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20th century literary/Critical theory

1. Matthew Arnold (1822-1888). Poet and a critic. Penned “Dover Beach”.

2. Literature is aesthetic but it should also instruct us.
3. Thomas Jefferson’s 1971 letter “a lively and lasting sense of filial duty is more
effectively impressed on the mind of a son or daughter by reading “King Lear” than by
all the dry volumes of ethics and divinity that were ever written”.
4. Arnold saw English culture as seriously threatened by a process of secularization that had
its origins in the growing persuasiveness of scientific thinking and by a ‘Philistinism’ that
was loosened upon the world of due to the social rise of a self-important, money-oriented,
and utterly conventional middle class, which is characterized by ‘vulgarity’, ‘coarseness’,
and ‘unintelligence’.
5. * “The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry…our race, as time goes on, will
find an even surer and surer stay” (The study of Poetry, 1880).*
6. “Culture is the best that has been thought and said in the world”* (Culture and
Anarchy, 1869). *Poetry is an embodiment of culture.
7. Poetry is the major repository of culture but culture is not confined to poetry only.
8. P.B. Shelly (1792-1822) also attributed visionary status to poetry.
9. Evil is the self centered unruliness of the working class. The best is not clear.
10. Where to find it (the best)? Hellenism – The Greek Culture of antiquity. The best
expresses
a. “An attitude towards life”.
b. “A way of being in the world”.
c. “A Disinterested play of consciousness”.
d. “An inward spiritual activity”.
e. “Freedom from fanaticism”.
f. “Delicacy of perception”.
11. “Poetry is deeply sympathetic and less self-serving and we should turn to poetry to
interpret life for us”. * Instruction of culture of spiritual activity and growth. *
12. Hellenism- A complex set of intellectual and emotional attitudes expressed in the
civilization of Ancient Greece.
13. Arnold was familiar with Hellenism and considered this classic and ideal culture
timeless. “The best that has been thought and said in the world”.
14. ‘The best’ changes with; time to time, and class to class (Aristocrats and Peasants).
15. No cultural idea embodies ‘the best’.
16. A peasant may consider Arnold an Elitist Snob.
17. Arnold makes a case for us “to escape from the place and the time we live in and to
transfer ourselves into citizens of an ideal world in which time does, in a sense, not pass
and in which we are in some ways- the ways that count- all the same”.
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18. To enter the realm of culture we have to disregard the here-and-now of personal
ambitions, political manoeuvring, and economic gain.
19. In content, Culture can be historical; but in essence it transcends history.
20. Poet also transcends time and place. Timeless culture is produced by timeless minds.
21. From where they pick up that transcendental quality? They just know.
22. Poet is a creative individual creating timeless culture. (Humanism/Self / western
philosophy).
23. Liberal humanism – we all are free and we have to some extent created ourselves based
on the individual experiences. We stand outside the experiences and are reasonably free.
(Example of court conviction and Elections).
24. Characters of realistic novels are free. Ahistorical perspective. (Different from historical
perspective).
25. In art, the eternal truths “are present, that are essential to us- ourselves – and that
transcends time and place.
26. Criticism:
a. Arnold’s campaign for the idea of culture is a struggle for power and status….
b. What if “the best” is the understanding developed due to education?
c. (Opportunities of education vary).
27. Despite the criticism, we still view literature as an endeavour pursued by high minded
intellectuals.
28. Are writings, that transcend time and place, separable from the creator?
29. Do the people, characters etc. of these writings really share our perspectives?
30. Nobody talks about the evilness, murderous mayhem of the Hellenistic era.
31. Nobody talks about the historical content of these eras.
32. Arnold’s claim that delicacy of perception and disinterested play of consciousness are the
attributes of “the ideal culture” that transcends time and place is questionable.
33. Arnold’s advocacy for poetry as the supreme interpretation of life did not lead to the
introduction of literature courses at university level courses.
34. Edinburgh- Scotland, Harvard- USA & 1830s India.
35. By 1888, English was taught as Academic English involving teaching of Middle and Old
English (Beowulf).
36. (1888-1965) T.S Eliot, British government wanted to give space to English literature in
the educational system.
37. Newbolt report 1921, Board of Education. Report claims that Great literature is a timeless
thing, can be used for the unity of all classes.
38. Democracy of exclusiveness- labourers and women were to be convinced of a world
