LBB AN178 K2 Introduction to Literary Studies (DP) Lecture block 2

(5) Theory of

Arts: differences between them and within them. : all art is imitation (); the arts differ from each other ‘in three respects – the medium, the object, the manner and mode of imitation.’ Medium and → division between the arts and within the arts

Medium: material vehicle of art; inherent possibilities and limitations, accounting for differences between the arts. Written and plastic / visual arts; temporal (moving in time) and spatial (moving in space)

Genre: type or species of ; literary form, aesthetic convention. Theory of genres: classifying literature by specifically literary types of organisation or structure. Numerous categories, variable criteria for classification; questions of division – categories, historical kinds, fixed forms

Earliest theory: Aristotle; epic (narrative), lyric, . Differentiation according to manner and mode of imitation (when the medium and the object are the same) → ‘the may imitate by narration – in which case he can either take another personality as Homer does, or speak in his own person, unchanged – or he may present all his characters as living and moving before us’ (). Still prevailing in literary studies and university courses

Northrop Frye: using Aristotle’s categories as a starting point, adding a genre which addresses a reader through a → fiction. Ancient times: literature was recited; today: only drama is performed, most literature is read silently → need for revising the categories. Drama, epos, fiction, lyric – based on the supposed presence or absence of an audience. Drama – spectators present, the concealment of the writer from the audience; epos – recited in front of an audience; fiction – written for readers; lyric – the audience concealed from the poet, the poet ‘overheard.’ Epos and fiction are related – e.g. Dickens reading his to an audience (fiction to epos). Epos and fiction: central area of literature; lyric: internal imitation of sound and imagery; drama: external imitation, outward representation of sound and imagery (cf. Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, ‘Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres’)

Other ideas: defining the categories in terms of grammatical structures – lyric: first person singular, present tense, epic: third person singular, past tense (R. Jakobson); basic types of : , tale and song – with their corresponding categories and criteria

More general view: three overall classes in literature, corresponding (roughly) to the categories of Aristotle → poetry, fiction, drama. Most common genres: epic, , , , lyric, biography, essay, . , ballade, rondeau – defined by and stanza form → fixed forms. Genres considered to be fixed categories from the Renaissance to the 18th century; Neo-classical critics: genres should remain pure, no mixing; hierarchy of kinds with the epic and the tragedy at the top. From Romanticism onwards: genres are convenient but arbitrary categories; general values of literary works instead of hierarchy of genres. Genres: depending both on outer form (metre and structure) and inner form (attitude, tone, purpose – i.e. ‘subject’ and ‘audience’)

Some more recent opinions: Fredric Jameson: genres – institutions, social contracts between a writer and a specific public. Roland Barthes: genre – a set of conventions and codes shared by an implicit contract between writer and reader; these sets of conventions make possible the LBB AN178 K2 Introduction to Literary Studies (DP) Lecture Block 2 2 writing of a particular work of literature. Writer: may work against the conventions; reader: conventions function as expectations

Suggested reading: Wellek, R., Warren, A. Theory of Literature. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993 (1949); ch. 17: ‘Literary genres’ pp. 226-237 Frye, N. Anatomy of Criticism. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990 (1957): ‘Fourth Essay: Rhetorical Criticism: Theory of Genres’ pp. 243-337 Abrams, M.H. A Glossary of Literary Terms. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1981

(6) Poetry: Narrative and Lyric

Poetry: a comprehensive term for metrical composition; reservations, in contradistinction to (poetry suggesting a distinctive, higher quality). Types: epic/narrative, lyric, dramatic, satirical. Generally: narrative and non-, Aristotle’s epic and lyric

Narrative poetry: the narrative poem tells a story. European literature begins with narrative poetry (Homer); non-literate societies: storytellers memorised poems; literate societies: oral verse narratives remained popular even after the invention of printing. Narrative poetry: epic, ballad (folk and literary ballads), metrical romance. Beowulf, Scottish popular ballads, Chaucer: Troilus and Criseyde, The Canterbury Tales

Lyric poetry: essentially non-narrative poetry, dealing with feelings, emotions, states of mind, thoughts, moods. There is a narrative base though (‘story’) but the focus is not this; cf. Wordsworth: ‘I wandered lonely…’

Concepts to discuss: theme, tone, voice, speaker, persona. Tone: the poet’s attitude towards his theme. Voice: what we hear in the poem. Different kinds of voices – T. S. Eliot: three voices → the poet talking to himself or to nobody (1), the poet addressing an audience (2), the poet creating a dramatic character speaking in verse (3; ‘The Three Voices of Poetry’). Second voice – the question of the speaker. Persona – a character invented for a particular purpose. Poet vs persona; cf. Frost – a poem is written by an author but it is spoken by an invented speaker

Third voice → dramatic poetry (a character speaks in a poem – always a character in a situation); dramatic monologue, dramatic lyric. Dramatic monologue: an imaginary character addressing an imaginary audience, presenting himself in a significant moment in his life, revealing his character; Browning: ‘My Last Duchess’. Dramatic lyric: the speaker’s thoughts revealed (not his personal qualities); Wordsworth: ‘Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour’

Emotion – central concern in lyric poetry; the way emotion is expressed. Relationship between thought and emotion (generally seen as conflicting). Schiller: earlier thought and emotion were not separated, the Greeks as example; growing complexity of civilisation leading to their separation. Also: the fragmentation of human personality. Consequence: the poet expresses his feelings – which may have nothing to do with the feelings of others. LBB AN178 K2 Introduction to Literary Studies (DP) Lecture Block 2 3

Wordsworth, Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1800; 1802): ‘’All good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings’ and it ‘takes its origin in emotion recollected in tranquillity.’ Attempting to overcome the split between thought and emotion, intuition and intellect. Wordsworth’s poetic practice: often disguising the general as autobiographical

T. S. Eliot – ‘the dissociation of sensibility’. Modern world: separation of thought from feeling, losing the ‘unified sensibility’ of earlier periods. Renaissance, early 17th century (Metaphysical ) still had it. Eliot also claiming the separation of ‘the mind which creates’ from ‘the man who suffers’, poetry is not the expression of emotion but an escape from it, ordinary emotions instead of private ones (‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’, 1919), the idea of the ‘objective correlative’: ‘The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.’

Poetic diction – the language of poetry. Poetry has always been written in a distinctive language; the characteristic language use, kinds of words, phrases and sentence structures of a poet; also used to refer to the general poetic language of a period. Modern meaning: deliberate departure from the common practice of the given period

General meaning in the period sense: Neo-classicism, 18th century – decorum (diction suited to the genre); frequent use of archaism, invocation, personification and periphrasis (circumlocution) in poetry → Pope, Thomson, Gray. Other famous instance: Wordsworth, Preface; ‘the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good ’; ‘the very language of men’