1.

INTRODUCTION
Literary criticism is simply the study of literary texts, including cultural texts
like films, theatre, etc., to unravel their meaning, and assign them a value. In
this very simplistic and limited sense, all of us practice literary criticism, in a
non-self-conscious way, every day. Whenever we read a story, a poem, or see
a film we interpret and evaluate it and, often, pass on our impressions to our
friends. If we like what we read or see, we recommend it to our friends. In fact,
this kind of literary criticism is, perhaps, as old as literature itself. However,
literary criticism of a formal kind, where we not only try to understand and
enjoy the literary text but also try to find the formal features of the text under
study.
At the turn of the century, there was an explosion of academic disciplines,
methods, different kinds of literature, and above all, a blurring of disciplinary
boundaries. Literary studies had already become an academic discipline in
England and elsewhere. Literary studies were getting enriched by borrowing
from disciplines as diverse as psychoanalysis, linguistics, philology, and
anthropology. The search for an objective appreciation of literary works
continued through various schools of thought. If at all anything can describe
literary studies in the early 20th century, then it must be the multiplicity of
views and divergent approaches from Russian Formalism to symbolism to
naturalism and so on. Around this time developed a school of criticism that
was later known as New Criticism and I. A. Richards is considered by many as
its fountainhead. Richards started teaching at Cambridge University around the
1920s.
Literary criticism, during this time, was oriented towards exploring literary
texts by placing them in the context of (a) the psychology of the writer, (b) the
socio-historical circumstances that the writer lived in and was possibly
influenced by, and (c) the writer’s intentions for writing. It is obvious then that
the critics paid little or no attention to value or the distinct properties of the
text in question. If you recall, we discussed earlier how literary criticism had
always focussed on the formal properties and the value of literary texts. This
focus on biography and psychology was taking literary criticism away from its
major concerns. Richards found this unsatisfactory. Subsequently, in his book,
Principles of Literary Criticism, he tries to bring the focus back, once again, on
the question of value and the ways in which meaning is produced in literary
texts.
Principles of Literary Criticism1 was first published in 1924. It is a seminal work
that presents Richards’ ideas on the study and evaluation of literature. The
book is organised in thirty-five chapters dealing with various aspects of literary
criticism. The idea was to develop a formal system of analysing literary texts
instead of relying too much on subjective beliefs and prejudices. The book
emphasizes the importance of close reading, the reader’s response, and the
analysis of language in understanding and interpreting literary works.
Richards rejects the idea that the author’s intentions are the sole determinant
of a text’s meaning. Instead, he promotes the concept of practical criticism,
which focuses on the direct study of texts rather than relying on external
factors such as historical or biographical information about the author. This
approach encourages readers to derive meaning primarily from the words on
the page and their personal response to them. He challenges two fallacies
commonly observed in literary criticism: the intentional fallacy and the
affective fallacy. While the former speculates on the author’s intentions, the
later relies solely on subjective, emotional responses as the basis for evaluating
a work. Richards argues instead for a close reading, which involves a detailed
analysis of a text’s language, themes, structure, and imagery. He believes that
a careful examination of these elements leads to a deeper understanding of a
literary work.
The book also highlights the importance of language in literature. Richards
explores how words, metaphors, and other rhetorical devices contribute to the
meaning and impact of a work. He encourages critics to pay close attention to
linguistic choices and devices used by authors. Finally, he emphasizes the
organic unity of a literary work. He argues that every part of a work
contributes to its overall meaning and effect. Critics should analyse how
different elements within a text interact and contribute to its structure and
themes. However, in this lesson, we will confine ourselves to the first two
chapters of the book and examine how Richards prepares the ground for
developing his principles of literary criticism.
THE CHAOS OF CRITICAL THEORIES (CHAPTER I)
In the Preface to the book, Richards makes it clear that literary criticism, which
he understood as an “endeavour to discriminate between experiences and to
evaluate them,” was not possible “without some understanding of the nature
of experience, or without theories of valuation and communication” (P.2).
