRY.· above has appeared in cnucrsm under a va• riety of other names: " moral." " message:' THEME. To speak of the t , of a poem ma y "precept," "thesis," "meaning," "interpreta• be only to give a brief and unsophisticated tion," "sentence," "idea," "comment:' etc. One answer to the question, " W h at is this poem or another of these terms has formed part of about?" But r, as subject or topic (sometimes the vocabulary of most critics who assign a equated with and sometimes distinguished primary position to the in strumental values of from such concepts as motif and archetype poetry. Mu ch medieval , Renaissance. and neo• [q.v .j) is indispensable for the folklorist , the classical criticism was didactically oriented. archetypal or m yth critic. the historian of cul • Medieval literary theory conceived of poetry ture or ideas. or an y other critic whose con • as an adjunct to religion and philosophy. The cern is to study characters. objects. situations. aim of the poet, like that of a preacher, should images. or ideas that recur within a particular be to present persuasively a valid moral pre• work, in the works of a single author, or in cept; hi s means is the use of attractive para• the works of various authors. In a closely re • ble . allegory, or exemplum. The moral pre• lated sense . t. is equivalent to a summary state• cept is the ..t. ... "nucleus:' "sentence:' "fruit... ment of the main course of action or line of or "grain" of the poem. Renaissance didactic thought and feeling that is depicted in a criticism. of which Sidncv's Apologie for Poet • poem: the t. of The Prelude is the growth of a rie (1595) is a good example. was similar to poet's mind; the t. of The Rime of the Ancient the medieval position. The aim of human life. Mariner is the consequences of the killing of says Sidney. is virtuous action. and poetry is an albatross. Another sense of t. involves a a discipline worthy of man's most serious at• reference not only to the subject of a poem tention because it is more effective than am hut also to its intention: the t. of To Althea, other human learning in molding human be • from Prison is to define true liberty; the t. of havior morally. Poetry is a "medicine of cher• Ode on Melancholy is to give advice to some• ries ." The center of a good poem is a moral one who finds himself in a state of depression; universal. and the poem is good if it presents the t. of Paradise Lost is to justify the waj s of a correct and lively image of th is universal. God to man. Finally. t. is used to refer to a Neoclassical criticism. following Horace. as• summary statement of the doctrinal (usually. signed pleasure and instruction as a double moral. religious. or philosophical) content of aim for poetry. This position resulted in a a poem. continued stress on the instrumental values of "T." in the last of the senses distinguished poetry. an d the terms " moral" and "I." wert' -[ 987 ]- SUPPLEMENT

used to point to the final cause of a poem and t. and invite the reader's acceptance of it. to its principle of unity. Thus Dryden: "The Rather the poem should be regarded as a form first rule which Bossu prescribes to the writer of exploratory discourse, in which a poet ex• of an Heroic Poem, and which holds too by plores an area of moral concern and discovers the same reason in all Dramatic Poetry, is to or realizes the meaning of an experience, a make the moral of the work; that is, to lay meaning which mayor may not have universal down to yourself what that precept of morality application. shall be, which you would insinuate into the The concept of t. plays a strikingly different people; as, namely, Homer's (which I have role in critical theories that stress the terminal cop ied in my Conquest of Granada), was, that rather than the instrumental values of poetry. union preserves a commonwealth, and discord Terminalist critics regard the poem as an end destroys it ; Sophocles, in his Oedipus, that no in itself, an intrinsic good, an object of beauty, man is to be accounted happy before his death. a source of aesthetic experience. If they discuss 'Tis the moral that directs the whole action of t. at all, they usually consider it, along with the pla y to one centre; and that action or everything else in the poem, as influencing the fable is the example built upon the moral, quality or intensity of the aesthetic experience. which confirms the truth of it to our experi• Edgar Allan Poe, for example, protested against ence" ("The Grounds of Criticism in Tragedy" the " heresy of the didactic" and insisted that [1679)). poetry should be written and read "simply Many modern critics regard with suspicion for the poem's sake." To read a poem for the expressions such as the "moral" or the "rnes• poem's sake is to experience a pure, elevating, sage" of a poem. But they do talk of poetry as and intense pleasure. A t. can be a "soul-ele• a kind of knowledge, and, when induced to vating" idea: "Love . .. the true, the divine speak of the uses of poetry, they speak of its Eros . . . is unquestionably the purest and cognitive and moral values. As a consequence, truest of all poetical themes" ("The Poetic like other instrumentalist critics, they have Principle" [1850]). It is so because this t., more found the term "t." (or "meaning," "signifi• than any other, is the means to intense