115103032MAE601

MASTER OF ARTS (ENGLISH) LITERARY CRITICISM AND CRITICAL APPROACHES - I 21MAE601

MASTER OF ARTS (ENGLISH) LITERARY CRITICISM AND CRITICAL APPROACHES - I 21MAE601 Dr. Manjushree Vikrant Sardeshpande

CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY Institute of Distance and Online Learning Course Development Committee Chairman Prof. (Dr.) R.S. Bawa Vice Chancellor,Chandigarh University, Punjab Advisors Prof. (Dr.) Bharat Bhushan, Director, IGNOU Prof. (Dr.) Majulika Srivastava, Director, CIQA, IGNOU Programme Coordinators & Editing Team Master of Business Administration (MBA) Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) Co-ordinator -Prof. Pragya Sharma Co-ordinator -Dr. Rupali Arora Master of Computer Applications (MCA) Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) Co-ordinator -Dr. Deepti Rani Sindhu Co-ordinator -Dr. Raju Kumar Master of Commerce (M.Com.) Bachelor of Commerce (B.Com.) Co-ordinator -Dr. Shashi Singhal Co-ordinator -Dr. Minakshi Garg Master of Arts (Psychology) Bachelor of Science (Travel&TourismManagement) Co-ordinator -Ms. Nitya Mahajan Co-ordinator -Dr. Shikha Sharma Master of Arts (English) Bachelor of Arts (General) Co-ordinator -Dr. Ashita Chadha Co-ordinator -Ms. Neeraj Gohlan Master of Arts (Mass Communication and Bachelor of Arts (Mass Communication and Journalism) Journalism) Co-ordinator -Dr. Chanchal Sachdeva Suri Co-ordinator- Dr. Kamaljit Kaur Academic and Administrative Management Prof. (Dr.) Pranveer Singh Satvat Prof. (Dr.) S.S. Sehgal Pro VC (Academic) Registrar Prof. (Dr.) H. Nagaraja Udupa Prof. (Dr.) Shiv Kumar Tripathi Director–(IDOL) Executive Director – USB © No part of this publication should be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording and/or otherwise without the prior written permission of the author and the publisher. SLM SPECIALLY PREPARED FOR CU IDOL STUDENTS Printed and Published by: Himalaya Publishing House Pvt. Ltd., E-mail:[email protected],Website:www.himpub.com For: CHANDIGARH UNIVERSITY Institute of Distance and Online Learning CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Course Code: MAE601 Credits: 3 Course Objectives:  To introduce the students to concepts, concerns and critical debates in theorizing literary texts.  To expose the students to the applicability of the theoretical frameworks.  To enable the students to critically perceive and engage with productions of meanings, significations and negotiations. Syllabus Unit 1- Introduction to Criticism:To introduce the student to the history of criticism and critical thought. Unit 2- Plato:Book X of The Republic:1. To introduce student to Plato 2. To understand Plato’s views on art and artists Unit 3- Aristotle:Poetics - I:1. To introduce student to the Aristotelian thought. 2. To understand Aristotle’s views on Tragedy Unit 4- Aristotle:Poetics - II:1. To introduce student to the Aristotelian thought. 2. To understand Aristotle’s views on Tragedy Unit 5- An Introduction to Romantic Criticism:To introduce the student to the Romantic thought and criticism. Unit 6- William Wordsworth:Preface to the Lyrical Ballads(1800):To introduce the student to William Wordsworth and his work. Unit 7- Samuel Taylor Coleridge:Biographia Literaria, Chapters IV, XIII and XIV:To introduce the student to S.T. Coleridge and his work. Unit 8- Introduction to Modern Criticism:To introduce the student to the development of modern criticism. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Unit 9- Matthew Arnold:The Study of Poetry:To introduce the student to Matthew Arnold and his work. Unit 10- T.S. Eliot:Tradition and the Individual Talent:To introduce the student to T.S. Eliot and his work. Textbooks: 1. Plato (2013),Book X of The Republic, London: Maple Press. 2. Aristotle (2017),Poetics I, London: Fingerprint! Publishing and Imprint Fingerprint! Classics. 3. Aristotle (2017).Poetics II, London : Fingerprint! Publishing and Imprint Fingerprint! Classics. 4. Wordsworth, W. (2018),Preface to the Lyrical Ballads(1800), India: Unique Publisher. 5. Coleridge, S.T. (2018),Biographia Literaria: Chapters IV, XIII and XIV, India Unique Publisher. 6. Arnold, M. (2010), “The Study of Poetry”, India: Prakash Book Depot. 7. Eliot, T.S. (2008), “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, US: Wiseblood Books 2. Reference Books: 1. David, D. (2001),Critical Approaches to Literature(2nd Edition), Hyderabad: Orient Longman. 2. Lucas, F.L. (1970),Tragedy in Relation to Aristotle’s Poetics, New Delhi: Allied Publishers. 3. House, H. (1970),Aristotle’s Poetics, Ludhiana: Kalyani Publishers. 4. Abrams, M.H. (2000),A Glossary of Literary Terms, Singapore: Harcourt Asia Pvt. Ltd. 5. Rene, Wellek, R. (1958),A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950(Vols. I-IV), London: Jonathan Cape. 6. Habib, M.A.R. (2005),A History of Literary Criticism: From Plato to the Present, Oxford: Blackwell. 7. Ford, B. (ed.) (1980),The Pelican Guide to English Literature(Vols. 4 & 5), London: Pelican. 8. Waugh, P. (2006),Literary Theory and Criticism: An Oxford Guide, Delhi: OUP. 9. Nagarajan, M.S. (2006),English Literary Criticism and Theory: An Introductory History, Hyderabad: Orient Longman. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

CONTENTS 1 - 19 20 - 76 Unit 1:Introduction to Criticism 77 - 125 Unit 2:Plato:Book X of The Republic 126 - 146 Unit 3:Aristotle:Poetics - I 147 - 162 Unit 4:Aristotle:Poetics - II 163 - 200 Unit 5:An Introduction to Romantic Criticism Unit 6:William Wordsworth:Preface to the Lyrical Ballads(1800) 201 - 235 Unit 7:Samuel Taylor Coleridge:Biographia Literaria, 236 - 257 258 - 287 Chapters IV, XIII and XIV 288 - 309 Unit 8:Introduction to Modern Criticism Unit 9:Mathew Arnold:The Study of Poetry Unit 10:T.S. Eliot:Tradition and Individual Talent CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT 1 INTRODUCTION TO CRITICISM Structure: 1.0 Learning Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Functions 1.3 Historical Development 1.4 The Influence of Science 1.5 Criticism and Knowledge 1.6 Keywords/Abbreviations 1.7 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 1.8 References 1.0 Learning Objectives In this unit, the students would study:  Literary Criticism, its meaning and its functions.  Consideration and approaches to the literary works.  Criticism from the ancient ages to the modern times.  Development of thought and perception. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

2 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I 1.1 Introduction Literary criticism,the reasoned consideration of literary works and issues. It applies, as a term, to any argumentation about literature, whether or not specific works are analyzed. Plato’s cautions against the risky consequences of poetic inspiration in general in hisRepublicare thus often taken as the earliest important example of literary criticism. More strictly construed, the term covers only what has been called “practical criticism,” the interpretation of meaning and the judgment of quality. Criticism in this narrow sense can be distinguished not only from aesthetics (the philosophy of artistic value) but also from other matters that may concern the student of literature: biographical questions, bibliography, historical knowledge, sources and influences, and problems of method. Thus, especially in academic studies, “criticism” is often considered to be separate from “scholarship.” In practice, however, this distinction often proves artificial, and even the most single-minded concentration on a text may be informed by outside knowledge, while many notable works of criticism combine discussion of texts with broad arguments about the nature of literature and the principles of assessing it. Criticism will here be taken to cover all phases of literary understanding, though the emphasis will be on the evaluation of literary works and of their authors’ places in literary history. 1.2 Functions The functions of literary criticism vary widely, ranging from the reviewing of books as they are published to systematic theoretical discussion. Though reviews may sometimes determine whether a given book will be widely sold, many works succeed commercially despite negative reviews, and many classic works, including Herman Melville’sMoby Dick(1851), have acquired appreciative publics long after being unfavourably reviewed and at first neglected. One of criticism’s principal functions is to express the shifts in sensibility that make such revaluations possible. The minimal condition for such a new appraisal is, of course, that the original text survive. The literary critic is sometimes cast in the role of scholarly detective, unearthing, authenticating, and editing unknown manuscripts. Thus, even rarefied scholarly skills may be put to criticism’s most elementary use, the bringing of literary works to a public’s attention. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 3 The variety of criticism’s functions is reflected in the range of publications in which it appears. Criticism in the daily press rarely displays sustained acts of analysis and may sometimes do little more than summarize a publisher’s claims for a book’s interest. Weekly and biweekly magazines serve to introduce new books but are often more discriminating in their judgments, and some of these magazines, such asThe(London)Times Literary SupplementandThe New York Review of Books, are far from indulgent toward popular works. Sustained criticism can also be found in monthlies and quarterlies with a broad circulation, in “little magazines” for specialized audiences, and in scholarly journals and books. Because critics often try to be lawgivers, declaring which works deserve respect and presuming to say what they are “really” about, criticism is a perennial target of resentment. Misguided or malicious critics can discourage an author who has been feeling his way toward a new mode that offends received taste. Pedantic critics can obstruct a serious engagement with literature by deflecting attention toward inessential matters. As the French philosopher-critic Jean-Paul Sartre observed, the critic may announce that French thought is a perpetual colloquy between Pascal and Montaigne not in order to make those thinkers more alive but to make thinkers of his own time more dead. Criticism can antagonize authors even when it performs its function well. Authors who regard literature as needing no advocates or investigators are less than grateful when told that their works possess unintended meaning or are imitative or incomplete. What such authors may tend to forget is that their works, once published, belong to them only in a legal sense. The true owner of their works is the public, which will appropriate them for its own concerns regardless of the critic. The critic’s responsibility is not to the author’s self- esteem but to the public and to his own standards of judgment, which are usually more exacting than the public’s. Justification for his role rests on the premise that literary works are not in fact self-explanatory. A critic is socially useful to the extent that society wants, and receives, a fuller understanding of literature than it could have achieved without him. In filling this appetite, the critic whets it further, helping to create a public that cares about artistic quality. Without sensing the presence of such a public, an author may either prostitute his talent or squander it in sterile acts of defiance. In this sense, the critic is not a parasite but, potentially, someone who is responsible in part for the existence of good writing in his own time and afterward. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