These principles have not found a place in literary criticism yet and all the
principles that are found in literary criticism thus far are arbitrary. Thus,
Richards regards his work as a point of departure. The first chapter, “The Chaos
of Critical Theories” begins with the observation that literary criticism has in
fact gathered a large body of work over the years and yet a survey of the field
only shows that much of what we have gathered is fragmentary and lacks
coherence between them. The experiences (reading a book, watching a play,
listening to music, etc.) that literary criticism deals with are plenty and present
all around us. Richards holds that the questions that the critic must try to
answer are also obvious. Some of the questions that the critics need to answer
are: “What gives the experience of reading a poem its value? How is this
experience better than another? Why prefer this picture to that? In which
ways should we listen to music so as to receive the most valuable moments?
Why is one opinion about works of art not as good as another?” (P.5) However,
some preliminary questions need answers before we begin to approach these
questions. Questions dealing with the nature of art, nature of experience, and
questions dealing with value and valuations are fundamental questions. The
answers to these questions will provide the context within which critics need
to operate. These are not extraordinary questions, but a cursory survey of the
field shows us that these questions remain unanswered till now. What we find,
instead, are conjectures, prejudices and, not so often, some inspired
formulations. Richards quotes a few established authorities in the field like
Aristotle, Addison, Wordsworth, Coleridge, etc. to prove his point.
Some of the quotes Richards presents to further his arguments are: “All men
naturally receive pleasure from imitation”; “Poetry is chiefly conversant with
general truth”; “It demands an enthusiasm allied to madness; transported out
of ourselves we become what we imagine”; “Beautiful words are the very and
peculiar light of the mind”; “Delight is the chief, if not the only end; instruction
can be admitted but in the second place”; “The spontaneous overflow of
powerful feelings.” (P.6-7) These quotes do show that the best minds of each
generation have tried to arrive at some understanding of the value of literary
works and yet have failed to provide a coherent theory of value. Richards is of
the view that most of these are profitable starting points for further enquiry.
But then how does one arrive at the true value of art? This failure begs the
question: is literary criticism the right place to find answers to the question of
value? Richards turns to empirical research into aesthetics to see if one could
find answers there. Empirical research into aesthetics has been quite useful in
the sense that it has unravelled some of the processes that contribute to our
appreciation of works of art. Many of these studies have used the
psychological laboratory to conduct scientific studies on the nature and
appreciation of beauty. However, the results are mixed. When the experiments
deal with simple subjects, a line from a poem, a single note of music, or
colours, etc., the results are quite encouraging. But when the subject becomes
a little more complex, the results are uncertain. However, even the results
from studies of simple subjects have shown that there can be a great variety of
responses from various people at various times and contexts. Even the same
person may have different responses to something like a particular colour at
different times. It is easy to conclude from this observation that more complex
subjects would, of necessity, produce an even greater variety of responses.
Richards points out that this could be disastrous for literary criticism where
comparing experiences is a key task. If comparing experiences becomes willy-
nilly impossible then how are we to decide on the question of value?
The answer to this question is simple. The point is, it is difficult to contemplate
a simple object in isolation. A word like ‘night’, as pointed out by Richards,
would mean nothing by itself. But it could produce a host of divergent
responses because each reader puts it in a context of his own and that in turn
evokes a certain kind of feeling in the reader. But when the same word is put in
a sentence the context is narrowed down and the variation in responses also
gets narrowed down. For instance, a sentence like ‘I am walking on a deserted
road on a dark night’ is already limited by the context of a man walking on a
deserted road. As we expand the context by placing the sentence in a
paragraph, or in a whole poem, the meaning gets further narrowed down and
the feelings it evokes become more or less similar with readers of the same
competence. Hence, a theory of literary criticism may not have much use for
experimental aesthetics. Richards concludes the chapter by pointing out that
the question will be discussed in detail later.