aes• cance," "interpretation," "dominant attitude," thetic experience. More recently, M.C. Beards• "evaluation") indispensable both for pointing ley has argued in a similar fashion. Though to the values of poetry and for indicating the not denying that poetry may have moral and principle of unity of a poem. However, they cognitive "side effects," he recommends that warn that the poem, or at least the good poem, poetry, like the other fine arts, should be is not a rhetorical device for ornamenting the cultivated and valued for the sake of aesthetic t. or making it more persuasive. experience. Aesthetic value, he says, depends The dangers of this didactic interpretation on unity, complexity, and the intensity of the of the nature of poetry are so great that some• emotive qualities of a work of art. Philosophi• times the recommendation appears to use "t." cal, religious, and moral concepts and doc• not to point to a general formulation of the trines ("themes" and "theses" in his termi• meaning realized in a poem but rather to the nology), whether explicit or implicit in the moral problem or human situation that is literary work, may add significantly to the dramatized in the poem. Thus the t. of Antig• unity, complexity, and intensity of the work one is difficult choice; the t. of Dr. Faustus and thus be aesthetically valuable. is the search for knowledge: the t. of King Finally, the Chicago critics (q.v.) divide Lear is self-d iscovery. The purpose of the good poems into didactic poems and presentative or poet is to explore these problems or situations mimetic poems. The critic, when faced with in a particularized and concrete context. The the task of analyzing and evaluating a didactic net result may be simply a detailed diagnosis poem, must, of course, use the word "t." or one of the nature and complexities of the problem. of its synonyms to point to the unifying prin• More often the poet comes up with a moral ciple of the work. This is the proper proce• judgment or evaluation which is a possible dure when discussing such masterpieces of di• solution to the problem. Such tentative solu• dactic art as The Divine Comedy or The Faerie tions may also be called "themes"; however, Queene. Mimetic poems, however, have a prin• the .reader of poetry is warned to regard them ciple of unity very different from didactic only as hypotheses which the good poem clari• poems. Their final cause is aesthetic pleasure fies, tests, qualifies, and subjects to the fires of derived from the reader's contemplation of a irony. In this process of testing, the original t. picture of a sequence of human actions, may be so qualified that no general statement thoughts, or feelings so structured as to give of it will represent it accurately. Murray Krie • the poem moving power. In the criticism of ger uses the word "thematics" (opposing it to mimetic works, "t.' may be useful to point the older, didactic use of "t.") to stress that the to the nature of the moral or philosophical meaning of a poem must be studied in this problems which are frequently part of the de • way. The good poem, then, does not assert its picted action of the poem. Or the term rna, -[ 988 ]- THEME-VERBLESS POETRY be useful to point to the set of moral norms, of an oration with specific topics in the speech. implied or expressed, in terms of which the Aristotle's use of the term in his Topics is not author or his narrator judges the characters essentially different; in that work topoi desig• and their actions. But to use "t." to point to nate the commonplaces upon which dialectic the organizing principle of the work is, for reasoning bases its arguments and through the Chicago critics, to assimilate mimetic works which the philosopher ma y effectively com • to didactic works and to miss their distinctive municate with non-philosophers. Ernst Robert excellence.- Crane; Frye; M. C. Beardsley, Curtius adapted the rhetorical conception to Aesthetics (1958); M. Krieger, The Tragic literary use in European Lit. and the Late Vision (1960); C. Brooks, A Shaping Joy (1971). Middle Ages, tr.W.R. Trask (1953). Examples F.G. of topoi are: the inexpressibility t., in which a poet decries his inability to do his subject TOPOS (pl. topoi). A commonplace appro• justice; the "world upsidedown" (mundus in• priate for literary treatment, an "intellectual versus) t., in which the world's disorder is theme suitable for development and modifica• shown by fish in the trees , children ruling tion" according to the imagination of the in• parents, etc .; and set pieces like the standard• dividual author (Curtius). In his Rhetoric, ized description of an ideal garden (locus Aristotle used an adapted sense of physical amoenus). Critics following Curtius have ex• place or t. to represent a rhetorical common• tended the conception of a t. to include tra• place, and such topoi became the loci com• ditional metaphors such as the world as stage, munes or commonplaces of the Roman rhetori• the world as book, etc . Curtius distinguished cian s, sometimes retaining a degree of their between these "metaphorics" and the other original physical sense by the association, in "topics," although in many instances the dis• memory-systems, of specific places at the scene tinction is difficult to maintain. F.J .W. v