4 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Although some critics believe that literature should be discussed in isolation from other matters, criticism usually seems to be openly or covertly involved with social and political debate. Since literature itself is often partisan, is always rooted to some degree in local circumstances, and has a way of calling forth affirmations of ultimate values, it is not surprising that the finest critics have never paid much attention to the alleged boundaries between criticism and other types of discourse. Especially in modern Europe, literary criticism has occupied a central place in debate about cultural and political issues. Sartre’s ownWhat Is Literature? (1947) is typical in its wide-ranging attempt to prescribe the literary intellectual’s ideal relation to the development of his society and to literature as a manifestation of human freedom. Similarly, some prominent American critics, including Alfred Kazin, Lionel Trilling, Kenneth Burke, Philip Rahv, and Irving Howe, began as political radicals in the 1930s and sharpened their concern for literature on the dilemmas and disillusionments of that era. Trilling’s influentialThe Liberal Imagination(1950) is simultaneously a collection of literary essays and an attempt to reconcile the claims of politics and art. Such a reconciliation is bound to be tentative and problematic if the critic believes, as Trilling does, that literature possesses an independent value and a deeper faithfulness to reality than is contained in any political formula. In Marxist states, however, literature has usually been considered a means to social ends and, therefore, criticism has been cast in forthrightly partisan terms. Dialectical materialism does not necessarily turn the critic into a mere guardian of party doctrine, but it does forbid him to treat literature as a cause in itself, apart from the working class’s needs as interpreted by the party. Where this utilitarian view prevails, the function of criticism is taken to be continuous with that of the state itself, namely, furtherance of the social revolution. The critic’s main obligation is not to his texts but rather to the masses of people whose consciousness must be advanced in the designated direction. In periods of severe orthodoxy, the practice of literary criticism has not always been distinguishable from that of censorship. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 5 1.3 Historical Development Antiquity Although almost all of the criticism ever written dates from the 20th century, questions first posed by Plato and Aristotle are still of prime concern, and every critic who has attempted to justify the social value of literature has had to come to terms with the opposing argument made by Plato inThe Republic.The poet as a man and poetry as a form of statement both seemed untrustworthy to Plato, who depicted the physical world as an imperfect copy of transcendent ideas and poetry as a mere copy of the copy. Thus, literature could only mislead the seeker of truth. Plato credited the poet with divine inspiration, but this, too, was cause for worry; a man possessed by such madness would subvert the interests of a rational polity. Poets were therefore, to be banished from the hypothetical republic. In his Poetics — still the most respected of all discussions of literature — Aristotle countered Plato’s indictment by stressing what is normal and useful about literary art. The tragic poet is not so much divinely inspired as he is motivated by a universal human need to imitate, and what he imitates is not something like a bed (Plato’s example) but a noble action. Such imitation presumably has a civilizing value for those who empathize with it. Tragedy does arouse emotions of pity and terror in its audience, but these emotions are purged in the process (katharsis). In this fashion Aristotle succeeded in portraying literature as satisfying and regulating human passions instead of inflaming them. Although Plato and Aristotle are regarded as antagonists, the narrowness of their disagreement is noteworthy. Both maintain that poetry is mimetic, both treat the arousing of emotion in the perceiver, and both feel that poetry takes its justification, if any, from its service to the state. It was obvious to both men that poets wielded great power over others. Unlike many modern critics who have tried to show that poetry is more than a pastime, Aristotle had to offer reassurance that it was not socially explosive. Aristotle’s practical contribution to criticism, as opposed to his ethical defense of literature, lies in his inductive treatment of the elements and kinds of poetry. Poetic modes are identified according to their means of imitation, the actions they imitate, the manner of imitation, and its CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

6 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I effects. These distinctions assist the critic in judging each mode according to its proper ends instead of regarding beauty as a fixed entity. The ends of tragedy, as Aristotle conceived them, are best served by the harmonious disposition of six elements: plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle, and song. Thanks to Aristotle’s insight into universal aspects of audience psychology, many of his dicta have proved to be adaptable to genres developed long after his time. Later Greek and Roman criticism offers no parallel to Aristotle’s originality. Much ancient criticism, such as that of Cicero, Horace, and Quintilian in Rome, was absorbed in technical rules of exegesis and advice to aspiring rhetoricians. Horace’s verse epistleThe Art of Poetryis an urbane amplification of Aristotle’s emphasis on the decorum or internal propriety of each genre, now including lyric, pastoral, satire, elegy, and epigram, as well as Aristotle’s epic, tragedy, and comedy. This work was later to be prized by Neoclassicists of the 17th century not only for its rules but also for its humour, common sense, and appeal to educated taste.On the Sublime, by the Roman-Greek known as “Longinus,” was to become influential in the 18th century but for a contrary reason: when decorum began to lose its sway encouragement could be found in Longinus for arousing elevated and ecstatic feeling in the reader. Horace and Longinus developed, respectively, the rhetorical and the affective sides of Aristotle’s thought, but Longinus effectively reversed the Aristotelian concern with regulation of the passions. Medieval Period In the Christian Middle Ages criticism suffered from the loss of nearly all the ancient critical texts and from an antipagan distrust of the literary imagination. Such Church Fathers as Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome renewed, in churchly guise, the Platonic argument against poetry. But both the ancient gods and the surviving classics reasserted their fascination, entering medieval culture in theologically allegorized form. Encyclopaedists and textual commentators explained the supposed Christian content of pre-Christian works and the Old Testament. Although there was no lack of rhetoricians to dictate the correct use of literary figures, no attempt was made to derive critical principles from emergent genres such as the fabliau and the chivalric romance. Criticism was in fact inhibited by the very coherence of the theologically explained universe. When nature is conceived as endlessly and purposefully symbolic of revealed truth, specifically literary problems of form and meaning are bound to be neglected. Even such an original vernacular poet CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 7 of the 14th century as Dante appears to have expected hisDivine Comedyto be interpreted according to the rules ofscriptural exegesis. The Renaissance Renaissance criticism grew directly from the recovery of classic texts and notably from Giorgio Valla’s translation of Aristotle’sPoeticsinto Latin in 1498. By 1549 thePoeticshad been rendered into Italian as well. From this period until the later part of the 18th century Aristotle was once again the most imposing presence behind literary theory. Critics looked to ancient poems and plays for insight into the permanent laws of art. The most influential of Renaissance critics was probably Lodovico Castelvetro, whose 1570 commentary on Aristotle’sPoeticsencouraged the writing of tightly structured plays by extending and codifying Aristotle’s idea of the dramatic unities. It is difficult today to appreciate that this obeisance to antique models had a liberating effect; one must recall that imitation of the ancients entailed rejecting scriptural allegory and asserting the individual author’s ambition to create works that would be unashamedly great and beautiful. Classicism, individualism, and national pride joined forces against literary asceticism. Thus, a group of 16th century French writers known as the Pléiade — notably Pierre de Ronsard and Joachim du Bellay — were simultaneously classicists, poetic innovators, and advocates of a purified vernacular tongue. The ideas of the Italian and French Renaissance were transmitted to England by Roger Ascham, George Gascoigne, Sir Philip Sidney, and others. Gascoigne’s “Certayne notes of Instruction” (1575), the first English manual of versification, had a considerable effect on poetic practice in the Elizabethan Age. Sidney’sDefence of Poesie(1595) vigorously argued the poet’s superiority to the philosopher and the historian on the grounds that his imagination is chained neither to lifeless abstractions nor to dull actualities. The poet “doth not only show the way, but giveth so sweet a prospect into the way, as will entice any man to enter into it.” While still honouring the traditional conception of poetry’s role as bestowing pleasure and instruction, Sidney’s essay presages the Romantic claim that the poetic mind is a law unto itself. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