LET’S SUM UP
I. The main task of literary criticism is to discriminate between
experiences of reading literary texts and to find what is valuable or, in
other words, ascribe value to literary texts.

II. To be able to do that a literary critic must answer questions like what
gives the experience of reading a certain poem its value. How is one
 experience better than another? Why should we privilege one
opinion over the other?

III. There are some fundamental questions that need to be answered

before engaging with literary texts. Questions like what is a picture,
or what is value, and how can experiences be compared, are key to
further exploration of literary texts.

IV. A survey of literary criticism attempted thus far shows that the great
minds of the past have hardly come close to answering these
questions. What we find in their work is fragmented assessments
based on prejudices, whims, some genuine speculation, etc.

V. The language of criticism has mostly remained vague and often

created more confusion rather than shedding light.

VI. Criticism often tends to focus on secondary aspects of art rather than
on the primary issue of value. Instead of dealing with the effects that
objects evoke in us, it treats the object as if it possesses some
inherent qualities.

VII. A major impediment to a valid literary criticism comes from

‘experimental aesthetics’. While it does provide us with the insight
that human tastes and feelings can vary immensely, it is of very little
use when we deal with complex objects like a poem. The variety of
feelings is inversely proportional to the complexity of the object.

VIII. And, finally, Richards has a word of caution for criticism. He says
criticism has become a disguised form of expressing the feelings and
attitudes of the critic towards the poem and the poet that he is
discussing, and that there is a need to focus on the poem instead.
THE PHANTOM AESTHETIC STATE (CHAPTER II)
In this chapter Richards discusses an even bigger problem with aesthetics.
Modern aesthetic theories rest on the assumption that there indeed is a kind
of mental activity that is distinct and unique, and this mental activity is at the
heart of all kinds of aesthetic experiences. This formulation is not very
disturbing. But, following Kant, when we characterise this experience as
“disinterested, universal, unintellectual, and not to be confused with the
pleasures of sense or of ordinary emotions, in short to make it a thing sui
generis…,” it creates a huge problem. Richards is of the view that all works of
art give rise to valuable experiences. Whether they help us in analysis is a
different matter and depends on the theory of value we adopt. But this Kantian
disinterested pleasure is sui generis, or in other words it is a one-of-a-kind
experience that is complete in itself and cannot be compared to anything else
in ordinary life. Richards is in complete disagreement with this formulation and
rejects the idea of the aesthetic mode or aesthetic state.
The “phantom problem of the aesthetic mode or aesthetic state” (P.11) arises
from this idea of uniqueness of aesthetic pleasure. Richards goes back to
discuss the emergence of this idea from Immanuel Kant onwards. He quotes
Kant: “All the faculties of the Soul, or capacities, are reducible to three, which
do not admit of any further derivation from a common ground: the faculty of
knowledge, the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, and the faculty of desire”
(P.12). This tripartite division coincides with Understanding, Judgment, and
Reason, respectively. Just as pleasure is bracketed by knowledge and desire, so
is Judgment bracketed by understanding and reason. Kant placed aesthetics in
the province of judgment. When we link these faculties with the abstract ideas
of Truth, Beauty, and Good, we see that while Truth could be identified with
thought because it deals with the intellectual part of the mind, and Good with
reason because it deals with the willing or practical part, Beauty falls in the
middle and gets identified with feelings. This is a complete mismatch because
all feelings, especially feelings of displeasure, cannot be beautiful. Richards
points out that this impasse creates a need for a category that could
accommodate beauty. And, of necessity, this had to be, “Some activity that
was neither inquisitive nor practical, that did not question and did not seek to
use” (P.13). This was the aesthetic mode. This was a mode in which the
aesthetic or contemplative activity would be carried out in an impersonal and
detached fashion. They would provide no intellectual stimulation nor fulfil any
desire.