VERBLESS POETRY. The function of the per, timid breathing! Nightingale's trills! Sil• various parts of speech in works of literature ver and rippling! Of a sleepy stream" (A. Fet) : and the fact that such categories as, e.g., the "Cold, wet leaves! Floating on moss-colored verb and the adjective have been in and out water! And the croaking of frogs! Cracked bell• of fashion at various times and for various notes in the twilight" (Amy Lowell); "Flowers reasons, have been often discussed by both through the window! lavender and yellow!! writers and scholars of various persuasions. changed by white curtains-! smell of cleanli• The problem, however, is very elusive and no ness!! Sunshine through the afternoon-! On definitive study exists on the subject. the glass tr ay!! a glass pitcher .. ." (W. C. A common generalization is the assertion Williams). that there is a direct relationship between the However, the assertions that the above-men• frequency of verbs in a poem and its "dynamic" tioned features arc due to the lack of verbs arc quality. Scholars invoke W. Humboldt's re• subject to question. It is possible, as pointed marks about the verb as an energy-giving ele• out by O. Jespersen ("The Role of the Verb") ment or A.M. Peskovskij's slogan, "back to to quote verbless construction "giving a very the verb" from his paper, "T he Verb as a definite impression of motion." And vice versa, Means of Expressiveness," in which he voiced one should add, i.e., a poem packed full with the view that the peculiar abstract aura of verbs may be static. Marinetti's slogan of les vagueness, " lack of outspokenness" in symbol• mots en liberte and his celebrated example of ist poetry was due to these poets avoiding a man who, on seeing a house on fire, naturally verbal constructions. shouts nouns (Fire! Fire!) rather than con• Indeed, such a tendency is quite common in structing sentences with verbs, was a simple svrnbolist poetry, notably Fr. and Russian. statement of fact. Many of the 20th-c. poets, (Verlaine's and Balmont's efforts to avoid but notably the futurists (see FUTURISM), turned verbs art' a matter of record.) The same goes against the conventional S} ntax and viewed the for some other earlier and later poets: "Rires verb as the most mechanical "conductor of oiseux, pleurs sans raisons.r Mains indefinirnent grammar," and they resorted to verbless con• pressces,! Tristesses moites, parnoisons.r Et quel struction in search of a more striking dynamic vague dans les pensees! " (P. Vcrlaine): "Whis- vision of the rapidly changing world. Mariner- -r 989 ]- SUPPLEMENT ti's poem Zang·Tumb·Tuum is a good example of the senses distinguished above) granted to of the violence and chaos of the bombardment the poet or to a character he has created. For of Adrianople given in a form of a "tele• example. there are the dream visions (see graphic" compression based mainly on the prin• DREAM ALLEGORY) popular in the Middle Ages ciple of free associations of nouns not con• and later: in these poems the claim to vision• nected by verbs (commands of officers clattering ary experience is clearly a convention-the like brass plates. bang from here bang from poem is only a mimesis of a visionary experi• there, boom-cling-clang fast clinkclingcling• ence . On the other hand, there are poets like clingclang up down there around high up at• Blake, who have analyzed carefully the condi• tention over the head clang beautiful blaze tions of visionary experience and have claimed blaze blaze blaze . . .). the authority of v. for the content of what they O. Jespersen. "The Role of the Verb," GRM . wrote. Indeed, most of the great romantics saw 3 (1911); A. Lombard. Les Constructions nomi• themselves as chosen poet-seers: they felt them• na/es dans le jrancais modeme (1930); N. A. selves to belong to "the visionary company" to• Nilsson, The Russian Imaginists (Stockholm, gether with great poets like Milton and the 1970; ch . 3: "Verbless Poetry" ; see also bibliog.); Hebrew prophets; their mission was to trumpet Z. Folejewski, "Dynamic or Static? The Func• a prophecy of a world renewed whose forms tion of the Verb in Modern Poetry" in Ca• the y had seen in imaginative v. M. H . Abrams nadian Contributions to the 7th Congress of has distinguished three principal kinds of Slauists, ed. Z. Folejewski (The Hague, 1972). transforming perception claimed by the ro o Z.F. mantics (and earlier and later poets) : to see the wonder of the old and familiar (to return to VISION. "V," has been a favorite word in the the freshness of sensation of the child); to ex· vocabulary of poets. but it has become common perience an epiphany in which an ordinary in criticism only in the modern period. It is a object or event is seen as suddenly and word rich in ambiguities and overtones of transitorily charged with a mysterious signifi• meaning, which frequently generate ironies in cance (Wordsworth's "spots of time'): and to the contexts in which it is used . There is the v. perceive objects as invested with values differ• of the physical eye; there is Coleridge's "armed ent from those that custom has accorded to v.... perception guided and assisted by a higher them (the sublimity of the lowly and humble). mental faculty; and there is transfiguration. Contemporary criticism uses "v. ' in a variety apocalypse. and the beatific v. V. suggests the of senses. Occasionally. "v. ' refers