8 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Neoclassicism and its Decline The Renaissance in general could be regarded as a neoclassical period, in that ancient works were considered the surest models for modern greatness. Neoclassicism, however, usually connotes narrower attitudes that are at once literary and social: a worldly-wise tempering of enthusiasm, a fondness for proved ways, a gentlemanly sense of propriety and balance. Criticism of the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly in France, was dominated by these Horatian norms. French critics such as Pierre Corneille and Nicolas Boileau urged a strict orthodoxy regarding the dramatic unities and the requirements of each distinct genre, as if to disregard them were to lapse into barbarity. The poet was not to imagine that his genius exempted him from the established laws of craftsmanship. Neoclassicism had a lesser impact in England, partly because English Puritanism had kept alive some of the original Christian hostility to secular art, partly because English authors were on the whole closer to plebeian taste than were the court-oriented French, and partly because of the difficult example of Shakespeare, who magnificently broke all of the rules. Not even the relatively severe classicist Ben Jonson could bring himself to deny Shakespeare’s greatness, and the theme of Shakespearean genius triumphing over formal imperfections is echoed by major British critics from John Dryden and Alexander Pope through Samuel Johnson. The science of Newton and the psychology of Locke also worked subtle changes on neoclassical themes. Pope’s Essay on Criticism(1711) is a Horatian compendium of maxims, but Pope feels obliged to defend the poetic rules as“Nature methodiz’d” — a portent of quite different literary inferences from Nature. Dr. Johnson, too, though he respected precedent, was above all a champion of moral sentiment and “mediocrity,” the appeal to generally shared traits. His preference for forthright sincerity left him impatient with such intricate conventions as those of the pastoral elegy. The decline of Neoclassicism is hardly surprising; literary theory had developed very little during two centuries of artistic, political, and scientific ferment. The 18th century’s important new genre, the novel, drew most of its readers from a bourgeoisie that had little use for aristocratic dicta. A Longinian cult of “feeling” gradually made headway, in various European countries, against Neoclassical canons of proportion and moderation. Emphasis shifted from concern for meeting fixed criteria to the subjective state of the reader and then of the author himself. The CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 9 spirit of nationalism entered criticism as a concern for the origins and growth of one’s own native literature and as an esteem for such non-Aristotelian factors as “the spirit of the age.” Historical consciousness produced by turns theories of literary progress and primitivistic theories affirming, as one critic put it, that “barbarous” times are the most favourable to the poetic spirit. The new recognition of strangeness and strong feeling as literary virtues yielded various fashions of taste for misty sublimity, graveyard sentiments, medievalism, Norse epics (and forgeries), Oriental tales, and the verse of plowboys. Perhaps the most eminent foes of Neoclassicism before the 19th century were Denis Diderot in France and, in Germany, Gotthold Lessing, Johann von Herder, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. Romanticism Romanticism, an amorphous movement that began in Germany and England at the turn of the 19th century, and somewhat later in France, Italy, and the United States, found spokesmen as diverse as Goethe and August and Friedrich von Schlegel in Germany, William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in England, Madame de Staël and Victor Hugo in France, Alessandro Manzoni in Italy, and Ralph Waldo Emerson and Edgar Allan Poe in the United States. Romantics tended to regard the writing of poetry as a transcendentally important activity, closely related to the creative perception of meaning in the world. The poet was credited with the godlike power that Plato had feared in him; Transcendental philosophy was, indeed, a derivative of Plato’s metaphysical Idealism. In the typical view of Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry “strips the veil of familiarity from the world, and lays bare the naked and sleeping beauty, which is the spirit of its forms.” Wordsworth’s preface toLyrical Ballads(1800), with its definition of poetry as the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and its attack on Neoclassical diction, is regarded as the opening statement of English Romanticism. In England, however, only Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria(1817) embraced the whole complex of Romantic doctrines emanating from Germany; the British empiricist tradition was too firmly rooted to be totally washed aside by the new metaphysics. Most of those who were later called Romantics did share an emphasis on individual passion and inspiration, a taste for symbolism and historical awareness, and a conception of art works as internally whole structures in which feelings are dialectically merged CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

10 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I with their contraries. Romantic criticism coincided with the emergence of aesthetics as a separate branch of philosophy, and both signalled a weakening in ethical demands upon literature. The lasting achievement of Romantic theory is its recognition that artistic creations are justified, not by their promotion of virtue, but by their own coherence and intensity. The late 19th century The Romantic movement had been spurred not only by German philosophy but also by the universalistic and utopian hopes that accompanied the French Revolution. Some of those hopes were thwarted by political reaction, while others were blunted by industrial capitalism and the accession to power of the class that had demanded general liberty. Advocates of the literary imagination now began to think of themselves as enemies or gadflies of the newly entrenched bourgeoisie. In some hands the idea of creative freedom dwindled to a bohemianism pitting “art for its own sake” against commerce and respectability. Aestheticism characterized both the Symbolist criticism of Charles Baudelaire in France and the self-conscious decadence of Algernon Swinburne, Walter Pater, and Oscar Wilde in England. At an opposite extreme, realistic and naturalistic views of literature as an exact record of social truth were developed by Vissarion Belinsky in Russia, Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola in France, and William Dean Howells in the United States. Zola’s programme, however, was no less anti-bourgeois than that of the Symbolists; he wanted novels to document conditions so as to expose their injustice. Post-Romantic disillusion was epitomized in Britain in the criticism of Matthew Arnold, who thought of critical taste as a substitute for religion and for the unsatisfactory values embodied in every social class. Toward the end of the 19th century, especially in Germany, England, and the United States, literary study became an academic discipline “at the doctoral level.” Philology, linguistics, folklore study, and the textual principles that had been devised for biblical criticism provided curricular guidelines, while academic taste mirrored the prevailing impressionistic concern for the quality of the author’s spirit. Several intellectual currents joined to make possible the writing of systematic and ambitious literary histories. Primitivism and Medievalism had awakened interest in neglected early texts; scientific Positivism encouraged a scrupulous regard for facts; and the German idea that each country’s literature had sprung from a unique national consciousness provided a conceptual framework. The French critic Hippolyte Taine’sHistory of English CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 11 Literature(published in French, 1863-69) reflected the prevailing determinism of scientific thought; for him a work could be explained in terms of the race, milieu, and moment that produced it. For other critics of comparable stature, such as Charles Sainte-Beuve in France, Benedetto Croce in Italy, and George Saintsbury in England, historical learning only threw into relief the expressive uniqueness of each artistic temperament. The 20th Century The ideal of objective research has continued to guide Anglo-American literary scholarship and criticism and has prompted work of unprecedented accuracy. Bibliographic procedures have been revolutionized; historical scholars, biographers, and historians of theory have placed criticism on a sounder basis of factuality. Important contributions to literary understanding have meanwhile been drawn from anthropology, linguistics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Impressionistic method has given way to systematic inquiry from which gratuitous assumptions are, if possible, excluded. Yet demands for a more ethically committed criticism have repeatedly been made, from the New Humanism of Paul Elmer More and Irving Babbitt in the United States in the 1920s, through the moralizing criticism of the Cambridge don F. R. Leavis and of the American poet Yvor Winters, to the most recent demands for “relevance.” No sharp line can be drawn between academic criticism and criticism produced by authors and men of letters. Many of the latter are now associated with universities, and the main shift of academic emphasis, from impressionism to formalism, originated outside the academy in the writings of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and T.E. Hulme, largely in London around 1910. Only subsequently did such academics as I. A. Richards and William Empson in England and John Crowe Ransom and Cleanth Brooks in the United States adapt the New Criticism to reform of the literary curriculum — in the 1940s. New Criticism has been the methodological counterpart to the strain of modernist literature characterized by allusive difficulty, paradox, and indifference or outright hostility to the democratic ethos. In certain respects the hegemony of New Criticism has been political as well as literary; and anti-Romantic insistence on irony, convention, and aesthetic distance has been accompanied by scorn for all revolutionary hopes. In Hulme conservatism and classicism were explicitly linked. Romanticism struck him as “spilt religion,” a dangerous exaggeration of human freedom. In reality, however, New Criticism owed much to Romantic CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