Richards questions the possibility of the existence of an aesthetic state or any
aesthetic experience that is totally unique. There is hardly any doubt that
various kinds of experiences exist in the contemplation of art. But the question
is, are they different from other kinds of ordinary experiences? To understand
if one kind of experience is anything like another kind of experience, we need
to compare the likeness or otherwise. If we agree that there are indeed various
kinds of experiences in contemplation of works of art, and that experience of
beauty may have various causes, we still need to identify if there is a degree of
difference that would make it specific. Richards believes that this is a question
of degree of difference and not easily measurable. And yet many post-Kantian
writers hold on to the position that the aesthetic experience is both peculiar
and specific.
There are two ways in which the existence of a peculiar and specific aesthetic
experience is put forward. The first one is to posit some kind of a special
mental element that facilitates only an aesthetic experience and interferes
with no other kind of experience. Clive Bell calls it an aesthetic emotion that is
unique. However, psychology allows no such category and, hence, this is not
tenable. The second one is to invest the usual aesthetic experience with a
special form in terms of disinterestedness, distance, impersonality, and so on.
But Richards dismisses this contention as nothing but an effect of
communication. He goes on to suggest that there is no such aesthetic mode
that is so unique that it has nothing in common with the experiences of
ugliness as well as beauty, or with a whole host of experiences that one may
not categorise as aesthetic. He agrees that there may be a narrow range of
aesthetic experiences that are confined to beauty and imply value, but he adds
that these experiences are similar to many other experiences and that what
distinguishes them are chiefly the connections between their constituents.
These aesthetic experiences are only a finer organisation, or putting together
of ordinary experiences and are not completely different kind of things. The
dangers of assuming that an aesthetic experience is peculiar is that it creates
the possibility of a peculiar aesthetic value removed from everything else
around it. He quotes Clive Bell, “To appreciate a work of art we need bring with
us nothing from life, no knowledge of its ideas and affairs, no familiarity with
its emotions” (P.17). This view of art, Richards considers, is a great obstacle to
an investigation of their value. This has given rise to a regrettable narrowing of
interests and an aloofness. Pushing art to the realm of mystery and linking it up
to an aesthetic mood is, in the last instance, harmful and limits the role and
influence of literature in society.
LET’S SUM UP
I. Modern aesthetic theories rest on the assumption that there indeed
is a kind of mental activity that is distinct and unique, and this mental
activity is at the heart of all kinds of aesthetic experiences.
II. Richards is of the view that all works of art give rise to valuable
experiences. It is this question of value which critics have ignored
thus far.
III. Kantian disinterested pleasure is sui generis, or in other words, it is a
one-of-a-kind experience that is complete in itself and cannot be
compared to anything else in ordinary life.
IV. The aesthetic mode was postulated to accommodate the category of
beauty. This was a mode in which the aesthetic or contemplative
activity would be carried out in an impersonal and detached fashion.
They would provide no intellectual stimulation nor fulfil any desire.
V. There are two ways in which the existence of a peculiar and specific
aesthetic experience is put forward. The first one is to posit some
kind of a special mental element that facilitates only an aesthetic
experience and interferes with no other kind of experience.
VI. The second one is to invest the usual aesthetic experience with a
special form in terms of disinterestedness, distance, impersonality,
and so on.
VII. Richards suggests that there is no such aesthetic mode that is so
unique that it has nothing in common with the experience’s ugliness
as well as beauty, or with a whole host of experiences that one may
not categorise as aesthetic.
VIII. Aesthetic experiences are only a finer organisation or putting
together of ordinary experiences and are not completely different
kinds of things.
IX. Regarding the experience of art as some kind of mystery, and linking
it up to an aesthetic mood is, in the last instance, harmful and limits
the role and influence of literature in society.