simply to a vividl y concrete. but also the archetypal. ideal. poet's visual images (see IMAG ERY) as these ap• and spiritual. It ma y be a revelation granted pear in descriptive passages or figures of speech to the semi-divine man. the poet. prophet, or (see Zimmermann in bibliog.). On the other saint; but it also may have connections with hand, a critic like Frye uses "v. ' in an extended ghosts, witches, and madness. In dream, irrtui• sense as a synon ym for literature itself, or at tion, or trance. the visionary sees what is or least for the thematic component of literature. what ought to be; heaven or hell; a past Golden Accord ing to Frye , literature is not an imita• Age, present misery, or a future brave new tion of nature and makes no reference to re• world. V. makes a claim to truth and invites ality; rather it is the dream of man, an imag• assent . but it may also refer to that which is inative projection of man's desires and fears . illusory. impractical, wild. or foolish . Its lan• Thus all literary works , taken together. consti• guage-allegory, metaphor, symbol. and other tute a total v, ( 'the vision of the end of social devices for expressing depth meanings-fre• effort, the innocent world of fulfilled desires, quently requires special skills of interpretation. the free human society'). whose parts Frye The tradition that great poets have drunk sometimes classifies metaphorically as the spring the milk of paradise or that they are gifted v.• the summer v.• the fall v., and the winter v, with mysterious and uncommon powers of per• But the sense in which "v.' is most frequently ception is an ancient one (see INSPIRATION). used in contemporary criticism is that given to Both poets and critics have encouraged this it by expressionist critics, who use the term view. This claim has been in part an attempt (with or without Orphic connotations) to refer to explain the wondrous creative power of the to an author's world view-his ideas, attitudes, great artist and in part a rhetoric of praise to feelings, and evaluations about God. nature, exalt the character of the poet in order to make and man. It is held that a poet necessarily ex• his message more persuasive. Convention too presses some part of his philosophy of life in enters here, as in the epic poet's address to h is the poems that he writes and that the aesthetic Muse. experience consists in the reader's evolving in• Poetry of v. is not a recognized literary genre. sight into this v. (or "perspective" or "point of However, a body of poetry exists for which the view" or "ideology') and ultimate identification claim has been made that the content is a rec• with the consciousness of the author. In a poem , ord of visionary experience (in one or another parts of the author's v. ma y be explicitly stat ed -[ 990 1- VISION-VOICE

(as in Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey); but much subsume the world of Blake); but he insists thai of it exists on noncognitive levels of the mind the truth claims of all the great artists must be and is revealed in the structure, style. images, respected, as revelatory of some aspect of a and figurative language of his work . The chief complex and mysterious reality. To other crit• function of the critic is to reconstruct and ics. the multiplicity of visions expressed in clarify the poet's v. In discharging this func • literature is a sign of irremediable relativism. tion. the critic may not be very.much concerned If men can get no ultimate answers about the about traditional genre Or even about the nature of the universe or their destiny in it, analysis of poems as discrete artistic wholes. then they are left with a variety of purely per• All the works of an author express some part sonal points of view by means of which they of his v., and the critic's aim is to display the v. order their experience and structure their in its totality. (M. Krieger has condemned works of art. A poet's v. must be regarded visionary critics for returning to pre-new criti• simply as a series of hypotheses generated in cism positions. Although he likes the term ..v.... a sensitive mind reacting to life's experiences. respect for the autonomy of the literary work These hypotheses may have heuristic value for makes him use " v." to refer to the thematic others, but the authority of v. cannot be called content-richly ambiguous and resisting an y upon to support a claim to their partial or un i• simple formulation-inhering in the work's versal validity. Indeed, an artist is to be praised unique totality and not to a set of abstract who fills his works with ironies and conflicting propositions and attitudes preexisting in the perspectives to dramatize the limitations of all mind of the author and reflected in the work visions and suggest the impossibility of anv he cornposes.) single correct view. The visionary critic's most difficult problem C. Santayana, Three Philosophical Poets is that of evaluation (unless. like Fr ye. he ex• (1910); P. Wheelwright. The Burning Fountain cludes evaluation from criticism). Visions have (1954) and Metaphor and Reality (1962); N been praised for being complex, deep. compre• Fr ye, The Anatomy of Criticism (1957) and hensive, original, or authentic. They ha ve been Fables Of Identit y (196!l); M. Krieger, The blamed for being simple. shallow. narrow, Tragic Vision (1960) and The Classic Vision standardized, Or inauthentic. Such criteria do (1971); H . Bloom, The Visionary Company not seem to be entirely adequate. Any view of (1961); E. Zimmermann, .. 