12 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I theory, especially to Coleridge’s idea of organic form, and some of its notable practitioners have been left of centre in their social thought. The totality of Western criticism in the 20th century defies summary except in terms of its restless multiplicity and factionalism. Schools of literary practice, such as Imagism, Futurism, Dadaism, and Surrealism, have found no want of defenders and explicators. Ideological groupings, psychological dogmas, and philosophical trends have generated polemics and analysis, and literary materials have been taken as primary data by sociologists and historians. Literary creators themselves have continued to write illuminating commentary on their own principles and aims. In poetry, Paul Valéry, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens; in the theatre, George Bernard Shaw, Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht; and in fiction, Marcel Proust, D. H. Lawrence, and Thomas Mann have contributed to criticism in the act of justifying their art. Most of the issues debated in 20th century criticism appear to be strictly empirical, even technical, in nature. By what means can the most precise and complete knowledge of a literary work be arrived at? Should its social and biographical context be studied or only the words themselves as an aesthetic structure? Should the author’s avowed intention be trusted, or merely taken into account, or disregarded as irrelevant? How is conscious irony to be distinguished from mere ambivalence, or allusiveness from allegory? Which among many approaches — linguistic, generic, formal, sociological, psychoanalytic, and so forth — is best adapted to making full sense of a text? Would a synthesis of all these methods yield a total theory of literature? Such questions presuppose that literature is valuable and that objective knowledge of its workings is a desirable end. These assumptions are, indeed, so deeply buried in most critical discourse that they customarily remain hidden from critics themselves, who imagine that they are merely solving problems of intrinsic interest. 1.4 The Influence of Science What separates modern criticism from earlier work is its catholicity of scope and method, its borrowing of procedures from the social sciences, and its unprecedented attention to detail. As literature’s place in society has become more problematic and peripheral, and as humanistic education has grown into a virtual industry with a large group of professionals serving as one CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 13 another judges, criticism has evolved into a complex discipline, increasingly refined in its procedures but often lacking a sense of contact with the general social will. Major modern critics, to be sure, have not allowed their “close reading” to distract them from certain perennial questions about poetic truth, the nature of literary satisfaction, and literature’s social utility, but even these matters have sometimes been cast in “value-free” empirical terms. Recourse to scientific authority and method, then, is the outstanding trait of 20th century criticism. The sociology of Marx, Max Weber, and Karl Mannheim, the mythological investigations of Sir James George Frazer and his followers, Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, Claude Levi-Strauss’s anthropological structuralism, and the psychological models proposed by Sigmund Freud and C.G. Jung have all found their way into criticism. The result has been not simply an abundance of technical terms and rules, but a widespread belief that literature’s governing principles can be located outside literature. Jungian “archetypal” criticism, for example, regularly identifies literary power with the presence of certain themes that are alleged to inhabit the myths and beliefs of all cultures, while psychoanalytic exegetes interpret poems in exactly the manner that Freud interpreted dreams. Such procedures may encourage the critic, wisely or unwisely, to discount traditional boundaries between genres, national literatures, and levels of culture; the critical enterprise begins to seem continuous with a general study of man. The impetus toward universalism can be discerned even in those critics who are most skeptical of it, the so-called historical relativists who attempt to reconstruct each epoch’s outlook and to understand works as they appeared to their first readers. Historical relativism does undermine cross-cultural notions of beauty, but it reduces the record of any given period to data from which inferences can be systematically drawn. Here, too, in other words, uniform methodology tends to replace the intuitive connoisseurship that formerly typified the critic’s sense of his role. 1.5 Criticism and Knowledge The debate over poetic truth may illustrate how modern discussion is beholden to extraliterary knowledge. Critics have never ceased disputing whether literature depicts the world correctly, incorrectly, or not at all, and the dispute has often had more to do with the support or condemnation of specific authors than with ascertainable facts about mimesis. Today it may be CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

14 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I almost impossible to take a stand regarding poetic truth without also coming to terms with positivism as a total epistemology. The spectacular achievements of physical science have (with logic questioned by some) downgraded intuition and placed a premium on concrete, testable statements very different from those found in poems. Some of the most influential modern critics, notably I. A. Richards in his early works, have accepted this value order and have confined themselves to behavioristic study of how literature stimulates the reader’s feelings. A work of literature, for them, is no longer something that captures an external or internal reality, but is merely a locus for psychological operations; it can only be judged as eliciting or failing to elicit a desired response. Other critics, however, have renewed the Shelleyan and Coleridgean contention that literary experience involves a complex and profound form of knowing. In order to do so they have had to challenge Positivism in general. Such a challenge cannot be convincingly mounted within the province of criticism itself and must depend rather on the authority of antipositivist epistemologists such as Alfred North Whitehead, Ernst Cassirer, and Michael Polanyi. If it is now respectable to maintain, with Wallace Stevens and others, that the world is known through imaginative apprehensions of the sort that poetry celebrates and employs, this is attributable to developments far outside the normal competence of critics. The pervasive influence of science is most apparent in modern criticism’s passion for total explanation of the texts it brings under its microscope. Even formalist schools, which take for granted an author’s freedom to shape his work according to the demands of art, treat individual lines of verse with a dogged minuteness that was previously unknown, hoping thereby to demonstrate the “organic” coherence of the poem. The spirit of explanation is also apparent in those schools that argue from the circumstances surrounding a work’s origin to the work itself, leaving an implication that the former have caused the latter. The determinism is rarely as explicit or relentless as it was in Taine’s scheme of race, milieu, and moment, but this may reflect the fact that causality in general is now handled with more sophistication than in Taine’s day. Whether criticism will continue to aim at empirical exactitude or will turn in some new direction cannot be readily predicted, for the empiricist ideal and its sanctuary, the university, are not themselves secure from attack. The history of criticism is one of oscillation between periods CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 15 of relative advance, when the imaginative freedom of great writers prompts critics to extend their former conceptions, and periods when stringent moral and formal prescriptions are laid upon literature. In times of social upheaval criticism may more or less deliberately abandon the ideal of disinterested knowledge and be mobilized for a practical end. Revolutionary movements provide obvious instances of such redirection, whether or not they identify their pragmatic goals with the cause of science. It should be evident that the future of criticism depends on factors that lie outside criticism itself as a rationally evolving discipline. When a whole society shifts its attitudes toward pleasure, unorthodox behaviour, or the meaning of existence, criticism must follow along. As Matthew Arnold foresaw, the waning of religious certainty has encouraged critics to invest their faith in literature, taking it as the one remaining source of value and order. This development has stimulated critical activity, yet, paradoxically, it may also be responsible in part for a growing impatience with criticism. What Arnold could not have anticipated is that the faith of some moderns would be apocalyptic and Dionysian rather than a sober and attenuated derivative of Victorian Christianity. Thought in the 20th century has yielded a strong undercurrent of anarchism which celebrates libidinous energy and self-expression at the expense of all social constraint, including that of literary form. In the critical writings of D. H. Lawrence, for example, fiction is cherished as an instrument of unconscious revelation and liberation. A widespread insistence upon prophetic and ecstatic power in literature seems at present to be undermining the complex, irony-minded formalism that has dominated modern discourse. As literary scholarship has acquired an ever-larger arsenal of weapons for attacking problems of meaning, it has met with increasing resentment from people who wish to be nourished by whatever is elemental and mysterious in literary experience. An awareness of critical history suggests that the development is not altogether new, for criticism stands now approximately where it did in the later 18th century, when the Longinian spirit of expressiveness contested the sway of Boileau and Pope. To the extent that modern textual analysis has become what Hulme predicted, “a classical revival,” it may not be welcomed by those who want a direct and intense rapport with literature. What is resisted now is not Neoclassical decorum but impersonal methodology, which is thought to deaden commitment. Such resistance may prove beneficial if it reminds critics that rationalized procedures are indeed CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

16 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I no substitute for engagement. Excellent work continues to be written, not because a definitive method or synthesis of methods has been found, but on the contrary because the best critics still understand that criticism is an exercise of private sympathy, discrimination, and moral and cultural reflection. 1.6 Keywords/Abbreviations  Belief:Belief is the second lowest grade of cognitive activity. The object of belief is the visible realm rather than the intelligible realm. A man in a state of belief does not have any access to the Forms, but instead takes sensible particulars as the most real things.  Epistemology:The branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge, belief and thought. Epistemological questions include: What is knowledge? How do we form beliefs based on evidence? Can we know anything?  Opinion:Since only eternal, unchanging truths can be the objects of knowledge, all other truths are relegated to opinion. Opinion is the highest form of certainty that we can hope for when it comes to the visible realm, the realm of sensible particulars.  Spirit:Spirit is one aspect of our tripartite soul. It is the source of our honor-loving and victory-loving desires. Spirit is responsible for our feelings of anger and indignation. In a just soul, spirit acts as henchman to reason, ensuring that appetite adheres to reason’s commands.  Thought:Thought is the second highest grade of cognitive activity. As with understanding, the objects of thought are the Forms of the intelligible realm. Unlike understanding, though, thought can only proceed with the crutches of images and hypotheses (i.e., unproven assumptions). 1.7 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) A. Descriptive Type Questions 1. What is Literary Criticism? 2. What are the functions of literary criticism? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 17 3. Write a note on the critics. 4. Do you think that literature should be discussed in isolation from other matters. Why? 5. Trace the historical development of Literary Criticism. 6. What are Aristotle and Plato’s contribution to criticism? 7. Explain the role of Criticism in the medieval period. 8. Discuss the ideas of the Renaissance Criticism. 9. Why did Neoclassicism have a lesser impact in England? 10. What are the achievements of the Romantic theory? 11. Write a note on the 19th Century Criticism. 12. What are the issues debated in the 20th Century Criticism? 13. “Literature’s governing principles can be located outside literature.” Comment. 14. Explain the influence of science on modern criticism. B. Multiple Choice/Objective Type Questions . 1. Once the literary work is published, it belongs to the (not in the legal sense) . (a) Author (b) Critic (c) Public (d) Publisher 2. Who has written Liberal Imagination? (a) Lionel Trilling (b) Alfred Kaizin (c) Kenneth Burke (d) Philip Rahv 3. In Marxist states, literature has usually been considered as a means to (a) Spiritual needs (b) Political agenda (c) Social ends (d) Psychological needs CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