INTRODUCTION
Cleanth Brooks (1906-1994) was a professor and a highly reputed literary critic
who altered the manner in which we engage with literary texts, especially
poetry. He belonged to the school of New Criticism which shifted the focus
from socio-historical and biographical analysis to structural and textual
analysis. I.A. Richards’ Practical Criticism and Principles of Literary Criticism
formed the foundational texts for New Criticism. The basic principles of
formalist/New Criticism are:
 Form and meaning of a poem are intrinsically linked; for any meaningful
interpretation of a poem, it is necessary to understand its underlying
form/structure. We will deal with structure/form in detail in “The heresy
of Paraphrase”.
 Poems should not be reduced to simple “paraphrase” (with a liberal
dose of biographical and historical contexts) as it robs the poem of its
very essence.
 A poet uses a variety of poetic devices like irony, paradox, metaphors,
symbols, and ambiguity which prevent the reduction of a poem to a
“paraphrase”.
 Any serious literary criticism should neither consider the readers
emotional response as an analytical tool (Affective fallacy), nor should it
explain a text by focusing on the intention and motivation of the author
(Intentional fallacy).
 A critic should look into what is there within the text, and how the
various parts within it are related. Consequently, practitioners of New
Criticism focused on aspects such as, paradox, irony, wordplay, puns,
imagery, metaphors, etc., within a text, and linked them within the
larger context of the text to reveal the underlying larger structures.
THE LANGUAGE OF PARADOX –
INTRODUCTION
Before we begin to understand Cleanth Brooks’ essay “The Language of
Paradox,” it is necessary to know the definition of the term “paradox.” The
Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms defines paradox as “a statement or
expression that is so surprisingly self-contradictory that it prompts us to seek
another sense or context in which it would be true.” Brooks claims that “the
language of poetry is the language of paradox” (p.3), and this language is
“appropriate and inevitable” for poetry. However readers and critics alike have
often neglected paradox as compared to other poetic devices primarily due to
a prejudice, as paradox is thought of as “intellectual rather than emotional,
clever rather than profound, rational rather than divinely irrational” (p.3).
Poetry is generally understood as communicating profound thoughts and
emotions which ennoble the soul, and hence paradox cannot be the
appropriate literary device to do so. He, however, claims that the “truth”
which a poet tries to convey can only be arrived at by the use of paradox.
The Language of Paradox:
Summary
In the ‘Preface to Lyrical Ballads,’ William Wordsworth laid emphasis on the
simplicity of subject matter and transparency of language in his poetry and
hence, critics assume that paradox is outside Wordsworth’s scheme of things.
Cleanth Brooks shows how Wordsworth employs the language of paradox in “It
is a Beauteous Evening, Calm and Free” and “Upon Westminster Bridge.” Our
understanding of the poems is incomplete if we do not take into consideration
the paradoxes at work in these poems. The first poem opens with the following
lines:
“It is a beauteous evening, calm and free, The holy time is quiet as a Nun
Breathless with adoration.”
The poet has likened the evening to a nun here, but it has more than one
connotation. At that sacred hour of the evening, the poet is filled with a sense
of reverence, but the girl who walks beside him does not share this sense of
worship. The lines suggest that she should respond to the holy hour of prayers
by becoming like a ‘nun, breathless with adoration,’ like the evening itself.
However, the girl is filled with an unconscious affection and sympathy for all of
Nature. His subliminal adoration and worship are similar to her unconscious
devotion to nature with one major difference; whereas his devotion is limited
to a specific time period, her devotion is permanent and not restricted to any
one time period.
Herein lies the paradox; How can someone or something be worshipped
unintentionally or secretly? It is a paradoxical situation. The implication here is
that the girl is more pious than the poet. Her piety springs from being
completely in communion with ‘nature,’ so much so that the evening’s peace
and tranquility
pale in comparison to her absolute devotion to nature. Here the calm of the
evening (worship), much like the nun’s habit, which is visible to all with a hint
of “Pharisaical holiness”(p.5), is juxtaposed with the girl’s worship which is
innocent, unconscious, and natural.