'V: in Poetry" in life. whether dramatized in a poem or systema• The Disciplines Of Criticism, ed. P. Dernetz tized in philosophy, invites serious considera• (1968); M. H. Abrams. Natural Supernaturalism tion of its truth and valid ity (see BELIEF. (1971). F.G. PROBLEM OF). Regardless of how intui tive or emotionally grounded a v. may be. it necessarily VOICE. To stress "v.' in discussions of poetry involves some elements that seem to make asser• may be simply a reminder of the large extent tions with respect to the universe or the on • to which the effects of poetry depend on sound. going course of human life. Keats's questions The qualities of vocal sounds enter directly then seem unavoidable: How does one dis• into the aesthetic experience in the witnessing tinguish v. from a waking dream? How does of dramatic productions or listening to the oral one know that he has achieved a "power to see interpretation of poetry. But there is also listen• as a god sees"? Santayana echoes Keats's words: ing with the "inner ear" that occurs in the "The height of poetry is to speak the language silent reading of poetry. The cultivation of of the gods :' The goal of the poet and the what T . S. Eliot has called the "auditory imag• philosopher, he says, is theoria, "a steady con• ination" is indispensable for the full apprecia• templation of all things in their order and tion of poetry. worth. Such contemplation is imaginative. .. . More often. modern critics use "v ." in a A philosopher who attains it is. for the mo• metaphorical and extended sense. A poem is ment, a poet; and a poet who turns his prac• regarded as a human utterance or an imitation tised and passionate imagination on the order of a human utterance. "V." is used to refer to of all th ings , or on an ything in the light of the person or persons who utter the words that the whole, is for that moment a philosopher." constitute the poem. The analysis of v. in a Santayana evaluates th e poetry of Lucretius. poem is an attempt to identify the v, or com • Dante, and Coethe in terms of this standard. bination of voices that are heard in the poem On the other hand, Wheelwright argues that (with the help of such distinctions as those because of the nature of reality and the Iirnita• suggested b} T . S. Eliot in his "T he Three lions of the human mind. no such synoptic Voices of Poetry") and then to characterize the view is possible. All v. is necessarily partial. He tonal qualities. attitudes, or even the entire is sensitive to the need for d istinguishing v. pcrsonalitv of this speaker as it reveals itself from illusion. and he says that the visions of direcrlv or indirectly (through sound, choice the great artists are incommensurable (the of diction, and other stylistic devices). The con• world of T . S. Eliot cannot be subsumed by or cept of v. reminds the reader that the meaning -[ 991 ]- SUPPLEMENT of what is said is qualified by who says it and has, it is alleged, depersonalized and dehuman• by the attitude that the speaker takes tow ard ized poetry. Poetry, it is argued, should be his subject and audience. More important, brought back to human concerns out of which stress on v. is a recommendation to place it has arisen and within which it has great in • greater critical emphasis on the extent to which fluence. To do so, W . J. Ong, for example, the reader's consciousness of the quality of using the language of modern phenomenolog• mind and personality of a speaker determines ical and personalist philosophers, suggests that the kind and intensity of the response that is all literature be regarded essentially as "a cr y." made to what he says. V. reminds us that a The v. is the key to the " l -thou world where, human being is behind the words of a poem, through the mysterious interior resonance that he is revealing his ind ividuality by means which sound best of all provides, persons com• of the poem, and that this revelation ma y be mune with persons, reaching one another's the most significant part of what we receive interiors in a way in which one can never reach from the poem. the interior of an 'object.' " Thus the aesthetic Thus, like "vision,"- "v." is an important experience must not be regarded as the contem• term in the vocabulary of recent critics who plation of a dramatic situation that the process wish to rehabilitate some form of romantic ex• of art has distanced from real life . Rather, it is pressionism or return to a view of poetry as a participation in the dialogue that the human personal communication. This recommendation race has been engaged in from the beginning is usually set in explicit reaction to contempo• of history. See also PERSONA.--T. S. Eliot, "The rary objectivist theories of poetry. By stressing Three Voices of Poetry" in On Poetry and the autonomy of poetry and recommending the Poets (1957); W . J. Ong, The Barbarian Within neglect of the author and the reader in the (1962); F. Berry, Poetry and the Physical fl. analysis and evaluation of poetry, objectivism (196?). H. y

YORUBA POETRY. See AFRICAN POEllW: VER• NACULAR.- z

ZULU POETRY. See AFRICAN POETRY : VER • NACULAR.-

-[ 992 ]-