18 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I 4. The poet as a man and poetry as a form of statement both seemed untrustworthy to . (a) Aristotle (b) Plato (c) Longinus (d) Horace 5. appears to have expected his Divine Comedy to be interpreted according to the rules of scriptural exegesis. (a) Dante (b) Roger Ascham (c) George Gascoigne (d) Sir Philip Sidney 6. Defence of Poesie (1595) vigorously argued the poet’s superiority to the philosopher and the historian on the grounds that his imagination is chained neither to lifeless abstractions nor to dull actualities. (a) Dante (b) Roger Ascham (c) George Gascoigne (d) Sir Philip Sidney 7. The poet of the 17th and 18th Century was not to imagine that his genius exempted him from the established . (a) Laws of craftsmanship (b) Religious orders (c) Norms of the State (d) Laws of Nature Answers: 1. (c), 2. (a), 3. (c), 4. (b), 5. (a), 6. (d), 7. (a). 1.7 References 1. https://www.britannica.com/art/literary-criticism 2. Johns Hopkins (2005),Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism(2nd Edition), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0801880106, OCLC 54374476. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Introduction to Criticism 19 3. Gelder, G.J.H. (1982),Beyond the Line: Classical Arabic Literary Critics on the Coherence and Unity of the Poem, Leiden: Brill Publishers, pp. 1-2, ISBN 9004068546. OCLC 10350183. 4. Murray, Stuart (2009),The Library: An Illustrated History, New York: Skyhorse, pp. 132-133, ISBN 9781616084530, OCLC 277203534. 5. Regan, Shaun and Dawson, Books (2013),Reading 1759: Literary Culture in Mid- eighteenth-century Britain and France, Lewisburg [Pa.]: Bucknell University Press, pp. 125-130, ISBN 9781611484786. 6. Jones, E. Michael (1991),Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehaviour, San Francisco: Ignatius Press, pp. 79-84, ISBN 0898704472, OCLC 28241358. 7. “Contemporary Women’s Writing | Oxford Academic”,OUP Academic, Retrieved 2019- 08-01. 8. Vladimir Nabokov, Lectures onLiterature, chap.L’Envoi, p. 381. 9. Speirs, Logan (1986), Eagleton, Terry (ed.). “Terry Eagleton and ‘The Function of Criticism’”,The Cambridge Quarterly, 15(1): 57-63, ISSN 0008-199X, JSTOR 42966605. 10. D.T. Max (June 19, 2006), “The Injustice Collector”,The New Yorker. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

UNIT 2 PLATO:BOOK X OF THE REPUBLIC Structure: 2.0 Learning Objectives 2.1 About ‘The Republic’ 2.2The RepublicSummary 2.3The Republic: Book X (Text) 2.4 The RepublicSummary of Book X “The Recompense of Life” Summary: Book X 2.5 Analysis: Book X 2.6 Philosophical Themes, Arguments and Ideas 2.7 Keywords/Abbreviations 2.8 Unit End Questions (MCQ and Descriptive) 2.9 References 2.0 Learning Objectives In this unit, the students will study Plato’sThe Republic:  Concerning justice, the order and character of the just city-state, and the just man  It is Plato’s best-known work.  World’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 21 2.1 AboutThe Republic Plato’s Republic has long defied classification: it is a philosophical masterpiece; it is acute political theory; it is great literature. Although certain inconsistencies have been subsequently discovered, philosophical and otherwise, there can be no doubt thatThe Republicis a work of genius. It has as its central problem the nature of justice. In a word, what is justice? From this common origin, however, the book divides at a broader level. There is first of all the mundane, represented in the first books by the refutation of proverbial morality and traditional society. But the middle books belong almost exclusively to pure philosophy. In these Plato examines the figure of the philosopher, metaphysics, and epistemology, an extended investigation that culminates in the allegory of the vision, visibility, and the sun as symbol of the good, or justice. It not until the delineation of the famous “Myth of the Cave” in Book VII, however, that the two realms: material and ideal, polity and philosophy, historical State and ideal State, virtue and ethics truly come together. The image of the liberated prisoner forsaking the light, compelled whether by force or obligation? Plato would say duty? To rejoin his companions in the murky darkness of the cave, is perhaps the key to the underlying unity ofThe Republic. It is in the individual that the two realms meet. Plato’s aim, then, was to realize social and political stability on a foundation of moral and spiritual absolutes by which every man may live. The seed ofThe Republicwas probably planted in the philosopher’s early manhood in Athens. While still an aspiring politician, Plato was befriended by the elder Socrates and quickly became his informal pupil. In the aftermath of the Peloponnesian war, an oligarchic tyranny, called the “Thirty Tyrants,” ruled Athens for eight months and attempted to enlist both Plato and Socrates. Plato never made up his mind, but Socrates was forced to openly refuse. Nonetheless, Socrates subsequently gained a reputation for anti-democratic beliefs, extremely dangerous under the radical democracy that had newly overthrown the Thirty. When, in 399 BC, Plato witnessed the trial and execution of Socrates at the hands of the restored Athenian democracy, under charges of corrupting the youth, introducing new gods to the city, atheism, and unusual religious practices, his disillusionment was complete. Fearing for his own life, Plato left Athens to travel, abandoning his political career and a state he would no longer be able to serve. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

22 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Thus, to some extent,The Republiccan be thought of as a rectification of the fate of Socrates? A just man killed by an unjust State. And, in fact, Plato’s Seventh Letter, written in his mid-seventies, seems to corroborate this inference. In it, he writes that his early hopes for statesmanship had been irrevocably destroyed by Socrates’ trial and death. Thereafter, he had decided to dedicate his life not to an ephemeral and hopelessly corrupt State, but, instead, to the formulation of a society based on eternal ideas of truth, goodness, and justice. Politics was an essential part of ancient Greek life. It could be considered the outward expression of the inward conclusions of the soul. And, though Plato never held office, he was politically committed. His longest work, Laws, is also devoted to his enlightened social and political views. Plato simply refused to participate in a hopeless situation and become a martyr unnecessarily. The actual composition ofThe Republicoccurred in Plato’s middle period, denoted by the mature formulation of theTheory of Form,possibly around 370-5 BC. An exact date is not known. Most scholars believe the dialogue was written more or less without interruption by another work. At the time, as during all of Plato’s adult life, the Athenian city-state was in decline. Plato, in the sanctum of the Academy, continued his inquiries and his prolific writing despite external skepticism from the Sophists who governed the state. These men, treated ironically several times inThe Republic,doubted the validity of any unified theory of knowledge and the existence of absolutes.The Republichad no publication date, as is generally the case with ancient texts; therefore, unqualified verification of its authorship is impossible. However, there is little controversy over the text’s authenticity. 2.2The RepublicSummary The Republicitself is nothing at the start of Plato’s most famous and influential book. It does not exist. Not only does it not exist in actuality, but it does not exist in theory either. It must be built. It’s architect will be Socrates, the fictional persona Plato creates for himself. In the first episode Socrates encounters some acquaintances during the festival of Bendis. His reputation for good conversation already well-established, Socrates is approached by some dilettante philosopher acquaintances and drawn into a dialogue. The discussion quickly moves to justice thanks to Socrates. The other philosophers, including Thrasymachus, Polermarchus, Glaucon, and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 23 Adeimantus enthusiastically consent to such a worthy topic. However, it is unlikely at this point that any of these philosophers–save Socrates, of course–anticipates the ambition and enormity of their undertaking. In Book I, Socrates entertains two distinct definitions of justice. The first is provided by Polermarchus, who suggests that justice is “doing good to your friends and harm to your enemies.” The definition, which is a version of conventional morality, is considered. Very soon though, its faults are clearly apparent. It is far too relative to serve as a formulation of the justice. Moreover, its individual terms are vulnerable; that is to say, how does one know who is a friend and who an enemy? And are not friends as much as enemies capable of evil? And when a friend acts wickedly, should he not be punished? And next, what does it mean that an action is good or bad? The perils of giving credence to false appearances is introduced early on as a major theme. It will be dealt with at length in the succeeding books. Thus surely an idea as noble as justice will not stand on such precarious ground. Socrates is dissatisfied. A second definition, offered by Thrasymachus, endorses tyranny. “Obedience to the interest of the stronger,” is likewise mined for its value, shown to be deficient, and discarded. Tyranny, Socrates demonstrates employing several analogies, inevitably results in the fragmentation of the soul. Benevolent rule, on the other hand, ensures a harmonious life for both man and State. Justice is its means and good is its end. That “justice is the excellence of the soul” is Socrates’ main conclusion. But there are too many presumptions. Although his auditors have troubled refuting his claims, Socrates knows he has been too vague and that should they truly wish to investigate the question of justice, he will have to be more specific. Book I ends with yet another question. Is the just life more pleasurable, more rewarding than the unjust? Rather all at once the philosophers have inundated themselves. But the first book has succeeded in one major way. It has established the territory of the over-arching argument of the entire work. The philosophers continue the debate in Book II by introducing a new definition that belongs more to political philosophy than pure philosophy: that justice is a legally enforced compromise devised for the mutual protection of citizens of a State. In other words, justice is a fabrication of the State that prevents citizens from harming one another. Socrates is certainly up to the challenge. He dislikes the idea that justice does not exists naturally, but that it must be externally and CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

