THE SONNET
PREPARED BY S. SREEKUMAR
In his The
Development of the Sonnet, Michael Spiller states that the sonnet is
‘probably the longest-lived of all poetic forms” and that almost all the major
poets of Britain, ‘with the exception of the Augustan poets’, have taken
to sonneteering at some time or other in their poetic career. John Fuller (in
his monograph on the sonnet) agrees with this view. He highlights some of the
reasons for the longevity of the genre:
THE Stanza
( Prepared by S. Sreekumar)
THE Stanza
“The poetry of a people does not begin
with the line but with the stanza, not with metre but with music”.
Wilhelm Meyer, the German novelist, and
playwright.
‘Stanza’ is first recorded in English at the
end of the 16th century, borrowed from Italian. A stanza is a well-defined
group of several lines of poetry having a fixed length, meter, or rhyme scheme;
the scheme is usually repeated. In Italian, stanza means “a stopping place,
room (in a house), lodging, chamber, stanza (in poetry).” The Italian word
comes from Vulgar Latin ‘stantia’. (From Dictionary.com)
Prose compositions—essay, report, short story, or novel —
consist of paragraphs. All paragraphs in a composition point to the central
idea/theme. Each signals a new idea or
may denote a change in tone/approach. They provide a sense of direction to the
writer and the reader. They also relieve
the eye and provide much-needed rest when reading a lengthy composition.
RHYTHM
( Prepared by S. Sreekumar)
ORIGIN AND DEFINITION OF RHYTHM
Trent says that
words in a genuine literary work get rhythmically organized because it
is a law of our nature for our emotions to express themselves rhythmically. We
can experience the rhythms in nature in the movement of waves and the swaying
of leaves. It is also there in the beatings of our hearts.
PERSONA AND TONE
PERSONA
ORIGIN OF THE TERM
The
term derives
from the Latin word persōna, meaning “mask.” It reached Literature from the
Analytical Psychology of Carl Gustav Jung (the Swiss psychoanalyst and founder of Analytical
Psychology). Jung uses ‘persona’ in contrast to ‘anima’, which, according to
him, represents the real nature of a person.
‘Persona’ is the mask that hides ‘anima’, real nature. It is a
“façade presented to satisfy the demands of a situation or environment” and
does not represent the real personality of the individual. Daryl Sharp’s Jung
Lexicon defines persona as a “functional complex” that “comes into
existence for reasons of adaptation or personal convenience”.
METRICS
Metrics comes from the Latin term metrica, an
abbreviation of ars metrica or metrical art. Mathematics
and physical sciences use the term frequently. The standard form of measurement
of weight, length, and capacity is the metric system.
The idea of
measurement is not far-fetched when we speak of metrics in English poetry.
Meter is the basic rhythmic structure of a line within a poem. It imposes a
specific number of syllables, stressed or unstressed. Besides,
meter governs individual units called feet (another term in
measurement) within poetry.
HOW TO READ POETRY
“Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo
from the bamboo”—Matsuo Bashō
[Matsuo Bashō was a seventeenth-century Japanese
master of haiku. Haiku is traditionally a Japanese poem consisting of three
short lines that do not rhyme. Bashō had written a series of insightful
reflections on poetry.]
The Encyclopedia Britannica defines
poetry as literature that evokes a concentrated imaginative awareness
of experience or a specific emotional response through
language chosen and arranged for its meaning, sound, and rhythm. The
terms—‘meaning’, ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’— highlight the three significant features
of poetry. However, in the study of
poetry, ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’ are often relegated to the background, and
‘meaning’ gets prominence. Prof. Butcher (in his Harvard Lectures) points
out the reason for the negligence of ‘sound’ and ‘rhythm’ in poetry: “The art
of printing has done much to dull our literary perceptions….
We miss much of the charm if the eye is made to do duty also for the ear.”
Without their vocal force, the words are only ‘half alive’ on
the printed page, and the music in the words becomes faint echo’ (quoted by
W.H. Hudson).