Brooks now turns his attention to Wordsworth’s other poem “Lines Composed
Upon Westminster Bridge,” and points out that it is rich in literary value and
beauty not because of the poet’s deft use of images, or the grandeur of feeling,
but because of its paradoxical situation. This setting delivers a wide range of
ideas to the reader. Wordsworth writes:
“Never did sun more beautifully steep In his first splendor, valley, rock or hill;”
The poet is surprised that the city of London can “wear the beauty of the
morning” which is reserved for the more natural places like Mount Snowdon or
Mont Blanc. The “smokeless air” and the Thames River running freely with no
impediments in her way, makes him realise that London in the early morning
light devoid of its hustle and bustle, is indeed organic, and not mechanical and
dead. It seems to the poet as a part of Nature, and hence it is natural. It is like
the lovely flowers or mountain brooks.
“Dear God! the very houses seem asleep; And all that mighty heart is lying
still!”
The poet views London as an organic element of the whole, rather than an
inanimate or mechanical thing. He employs the phrase ‘asleep’ as though the
dwellings are real beings. They are alive and contribute to the life of nature as
if they were a part of her, rather than apart from her. It is worth noting that
the word ‘asleep’ is a semblance of death, and it is at this time, when the city
and its heart is asleep, that the poet realizes that London is alive. Wordsworth
stated in his renowned work, “Preface to Lyrical Ballads,” that his major
purpose was to select episodes and circumstances from the lives of rustics and
simple people. What Wordsworth wants his readers to understand is that what
appears to be normal and commonplace is actually unusual. Coleridge writes,
“[Link]…was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of
novelty to things of everyday and to excite a feeling analogous to the
supernatural by awakening the mind’s attention from the lethargy of custom
and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us…”
(p.7).
It should be emphasised that neoclassical writers, such as Alexander Pope,
make excellent use of paradoxes and irony; paradoxical statements transmit a
wide variety of thoughts to the reader. Pope approached the subject of “Essay
on Man” in a fresh way. According to Cleanth Brooks, paradoxes and irony are
nurtured in the poet’s language, which includes both connotation and
denotation. It is also worth noting that several of William Wordsworth’s poems
have an excellent combination of irony and paradox. William Blake’s and
Thomas Gray’s works are no exception. In his poem “The Ancient Mariner,”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge deftly employs these poetical tropes.
Brooks, in this essay, also draws our attention to the difference between the
language of science and poetry. Science, according to him, has a propensity to
render words lifeless and straightforward via the use of denotations. In poetry,
the poet introduces new terminology by departing from their denotative and
dictionary meanings. Science employs straight terms that are rather strict, but
poets use poetical tools such as paradoxes, ambiguity, metaphors and irony to
hint at the message and meaning of their work; the language of poetry cannot
be direct. Brooks claims that directness of language is useless in poetry, and
that forthright statements in poetry misrepresent what is meant to be
communicated.
Brooks examines John Donne’s poem “Canonization,” to further explain his
point. In this poem as in all other poems, John Donne employs numerous
surprising images, metaphors, paradoxes, that appeal to the reader’s heart and
mind. Canonization is defined as “an official act of a Christian communion -
mainly the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church- declaring
one of its deceased members worthy of public cult and entering his or her
name in the canon, or the authorized list, of that communion’s recognized
saints” (Encyclopaedia Britannica). Going by this definition, the title itself is a
paradox. What is being canonized and made sacred, in this poem, is the
sensual love between a man and a woman, which the world considers as
immoral. The poem as a whole, is filled with paradoxes. John Donne has
presented profane love as if it were spiritual and holy love. Critics have often
said that John Donne did not believe in love, and that in his love poetry he was
only honing his wit as a mechanical exercise. Brooks, however, maintains that
John Donne treated both religion and love seriously, and the supposed
contradiction between the two, became an efficient tool for Donne to shock
and surprise his readers.
In the poem “Canonization,” the speaker addresses a quiet listener, who may
be seen as a representative of the practical world, which regards love as a
futile and worthless pursuit. The two lovers in the poem, escape the secular
world’s conventions, norms, and constraints. The lover tells the listener that he
can chide him about everything else, other than his love:
“Or chide my palsie, or my gout, My five gray haires, or ruined fortune flout.”