24 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I superficially imposed to discourage unjust behaviour. Adeimantus’ mentioning of the State seems fortuitous, but it is as if Socrates has been waiting for it all along. Uncertain whether they can arrive at an acceptable definition of justice any other way, Socrates proposes they construct a State of which they approve, and see if they might not find justice lurking in it somewhere. This State arises, Socrates says, “out of the needs of mankind.” And the immense project of building a State from its very foundation has officially commenced. Basic necessities are addressed first, then the primitive division of labour, followed by the rudiments of education. Within the ideal State, Socrates maintains, there will be no need for “bad fictions,” or manipulative poetics in general, since education must be perfectly moral. The arts in education are primarily dealt with in Book III. Socrates concludes his attack on the “libelous poetry” that portrays his beloved virtues in so many negative lights. It is not of use to the State. Or if it is to be of use, it must be stringently didactic and partake of none of the indulgence and rhapsody common to their tradition and to contemporary poets as well. Even Homer is indicted. Instead the citizens of the state, at this early stage they are generically named guardians, are to be nourished only on literature – broadly termed ‘music’ by Socrates – clearly illustrating courage, wisdom, temperance, and virtue (just behaviour). The second part of education, gymnasium, consists mostly of the physical training of the citizens. At this point Socrates’ State needs rulers. Who better to rule than the best and most patriotic citizens produced by the rigorous education apparatus. These very select few are now more strictly called the guardians, while non-guardians remain citizens. The guardians will be the rulers. The book closes with the Phoenician myth, which Socrates feels would serve as effective mythical explanation for their State. Through the myth citizens are told they are made of a certain mix of metals, gold and silver, iron and brass, etc. They are born like this and are to take the requisite social station because of it. However, should a citizen of gold or silver be born to parents of an inferior metal, he will rise socially as is just; and the rule will also function in the reverse situation. The myth provides the State with an accessible, allegorical illustration of its stable, hierarchical social organization. In Book IV, the happiness of the guardians, so strenuously trained, is questioned. Socrates takes the objections of his auditors in due stride, reminding them of their original premise: that CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 25 the State is to be for the good of the many and not the few. Their State has grown larger in the meantime, and is beginning to divide its labours. Defense and security against neighbours and foreign invasion enter the debate. But surely, Socrates says, the education, military and otherwise, that the citizens have garnered, coupled with their love for the State and their solidarity, will repel or outwit all challenges. Believing that what they have created thus far is a perfect State, the philosopher once again seek out justice. Socrates suggests they proceed by a process of elimination among the four virtues. He defines courage, temperance, and wisdom, but must digress before attaining justice. The digression yields the three principles of the soul: reason, passion, and appetite. When these exist in harmony, Socrates concludes, there is justice. It is a provisional definition. The philosophers agreement at the end of Book IV to discuss the various corrupt forms of government is, however, interrupted by an accusation of laziness. Thrasymachus voices his dissatisfaction with Socrates who, he says, has purposely avoided speaking of the more practical concerns of the State. The objection blossoms into the section on matrimony. Encompassing matrimony, family, and community, Socrates elucidates his very scientific, very futuristic plan for population control and the right breeding of the human animal. The strong reproduce more often than the weak. Likewise weak offspring are disposed of or hidden away someplace unnamed. Socrates has bucked two of what he calls three “waves.” The third and greatest is the question of whether their possibility is realizable in any way. Socrates’ response is mostly negative. However, there is one method by which the States they see around them might become ideal States. That is, if philosophers become kings or, more likely, if kings take up the study of philosophy. Hence the famous term philosopher-kings. But this in turn begs the query: what is the philosopher? This leads Socrates into another complicated idea, an inchoate version of the Theory of Forms. Manifestations, appearances, likenesses, opinions–none of them are Reality; they are merely shadows. Only the Forms, the ideals that lie behind are truth. And the philosopher seeks above all else knowledge of these Forms. Yet another accusation from the gallery directs Socrates’ inquiry in the beginning of Book VI. Adeimantus believes the guardians they have created are monsters. On the contrary, Socrates defends, their nobility and worth are beyond question, drawing on the parable of the pilot and his CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

26 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I crew as an illustration. The parable opposes the wants of the majority with the authority of the truly fit leader. The multitudes, Socrates explains, do not know what is best for them. They are to be ruled by one especially suited and trained to this end, and for the good of all. Socrates is obliged then to develop the relationship between the guardians and philosophy. Guardians, he says, cease to be guardians when they abandon the truth, be minority or otherwise. The final section of Book VI includes a series of wonderfully vivid and intelligible figures or metaphors that help clarify somewhat the Theory of Forms and the good. Visibility, vision, and light are analogous to knowledge, the knower, and that which makes knowing possible, the good. The good is symbolized by sunlight, the vital means by which the sun not only sheds light on the world but nourishes that world. Philosophy is a love of the light, an attempt to perceive and understand it in all its metaphorical manifestations. Everything else belongs to the world of the manifold, of shadows. Finally the dialectic is the only way to ascend, as upon a staircase of ideas, to the luminous good. Book VII is dominated by the Allegory of the Cave. One of the most enduring images perhaps in the history of western philosophy, the dim cave plays host to a group of prisoners, chained in such a way that they cannot move their heads, stare at a wall all day. Thanks to a small fire, the prisoners see the shadows of their captors projected on the wall. Having always been in the cave, they believe the shadows are true; likewise, the echoed voices they hear, they also believe to be true. Then one day a certain prisoner is released. The secrets of the cave are disclosed to him, and he is lead up into the sunlight, which blinds his unaccustomed eyes. The third part of the allegory has the ‘enlightened’ prisoner, who has looked upon, contemplated, and adjusted to the true light of the sun, must return to the cave. There he finds his new eyes ill-suited for cave life and is cruelly mocked by the other prisoners. A summary of the life course of the guardians, the allegory moralizes dutiful rule for the common good. The guardians must give up the beauty and peace of the light to help their fellow men, the majority of whom dwell in abject darkness. But who would make such a sacrifice? Given their education–which is now expanded even further–Socrates is confidant the guardians would. After all they spend the first fifty years of their life training for the opportunity and, as they would consider it, their honour. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 27 Socrates asks permission to backtrack a little at the opening of Book VIII in order to analyze the forms of corrupt governments. This way they can also look at the individuals inhabiting them, thus cutting away the grist so that only the meat, the just man, may remain. There are four principle defective forms: timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny. Aristocracy’s (The Republic) degeneration into timocracy occurs as a kind of hypothetical fluke, an error in population control. The timocracy is a government based primarily on honour not justice, and the timocratic man is torn between his philosophical ancestors and new, ingratiating contemporaries who flatter his vanity. Oligarchy arises when wealth becomes the standard. The State separates into two distinct and distant classes–rich and poor. And the timocrat embodies the old, honourable ways in competition with avarice. After a revolution in which the rulers are overthrown by the discontented poor, democracy, the most liberal and various State appears. The democratic representative is ruled by appetites that hold sway well above reason or honor. The final dissolution into the worst and most wicked form of government, tyranny, is the result of democracy’s supposed virtue: freedom. But is in excess and, after another revolution, a new ruler, the tyrant ascends. He has no unlimited freedom and thus no morals. He feeds off the State, taxes his people, protects himself with mercenaries, and destroys any threat to this power. The book’s most miserable character, the tyrant is antithetical to the guardian; he is injustice incarnate. Book IX sees Socrates deal with the figure of the tyrant in more depth. This is a necessary digression, since by evaluating the life of the tyrant, his pleasures and pains, they may have a better idea of what constitutes the unjust life. Eventually they will use what they learn from the tyrant to compare his life with the philosopher’s. The tyrant begins as the champion of the people, promising to release them from debt. By the end of his reign, however, he has taxed them into poverty and enslaved them. Then, in an unexpected turn, the tyrant, for a while master of all men himself becomes a slave to all men. He is governed by insatiable appetites, is threatened on all sides and at every moment by betrayal and assassination, and can never leave his land for fear of being deposed. The portrait is rather dismal; what would seem to be absolute freedom is in reality absolute slavery. Book IX concludes with the re-introduction of the question: does the unjust man who is perceived as just in public live better or worse than the just man perceived as unjust? A discussion of the nature of pleasure ensues and the base pleasures are distinguished from the CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

28 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I noble and, in fact, more enjoyable. Ultimately, Socrates answers, in the long run, injustice enjoys much less, if at all, and must inevitably reveal itself and be shunned or cast out. The finale, and really the end of the State as such, is Socrates assertion that whether or not the ideal State becomes a reality, the philosopher must always live as though it were real inside him. The final book ofThe Republic, “The Recompense of Life,” telescopes into two main points. First is the issue of imitative poetry. Here Socrates offers his conclusive assessment of the poetic arts. Homer, he apologizes, must, except for those parts portraying nobility and right behaviour in famous men and gods, be left out of the State. He may even have to be translated from verse to prose, in order that the musicality of the language not seduce any citizens. Second comes the true recompense of life, which actually occurs in the afterlife. Although the just man reaps great rewards in mortal life, it is in his immortality, or the immortality of his soul, where he is truly paid his due. The gods receive the just man, who has aspired all along to emulate them, as a quasi-equal. And enfin,The Republiccloses with Socrates’ colourful narration of the tale of Er the hero. It is a long description of an afterlife, in which all those virtues that Socrates has worked so diligently to expose and defend are given their proper place. Souls are shown in eternal recurrence, moving up and down from the heavens to earth and back again (with the wicked spending thousand year stints in hell). 2.3The Republic: Book X (Text) Of the many excellences which I perceive in the order of our State, there is none which upon reflection pleases me better than the rule about poetry. To what do you refer? To the rejection of imitative poetry, which certainly ought not to be received; as I see far more clearly now that the parts of the soul have been distinguished. What do you mean? Speaking in confidence, for I should not like to have my words repeated to the tragedians and the rest of the imitative tribe — but I do not mind saying to you, that all poetical imitations are CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 29 ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only antidote to them. Explain the purport of your remark. Well, I will tell you, although I have always from my earliest youth had an awe and love of Homer, which even now makes the words falter on my lips, for he is the great captain and teacher of the whole of that charming tragic company; but a man is not to be reverenced more than the truth, and therefore I will speak out. Very good, he said. Listen to me then, or rather, answer me. Put your question. Can you tell me what imitation is? For I really do not know. A likely thing, then, that I should know. Why not? for the duller eye may often see a thing sooner than the keener. Very true, he said; but in your presence, even if I had any faint notion, I could not muster courage to utter it. Will you enquire yourself? Well then, shall we begin the enquiry in our usual manner: Whenever a number of individuals have a common name, we assume them to have also a corresponding idea or form:— do you understand me? I do. Let us take any common instance; there are beds and tables in the world — plenty of them, are there not? Yes. But there are only two ideas or forms of them — one the idea of a bed, the other of a table. True. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