Capitalism, Modernism, and Postmodernism
Terry Eagleton
Abridged and simplified summary for students of Indian Universities.
There are two summaries in this blog.
Introduction
Terry Eagleton expresses his disillusionment with the postmodernist
agenda in Against the Grain. The essay, Capitalism,
Modernism, and Postmodernism, comes from Against the Grain.
Eagleton says that
postmodernism is not a critique of contemporary society, as claimed by Frederic
Jameson. Eagleton has no faith in postmodernism. He feels that postmodernism
parodies the revolutionary art of the twentieth-century avant-garde. It also
dissolves art into modes of commodity production.
CAPITALISM,
MODERNISM, and POSTMODERNISM
Terry Eagleton
Terry Eagleton is a
leading British Marxist critic. He was involved in a project to reconcile
Marxism with Catholicism. At the beginning of his career, he supported the
British New Left Critical Tradition. Later, he became an ardent follower of the
European structuralist and poststructuralist theory. His Criticism and Ideology (1976) and Marxism and Literary Criticism (1976)
reflect his engagement with the debates within Marxist literary theory generated
by Althusser and Macherey. Eagleton expressed his disillusionment with the
Althusserian project in Against the Grain (1986).
[Refer to the introductory note by David Lodge and
Nigel Wood—Modern
Criticism and Theory—A Reader.]
CRITICISM,
Inc.
JOHN CROWE RANSOM
(Lecture notes by Dr S. Sreekumar)
(Revised )
Introduction
J. C. Ransom (1888 –1974), one of the founders of the American New Criticism was a celebrated poet, critic, and a great teacher who had few equals as a companion and guide for many distinguished students like George Lanning, Robert Lowell, Allen Tate, Robert Penn Warren, and Cleanth Brooks. The term ‘New Criticism’ (itself) originated from the title of a volume of essays— The New Criticism— published by him in 1941. The New Criticism and theory dominated American literary thought throughout the middle of the 20th century, and the method of close reading introduced by the New Critics continues to be relevant in literary studies/criticism even today.
‘Criticism
Inc.’ (1937) is an important document in the history of literary criticism [like the Preface to Lyrical Ballads (1801)], bringing
together in one place all the distinctive ‘aims, attitudes, and assumptions’ of
the American New Criticism. The essay envisages an ‘objective’ or ‘ontological’
(what exists) criticism
that is the product of a ‘rigorous, disciplined, collaborative effort’ in the
elucidation and evaluation of literary texts. Ransom believes that
"criticism must become more scientific, or precise and systematic."
To this end, he argues that ‘obstructive rival methods and approaches’ like
impressionistic appreciation, historical approach (‘dry as dust’), linguistic scholarship, and "moral studies” should not influence
literary criticism. ‘Criticism, Inc.,’ along with his other theoretical essays set
forth some of the guiding principles the New Critics later developed. However,
his former students like Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and Robert Penn Warren played
a more significant role in developing many of the key concepts like close
reading that later became the hallmarks of the New Criticism.
This preview will not be complete
without mentioning a pejorative connotation of the title, ‘Criticism Inc.’ By the closing decades of the twentieth
century, the ‘hyperbolic, extravagant …explosion’ (J. Hillis Miller) of the
technique of close reading@ had led to
many hermeneutic eccentricities in American universities. For many traditional scholars and
critics, annoyed by the radical shifts of interpretative thought, criticism has
become a sort of industry [that
reminded them of Detroit auto assembly lines?]. For them, the
title, ‘Criticism, Inc.’ served as a mocking catechism. [Inc. is used in commercial circles as an abbreviation for
‘incorporated’—a legal corporation]. To be fair, criticism was a
‘humane pursuit’ for Ransom, never a commercial venture.
[@Let us look at an extreme example: Jacques Derrida's essay,
‘Ulysses Gramophone’ devotes more than eighty pages to an interpretation of the
word "yes" in James Joyce's modernist novel Ulysses.
‘Criticism,
Inc.’ has five parts.