In these lines, the lover encourages the audience not to think of his love as
diseased and immoral, and instead to focus on his other shortcomings, his
palsy and his approaching old age. The love shared by the lovers should not be
criticised because no one is hurt by it. In short, love causes no harm to
anybody, even though it looks foolish and immoral to the rest of the world. By
withdrawing from the physical world, the lovers are rewarded with a far higher
status in the other realm. The lover goes on to say:
“Call us what you will, we are made such by love Call her one, me another fly,
We’re Tapers too, and at our own cost die. And we in us find the Eagle and the
Dove; The Phoenix riddle hath more wit By us, we two being one, are it So, to
one neutral thing both sexes fit. We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.”
We find a series of comparisons -- the lovers are like the tapers consumed by
the heat of their love, they are like an eagle and a dove, as well as a phoenix.
The eagle represents power, while the dove represents sobriety and kindness.
As a result, the lovers possess both male and feminine characteristics. The
phoenix is a hybrid of both sexes. Because the lovers are one, they merge both
sexes. Their love is reborn and regenerated in the fire of their passion for one
another, and it continues to develop fresh and new like a phoenix. It is crucial
to remember that, throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, the word ‘die,’ in
an alternate sense, also indicated the culmination of the sexual act. Their love
has not been completely spent, but it has been rejuvenated and revitalised
after completion. Their love is like a phoenix rising from its own ashes. Donne
has heightened the paradox by using a phoenix metaphor.
“We can die by it, if not live by love, And if unfit for tombs or hearse Our
legend be, it will be fit for verse.”
The poet has conveyed the dedication of two lovers who are willing to die for
love, even though their love is regarded as immoral and foolish by the rest of
the world. It should be emphasised that the word ‘legend’ here, refers to the
‘life of a saint’. Even if their love is not documented in the chronicle, they
would be content to be observed and remembered in small sonnets. In the
essay’s conclusion, Brooks writes, “I submit that the only way the poet could
say what “The Canonization” says is by paradox” (p.16).
THE HERESY OF PARAPHRASE
INTRODUCTION
“The Heresy of Paraphrase” is the last chapter in The Well Wrought Urn:
Studies in the Structure of Poetry and Brooks, right at the start, states that this
chapter is meaningful only to those who find his readings of the ten poems, in
the previous ten chapters, adequate. His two main contentions in this essay
are: 1. In any given poem, the form/structure and content form a unified
whole and hence, to experience the poem in its entirety, we must analyse all
those elements which constitute its structure. 2. A poem cannot be reduced to
a paraphrase or a denotative meaning, as this would amount to denying it its
very essence.
The Heresy of Paraphrase –
Summary
Brooks draws our attention to the fact that all of the poems in the previous
chapters, have a “common goodness…not in terms of content or subject
matter, but rather in terms of structure… we must draw a sharp distinction
between the attractiveness or beauty of any particular item taken as such and
the ‘beauty’ of the poem considered as a whole” (p.178). The underlying
pattern in the poem holds together the ambiguity, irony, paradoxes, images
and metaphors and gives the poem its unity. The structure is not to be
understood in the simplistic sense of a wrapper or an envelope and reduced to
a “metrical pattern or a sequence of images” (p.178). The kind of the content,
that enters into the poem, definitely has an impact on the form. Brooks
describes structure/form as a collection of “meanings, evaluations, and
interpretations, and the principle of unity which informs it appears to be one
of balancing and harmonising connotations, attitudes, and meanings” (p.178).
This idea neither means mechanically putting together similar elements nor
does it mean harmonizing the opposing elements by subtraction. Brooks
emphasises his search for “adequate terms,” -- terms such as ‘ambiguity,’
‘paradox,’ ‘complex of attitudes,’ and ‘irony’ -- which he has used in the
previous chapters while analysing diverse poems that do justice to the special
kind of structure that seems to emerge as the common structure of poems as
diverse on other counts as are “The Rape of the Lock” and “Tears, Idle Tears”
(p.179).