30 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I And the maker of either of them makes a bed or he makes a table for our use, in accordance with the idea — that is our way of speaking in this and similar instances — but no artificer makes the ideas themselves: how could he? Impossible. And there is another artist, — I should like to know what you would say of him. Who is he? One who is the maker of all the works of all other workmen. What an extraordinary man! Wait a little, and there will be more reason for your saying so. For this is he who is able to make not only vessels of every kind, but plants and animals, himself and all other things — the earth and heaven, and the things which are in heaven or under the earth; he makes the gods also. He must be a wizard and no mistake. Oh! you are incredulous, are you? Do you mean that there is no such maker or creator, or that in one sense there might be a maker of all these things but in another not? Do you see that there is a way in which you could make them all yourself? What way? An easy way enough; or rather, there are many ways in which the feat might be quickly and easily accomplished, none quicker than that of turning a mirror round and round — you would soon enough make the sun and the heavens, and the earth and yourself, and other animals and plants, and all the other things of which we were just now speaking, in the mirror. Yes, he said; but they would be appearances only. Very good, I said, you are coming to the point now. And the painter too is, as I conceive, just such another — a creator of appearances, is he not? Of course. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 31 But then I suppose you will say that what he creates is untrue. And yet there is a sense in which the painter also creates a bed? Yes, he said, but not a real bed. And what of the maker of the bed? Were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed? Yes, I did. Then if he does not make that which exists he cannot make true existence, but only some semblance of existence; and if any one were to say that the work of the maker of the bed, or of any other workman, has real existence, he could hardly be supposed to be speaking the truth. At any rate, he replied, philosophers would say that he was not speaking the truth. No wonder, then, that his work too is an indistinct expression of truth. No wonder. Suppose now that by the light of the examples just offered we enquire who this imitator is? If you please. Well then, here are three beds: one existing in nature, which is made by God, as I think that we may say — for no one else can be the maker? No. There is another which is the work of the carpenter? Yes. And the work of the painter is a third? Yes. Beds, then, are of three kinds, and there are three artists who superintend them: God, the maker of the bed, and the painter? Yes, there are three of them. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

32 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I God, whether from choice or from necessity, made one bed in nature and one only; two or more such ideal beds neither ever have been nor ever will be made by God. Why is that? Because even if He had made but two, a third would still appear behind them which both of them would have for their idea, and that would be the ideal bed and not the two others. Very true, he said. God knew this, and He desired to be the real maker of a real bed, not a particular maker of a particular bed, and therefore He created a bed which is essentially and by nature one only. So we believe. Shall we, then, speak of Him as the natural author or maker of the bed? Yes, he replied; inasmuch as by the natural process of creation He is the author of this and of all other things. And what shall we say of the carpenter — is not he also the maker of the bed? Yes. But would you call the painter a creator and maker? Certainly not. Yet if he is not the maker, what is he in relation to the bed? I think, he said, that we may fairly designate him as the imitator of that which the others make. Good, I said; then you call him who is third in the descent from nature an imitator? Certainly, he said. And the tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth? That appears to be so. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 33 Then about the imitator we are agreed. And what about the painter? — I would like to know whether he may be thought to imitate that which originally exists in nature, or only the creations of artists? The latter. As they are or as they appear? You have still to determine this. What do you mean? I mean, that you may look at a bed from different points of view, obliquely or directly or from any other point of view, and the bed will appear different, but there is no difference in reality. And the same of all things. Yes, he said, the difference is only apparent. Now let me ask you another question: Which is the art of painting designed to be — an imitation of things as they are, or as they appear — of appearance or of reality? Of appearance. Then the imitator, I said, is a long way off the truth, and can do all things because he lightly touches on a small part of them, and that part an image. For example: A painter will paint a cobbler, carpenter, or any other artist, though he knows nothing of their arts; and, if he is a good artist, he may deceive children or simple persons, when he shows them his picture of a carpenter from a distance, and they will fancy that they are looking at a real carpenter. Certainly. And whenever any one informs us that he has found a man who knows all the arts, and all things else that anybody knows, and every single thing with a higher degree of accuracy than any other man — whoever tells us this, I think that we can only imagine him to be a simple creature who is likely to have been deceived by some wizard or actor whom he met, and whom he thought all-knowing, because he himself was unable to analyse the nature of knowledge and ignorance and imitation. Most true. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

34 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I And so, when we hear persons saying that the tragedians, and Homer, who is at their head, know all the arts and all things human, virtue as well as vice, and divine things too, for that the good poet cannot compose well unless he knows his subject, and that he who has not this knowledge can never be a poet, we ought to consider whether here also there may not be a similar illusion. Perhaps they may have come across imitators and been deceived by them; they may not have remembered when they saw their works that these were but imitations thrice removed from the truth, and could easily be made without any knowledge of the truth, because they are appearances only and not realities? Or, after all, they may be in the right, and poets do really know the things about which they seem to the many to speak so well? The question, he said, should by all means be considered. Now do you suppose that if a person were able to make the original as well as the image, he would seriously devote himself to the image-making branch? Would he allow imitation to be the ruling principle of his life, as if he had nothing higher in him? I should say not. The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them. Yes, he said, that would be to him a source of much greater honour and profit. Then, I said, we must put a question to Homer; not about medicine, or any of the arts to which his poems only incidentally refer: we are not going to ask him, or any other poet, whether he has cured patients like Asclepius, or left behind him a school of medicine such as the Asclepiads were, or whether he only talks about medicine and other arts at second-hand; but we have a right to know respecting military tactics, politics, education, which are the chiefest and noblest subjects of his poems, and we may fairly ask him about them. ‘Friend Homer,’ then we say to him, ‘if you are only in the second remove from truth in what you say of virtue, and not in the third — not an image maker or imitator — and if you are able to discern what pursuits make men better or worse in private or public life, tell us what State was ever better governed by your help? The good order of Lacedaemon is due to Lycurgus, and many other cities great and small CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 35 have been similarly benefited by others; but who says that you have been a good legislator to them and have done them any good? Italy and Sicily boast of Charondas, and there is Solon who is renowned among us; but what city has anything to say about you?’ Is there any city which he might name? I think not, said Glaucon; not even the Homerids themselves pretend that he was a legislator. Well, but is there any war on record which was carried on successfully by him, or aided by his counsels, when he was alive? There is not. Or is there any invention of his, applicable to the arts or to human life, such as Thales the Milesian or Anacharsis the Scythian, and other ingenious men have conceived, which is attributed to him? There is absolutely nothing of the kind. But, if Homer never did any public service, was he privately a guide or teacher of any? Had he in his lifetime friends who loved to associate with him, and who handed down to posterity an Homeric way of life, such as was established by Pythagoras who was so greatly beloved for his wisdom, and whose followers are to this day quite celebrated for the order which was named after him? Nothing of the kind is recorded of him. For surely, Socrates, Creophylus, the companion of Homer, that child of flesh, whose name always makes us laugh, might be more justly ridiculed for his stupidity, if, as is said, Homer was greatly neglected by him and others in his own day when he was alive? Yes, I replied, that is the tradition. But can you imagine, Glaucon, that if Homer had really been able to educate and improve mankind — if he had possessed knowledge and not been a mere imitator — can you imagine, I say, that he would not have had many followers, and been honoured and loved by them? Protagoras of Abdera, and Prodicus of Ceos, and a host of others, have only to whisper to their contemporaries: ‘You will never be able to manage either your own house or your own State until you appoint us to be your ministers of education’ — and this ingenious CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

36 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I device of theirs has such an effect in making men love them that their companions all but carry them about on their shoulders. And is it conceivable that the contemporaries of Homer, or again of Hesiod, would have allowed either of them to go about as rhapsodists, if they had really been able to make mankind virtuous? Would they not have been as unwilling to part with them as with gold, and have compelled them to stay at home with them? Or, if the master would not stay, then the disciples would have followed him about everywhere, until they had got education enough? Yes, Socrates, that, I think, is quite true. Then must we not infer that all these poetical individuals, beginning with Homer, are only imitators; they copy images of virtue and the like, but the truth they never reach? The poet is like a painter who, as we have already observed, will make a likeness of a cobbler though he understands nothing of cobbling; and his picture is good enough for those who know no more than he does, and judge only by colours and figures. Quite so. In like manner the poet with his words and phrases may be said to lay on the colours of the several arts, himself understanding their nature only enough to imitate them; and other people, who are as ignorant as he is, and judge only from his words, imagine that if he speaks of cobbling, or of military tactics, or of anything else, in metre and harmony and rhythm, he speaks very well — such is the sweet influence which melody and rhythm by nature have. And I think that you must have observed again and again what a poor appearance the tales of poets make when stripped of the colours which music puts upon them, and recited in simple prose. Yes, he said. They are like faces which were never really beautiful, but only blooming; and now the bloom of youth has passed away from them? Exactly. Here is another point: The imitator or maker of the image knows nothing of true existence; he knows appearances only. Am I not right? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 37 Yes. Then let us have a clear understanding, and not be satisfied with half an explanation. Proceed. Of the painter we say that he will paint reins, and he will paint a bit? Yes. And the worker in leather and brass will make them? Certainly. But does the painter know the right form of the bit and reins? Nay, hardly even the workers in brass and leather who make them; only the horseman who knows how to use them — he knows their right form. Most true. And may we not say the same of all things? What? That there are three arts which are concerned with all things: one which uses, another which makes, a third which imitates them? Yes. And the excellence or beauty or truth of every structure, animate or inanimate, and of every action of man, is relative to the use for which nature or the artist has intended them. True. Then the user of them must have the greatest experience of them, and he must indicate to the maker the good or bad qualities which develop themselves in use; for example, the flute-player will tell the flute-maker which of his flutes is satisfactory to the performer; he will tell him how he ought to make them, and the other will attend to his instructions? Of course. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