beyond the trivial issues of the society.
39. Assimilation of immigrants in UK and USA.
40. If texts of unity are included then resisting voices and texts are excluded/
41. In 1920s, Eliot takes the responsibility of defining the criteria of “the best”.
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42. The Canon he identifies set the mood of intellectuals for discovering literature till the
1970s.
43. Eliot discredited
a. Victorians- for their sensibility, sound sentiments and lofty moods.
b. The autobiographical emotional outpourings of Romantics (Wordsworth, Blake,
Coleridge etc.)
44. Eliot believed “ Tradition of individual talent” that poetry is impersonal, so
45. Highly emotional outpourings are objected by him as drawing attention to the poet-not
poetry. He allowed emotions in the form of “objective correlate”.
46. Objective correlative is “a set of objects, a situation, and a chain of events which shall be
the formula of that particular emotion”. Emotion must be conveyed indirectly.
47. Poets’ emotions should be invested in “objective correlatively” to evoke the proper
response from the reader.
48. Emotion must be checked by Wit (ironic perception, paradoxes, and incongruities that
pose an intellectual challenge to the reader.
49. Wasteland is different from Tennyson’s poetry due to its complexity, terse, tight-lipped,
ironic melancholy, juxtapositions, inversions, and other poetic strategies.
50. More important is integration of intellect and emotion and to some extent the integration
of profundity and playfulness in the poetry.
51. Metaphysical poets of the 17th century knew how to fuse thought and feeling,
seriousness and lightness.
52. Eliot is nostalgic about the past and how the people fused thought and feeling.
53. His nostalgia was due to the lack of harmony of the post war era.
54. For Eliot, the natural organic unity is missing from the world and people have lost their
stable selves due to the advent of scientific revolution and utilitarian thinking of
industrialization. This dissociation of sensibility can be addressed by poetry to give us a
surer stay.
55. Frost – Poetry provides us a momentary stay against confusion.
56. Like New critics, for Eliot, poetry must carry rich meaning about life. The complex
meaning fused in the contradictions.
57. Meaning was considered important from 1920-1970s.
58. Eliot was not a university scholar but his thoughts were influential.
59. I.A Richards (1893-1979) in Cambridge was influenced by Eliot and later F.R Leavis
(1895-1979).
60. Richards initiated analytical procedure of practical criticism (text- oriented approach).
61. He withheld all extra-textual information and asked students to analyse.
62. Textual analysis without autobiographical commentary was an intellectual challenge in
his time.
63. Richards believes that poetry and art could save us as it contains what is valuable.
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64. For Richards, minds of the artists can control and reconcile contradictions and their
products can make us transcend our usual self-centeredness.
65. Unlike Eliot, Richards believes that literary art is emotive and personal.
66. Poetry is a means to the expression of feelings and it does not add to any body of
doctrine.
67. Textual orientation can help to tease out and resolve the opposite/contradictious.
68. Best poems create “vulnerable harmony”, “precarious coherence” out of conflicting
perspectives.
69. Leavis relegated many English poets to the minor status (including Milton) as they were
accused of a divorce between thought and feeling, intelligence and sensibility. A clear
influence of Eliot on Leavis. ‘(Dissociation of sensibility)’.
70. Novel cannot be subjected to analysis as in poetry. Leavis’s work in the 1940s.
71. By 19040s, Leavis introduced the moralistic dimensions to the new criticism.
72. Leavis approaches oppositions, contradictions, inversions in poetry to evaluate them in
terms of “life”, and “Concreteness”. To seek guidance and interpret life.
73. New Critics did not separate form and content but Leavis did.
74. For New Critics, text’s form creates an ironic maturity, a vulnerable harmony.
75. But for Leavis, form is of secondary importance. A work must provide a mature
apprehension of authentic life. He did not like the ironies of James Joyce’s Ulysses which
was appreciated by Eliot.
76. Leavis took a Liberal Humanist stance and in The Great Tradition (1948) argued that
great writers have vital capacity for expressions, and a kind of reverent openness before
life and a marked moral intensity.
77. Lawrence: If a novel reveals true and vivid relationships, it is a moral work, no matter
what the relationships may consist in.
78. Novel is the superior form of literary art as it represents authentic details of life in
fullness.
79. Lawrence: To be alive, to be man alive, to be whole man alive: that’s the point.
80. Just to end it on a round number.

Lines having * mark need correction.