Brooks disagrees with the common formula used by most critics that a poem
makes a definitive statement which is expressed by the poet in a beautiful
manner. Most heresies about poetry stem from this approach as it forces the
critic to analyse the poem by extraneous factors such as its “political, scientific,
or philosophic truth”. It is precisely for this refusal to admit that poems convey
messages that Alfred Kazin criticizes the New Critics’ method, and accuses
them of ranking poems by their “formal embellishments”. Brooks dismisses
Kazin’s contention by stating that all good poems inherently carry within them,
checks that deter attempts to paraphrase them. Brooks believes that any
attempt to read a final core meaning in a poem is immediately thwarted; “the
imagery and rhythm seem to set up tensions with it, warping and twisting it,
qualifying and revising it.” (p.180) Wordsworth’s “Ode,” Donne’s “The
Canonisation,” Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock,” and Herrick’s “Corinna’s Going
a-Maying,” amply illustrate this point. The tension that informs poetry like this
is not easily overcome. We “mistake matters grossly,” he claims, if we interpret
the poem as toying with opposing extremes in order to indicate the golden
mean in a theory that, in the end, would correct the falsity of extremes. The
point Brooks makes is that the “‘prose-sense’ of the poem is not a rack on
which the stuff of the poem is hung, that it does not represent the “inner”
structure, the “essential” structure, or the “real” structure of the poem”
(p.182), and that all attempts to formulate the ‘statement’ made by a poem,
“lead away from the centre of the poem -- not towards it.” (p.182) Such
viewpoints, he contends, are simply “scaffoldings which we may properly
throw about the building for certain purposes: we must not mistake them for
the internal and essential structure of the building itself.” (p.182). Indeed, he
emphasises that most errors in criticism arise from succumbing to the
temptation to mistake certain remarks we make about the poem -- statements
about what it says, truths it provides, or formulations it illustrates -- for the
essential core of the poem itself.
Critics who ignore the fact that “form and content, or content and medium,
are inseparable” (p.183) tend to underplay the essential elements of the poem,
and prioritize the paraphrasable elements. This disturbs the organic harmony
of the poem and the relation between the various elements. Such critics are
guilty of, what Brooks refers to as “paraphrastic heresy,” or the heresy of
paraphrase, wherein the form and content of a poem are treated as separate
entities, thereby tampering with the internal order of the poem. Brooks
maintains that “one can never measure a poem against the scientific or
philosophical yardstick for the reason that the poem, when laid against the
yardstick, is never the ‘full poem,’ but an abstraction from the poem” (p.185).
For instance, the ambiguity in Keats’ line, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” can
only be comprehended when it is related to the context of the entire poem,
and is not seen as a summarizing proposition. If a single line in a poem can be
viewed as encompassing the whole meaning of the poem, then the rest of the
poem may well have not been written. Certain lines can be used to aid our
sense of the poem, but should not be mistaken for the “inner core” of the
poem. It is futile to look for logical conclusions in a poem; the ending of a
poem presents the working out of the various tensions by employing
propositions, metaphors, and symbols.
Unlike a scientist, a poet is constantly obliged to reinvent language. “The word
as the poet uses it, has to be conceived of not as a discrete particle of meaning,
but as a potential of meaning, a nexus or cluster of meanings” (p.192). Brooks
claims that “poet after poet” preferred “ambiguity and paradox rather than
plain discursive simplicity” (p.194). A poet and a scientist view experience in
diametrically opposite ways. A scientist breaks it down into components,
discriminating between them, and classifying them, whereas the poet tries to
unify experience. “The poem, if it be a true poem, is a simulacrum of reality –
in this sense, at least, it is an ‘imitation’ -- by being an experience rather than
any mere statement about experience or any mere abstraction from
experience” (p.194).