38 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I The one knows and therefore speaks with authority about the goodness and badness of flutes, while the other, confiding in him, will do what he is told by him? True. The instrument is the same, but about the excellence or badness of it the maker will only attain to a correct belief; and this he will gain from him who knows, by talking to him and being compelled to hear what he has to say, whereas the user will have knowledge? True. But will the imitator have either? Will he know from use whether or no his drawing is correct or beautiful? or will he have right opinion from being compelled to associate with another who knows and gives him instructions about what he should draw? Neither. Then he will no more have true opinion than he will have knowledge about the goodness or badness of his imitations? I suppose not. The imitative artist will be in a brilliant state of intelligence about his own creations? Nay, very much the reverse. And still he will go on imitating without knowing what makes a thing good or bad, and may be expected therefore to imitate only that which appears to be good to the ignorant multitude? Just so. Thus far then we are pretty well agreed that the imitator has no knowledge worth mentioning of what he imitates. Imitation is only a kind of play or sport, and the tragic poets, whether they write in Iambic or in Heroic verse, are imitators in the highest degree? Very true. And now tell me, I conjure you, has not imitation been shown by us to be concerned with that which is thrice removed from the truth? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 39 Certainly. And what is the faculty in man to which imitation is addressed? What do you mean? I will explain: The body which is large when seen near, appears small when seen at a distance? True. And the same object appears straight when looked at out of the water, and crooked when in the water; and the concave becomes convex, owing to the illusion about colours to which the sight is liable. Thus every sort of confusion is revealed within us; and this is that weakness of the human mind on which the art of conjuring and of deceiving by light and shadow and other ingenious devices imposes, having an effect upon us like magic. True. And the arts of measuring and numbering and weighing come to the rescue of the human understanding — there is the beauty of them — and the apparent greater or less, or more or heavier, no longer have the mastery over us, but give way before calculation and measure and weight? Most true. And this, surely, must be the work of the calculating and rational principle in the soul? To be sure. And when this principle measures and certifies that some things are equal, or that some are greater or less than others, there occurs an apparent contradiction? True. But were we not saying that such a contradiction is impossible — the same faculty cannot have contrary opinions at the same time about the same thing? Very true. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

40 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Then that part of the soul which has an opinion contrary to measure is not the same with that which has an opinion in accordance with measure? True. And the better part of the soul is likely to be that which trusts to measure and calculation? Certainly. And that which is opposed to them is one of the inferior principles of the soul? No doubt. This was the conclusion at which I was seeking to arrive when I said that painting or drawing, and imitation in general, when doing their own proper work, are far removed from truth, and the companions and friends and associates of a principle within us which is equally removed from reason, and that they have no true or healthy aim. Exactly. The imitative art is an inferior who marries an inferior, and has inferior offspring. Very true. And is this confined to the sight only, or does it extend to the hearing also, relating in fact to what we term poetry? Probably the same would be true of poetry. Do not rely, I said, on a probability derived from the analogy of painting; but let us examine further and see whether the faculty with which poetical imitation is concerned is good or bad. By all means. We may state the question thus:— Imitation imitates the actions of men, whether voluntary or involuntary, on which, as they imagine, a good or bad result has ensued, and they rejoice or sorrow accordingly. Is there anything more? No, there is nothing else. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 41 But in all this variety of circumstances is the man at unity with himself — or rather, as in the instance of sight there was confusion and opposition in his opinions about the same things, so here also is there not strife and inconsistency in his life? Though I need hardly raise the question again, for I remember that all this has been already admitted; and the soul has been acknowledged by us to be full of these and ten thousand similar oppositions occurring at the same moment? And we were right, he said. Yes, I said, thus far we were right; but there was an omission which must now be supplied. What was the omission? Were we not saying that a good man, who has the misfortune to lose his son or anything else which is most dear to him, will bear the loss with more equanimity than another? Yes. But will he have no sorrow, or shall we say that although he cannot help sorrowing, he will moderate his sorrow? The latter, he said, is the truer statement. Tell me: will he be more likely to struggle and hold out against his sorrow when he is seen by his equals, or when he is alone? It will make a great difference whether he is seen or not. When he is by himself he will not mind saying or doing many things which he would be ashamed of any one hearing or seeing him do? True. There is a principle of law and reason in him which bids him resist, as well as a feeling of his misfortune which is forcing him to indulge his sorrow? True. But when a man is drawn in two opposite directions, to and from the same object, this, as we affirm, necessarily implies two distinct principles in him? CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

42 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Certainly. One of them is ready to follow the guidance of the law? How do you mean? The law would say that to be patient under suffering is best, and that we should not give way to impatience, as there is no knowing whether such things are good or evil; and nothing is gained by impatience; also, because no human thing is of serious importance, and grief stands in the way of that which at the moment is most required. What is most required? he asked. That we should take counsel about what has happened, and when the dice have been thrown order our affairs in the way which reason deems best; not, like children who have had a fall, keeping hold of the part struck and wasting time in setting up a howl, but always accustoming the soul forthwith to apply a remedy, raising up that which is sickly and fallen, banishing the cry of sorrow by the healing art. Yes, he said, that is the true way of meeting the attacks of fortune. Yes, I said; and the higher principle is ready to follow this suggestion of reason? Clearly. And the other principle, which inclines us to recollection of our troubles and to lamentation, and can never have enough of them, we may call irrational, useless, and cowardly? Indeed, we may. And does not the latter — I mean the rebellious principle — furnish a great variety of materials for imitation? Whereas the wise and calm temperament, being always nearly equable, is not easy to imitate or to appreciate when imitated, especially at a public festival when a promiscuous crowd is assembled in a theatre. For the feeling represented is one to which they are strangers. Certainly. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

Plato: Book X of The Republic 43 Then the imitative poet who aims at being popular is not by nature made, nor is his art intended, to please or to affect the rational principle in the soul; but he will prefer the passionate and fitful temper, which is easily imitated? Clearly. And now we may fairly take him and place him by the side of the painter, for he is like him in two ways: first, inasmuch as his creations have an inferior degree of truth — in this, I say, he is like him; and he is also like him in being concerned with an inferior part of the soul; and therefore we shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulges the irrational nature which has no discernment of greater and less, but thinks the same thing at one time great and at another small — he is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. Exactly. But we have not yet brought forward the heaviest count in our accusation:— the power which poetry has of harming even the good (and there are very few who are not harmed), is surely an awful thing? Yes, certainly, if the effect is what you say. Hear and judge: The best of us, as I conceive, when we listen to a passage of Homer, or one of the tragedians, in which he represents some pitiful hero who is drawling out his sorrows in a long oration, or weeping, and smiting his breast — the best of us, you know, delight in giving way to sympathy, and are in raptures at the excellence of the poet who stirs our feelings most. Yes, of course I know. But when any sorrow of our own happens to us, then you may observe that we pride ourselves on the opposite quality — we would fain be quiet and patient; this is the manly part, and the other which delighted us in the recitation is now deemed to be the part of a woman. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)

44 Literary Criticism and Critical Approaches - I Very true, he said. Now can we be right in praising and admiring another who is doing that which any one of us would abominate and be ashamed of in his own person? No, he said, that is certainly not reasonable. Nay, I said, quite reasonable from one point of view. What point of view? If you consider, I said, that when in misfortune we feel a natural hunger and desire to relieve our sorrow by weeping and lamentation, and that this feeling which is kept under control in our own calamities is satisfied and delighted by the poets; — the better nature in each of us, not having been sufficiently trained by reason or habit, allows the sympathetic element to break loose because the sorrow is another’s; and the spectator fancies that there can be no disgrace to himself in praising and pitying any one who comes telling him what a good man he is, and making a fuss about his troubles; he thinks that the pleasure is a gain, and why should he be supercilious and lose this and the poem too? Few persons ever reflect, as I should imagine, that from the evil of other men something of evil is communicated to themselves. And so the feeling of sorrow which has gathered strength at the sight of the misfortunes of others is with difficulty repressed in our own. How very true! And does not the same hold also of the ridiculous? There are jests which you would be ashamed to make yourself, and yet on the comic stage, or indeed in private, when you hear them, you are greatly amused by them, and are not at all disgusted at their unseemliness; — the case of pity is repeated; — there is a principle in human nature which is disposed to raise a laugh, and this which you once restrained by reason, because you were afraid of being thought a buffoon, is now let out again; and having stimulated the risible faculty at the theatre, you are betrayed unconsciously to yourself into playing the comic poet at home. Quite true, he said. CU IDOL SELF LEARNING MATERIAL (SLM)