concepts of criticismby rené wellek; s. g. nichols, jr.;logic and criticismby william righter

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Page 1: Concepts of Criticismby René Wellek; S. G. Nichols, Jr.;Logic and Criticismby William Righter

Concepts of Criticism by René Wellek; S. G. Nichols, Jr.; Logic and Criticism by WilliamRighterReview by: W. G. MooreThe Modern Language Review, Vol. 59, No. 2 (Apr., 1964), pp. 252-253Published by: Modern Humanities Research AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3721754 .

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Page 2: Concepts of Criticismby René Wellek; S. G. Nichols, Jr.;Logic and Criticismby William Righter

aimai for j'ai aime, and many more. His spelling of many English words is also slovenly: concommitant, consistantly, gerundal, gutteral, irrelevent, knowledgably, participal, plebian, and shiboleth. After the manner of William Cobbett and Mark Twain, Girsdansky takes occasional shots at academic pedantry. He enjoys himself immensely, but he surely spent long enough at Chicago University to learn that scholarship is accuracy always and everywhere. This Prentice-Hall book has in it the makings of a very good and useful book indeed. It should be thoroughly tidied up before it is reprinted in Britain. SIMEON POTTE

SIMEON POTTER LIVERPOOL

Concepts of Criticism. By RENE WELLEK. Edited by S. G. NICHOLS, JR. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1963. xv + 403 pp. 56s.

Logic and Criticism. By WILLIAM RIGHTER. London: Routledge. 1963. ix + 148 pp. 21s.

These books are more timely in their publication than any review can be, since the New York Conference of F.I.L.L.M. is still fresh in the minds of many, and under its stimulus we have tried to look again at the related domains of literary history and criticism. Mr Wellek, as was only right, played a part in the Conference, and these essays, collected by a disciple to mark his sixtieth birthday, remind us of his imposing presence, as he opened the discussion on a paper by Mario Praz. (For the record, the leading article in T.L.S. of 29 September on 'Critics in Con- ference' may give to those not able to take part an appraisal of the central novelty of the meeting, its attempt to evoke an East-West Symposium.)

Mr Righter has not been well served by his printer and proof-reader but he addresses himself to central points of discussion in trying to sort out the share of description and of judgement in critical assessments, and he has little difficulty in showing that recent attempts to attain exactness in criticism are all 'reductivist', by which I understand: minimizing the problems in order to fit suggested solutions. The meat of his book is in the cases: Gide, Richards, Empson, Leavis and Ransom are all acutely brought in to the argument.

Mr Wellek's essays are more difficult to handle. To the casual reader they may convey what many of us think of as unpleasant features of American scholarship: a field of inquiry so wide that works have to be ticketed and pigeonholed in cate- gories, and so that the reader feels he has skimmed much and learned little. But this would be unfair to the acumen and industry of a great scholar (as in this Journal I was unfair to another, whom Mr Wellek seems to resemble, Carrington Lancaster). These attempts at synthesis, if approached in the right spirit, allow one to discern beneath the mass of (in this book necessarily) overlapping titles considerable critical power and an attempt to ask where all the new work is getting us. Someone must cut down the brushwood: 'We need some principles of selection among mountains of printed matter that confront us' (p. 344). Much recent criti- cism appears in this book as needlessly obscure and difficult: I think of the pages on Northup Frye and Kenneth Burke. The best part of the book seems to me the discussions on concepts that we must use everyday: baroque, realism, romanticism, positivism, comparative literature.

Reading Mr Wellek sends one back to Mr Righter and makes one feel about criticism as Matthew Arnold felt about Christianity: we cannot do without it, but we cannot do with it as it is. Is there any other branch of inquiry in which the experts may so easily be partial and wrong as in questions of taste ? If Leavis tells me that The Golden Bowl outrages my moral sense and if I have no other feeling before this delicate masterpiece than respect, what do I conclude ? That an able

aimai for j'ai aime, and many more. His spelling of many English words is also slovenly: concommitant, consistantly, gerundal, gutteral, irrelevent, knowledgably, participal, plebian, and shiboleth. After the manner of William Cobbett and Mark Twain, Girsdansky takes occasional shots at academic pedantry. He enjoys himself immensely, but he surely spent long enough at Chicago University to learn that scholarship is accuracy always and everywhere. This Prentice-Hall book has in it the makings of a very good and useful book indeed. It should be thoroughly tidied up before it is reprinted in Britain. SIMEON POTTE

SIMEON POTTER LIVERPOOL

Concepts of Criticism. By RENE WELLEK. Edited by S. G. NICHOLS, JR. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. 1963. xv + 403 pp. 56s.

Logic and Criticism. By WILLIAM RIGHTER. London: Routledge. 1963. ix + 148 pp. 21s.

These books are more timely in their publication than any review can be, since the New York Conference of F.I.L.L.M. is still fresh in the minds of many, and under its stimulus we have tried to look again at the related domains of literary history and criticism. Mr Wellek, as was only right, played a part in the Conference, and these essays, collected by a disciple to mark his sixtieth birthday, remind us of his imposing presence, as he opened the discussion on a paper by Mario Praz. (For the record, the leading article in T.L.S. of 29 September on 'Critics in Con- ference' may give to those not able to take part an appraisal of the central novelty of the meeting, its attempt to evoke an East-West Symposium.)

Mr Righter has not been well served by his printer and proof-reader but he addresses himself to central points of discussion in trying to sort out the share of description and of judgement in critical assessments, and he has little difficulty in showing that recent attempts to attain exactness in criticism are all 'reductivist', by which I understand: minimizing the problems in order to fit suggested solutions. The meat of his book is in the cases: Gide, Richards, Empson, Leavis and Ransom are all acutely brought in to the argument.

Mr Wellek's essays are more difficult to handle. To the casual reader they may convey what many of us think of as unpleasant features of American scholarship: a field of inquiry so wide that works have to be ticketed and pigeonholed in cate- gories, and so that the reader feels he has skimmed much and learned little. But this would be unfair to the acumen and industry of a great scholar (as in this Journal I was unfair to another, whom Mr Wellek seems to resemble, Carrington Lancaster). These attempts at synthesis, if approached in the right spirit, allow one to discern beneath the mass of (in this book necessarily) overlapping titles considerable critical power and an attempt to ask where all the new work is getting us. Someone must cut down the brushwood: 'We need some principles of selection among mountains of printed matter that confront us' (p. 344). Much recent criti- cism appears in this book as needlessly obscure and difficult: I think of the pages on Northup Frye and Kenneth Burke. The best part of the book seems to me the discussions on concepts that we must use everyday: baroque, realism, romanticism, positivism, comparative literature.

Reading Mr Wellek sends one back to Mr Righter and makes one feel about criticism as Matthew Arnold felt about Christianity: we cannot do without it, but we cannot do with it as it is. Is there any other branch of inquiry in which the experts may so easily be partial and wrong as in questions of taste ? If Leavis tells me that The Golden Bowl outrages my moral sense and if I have no other feeling before this delicate masterpiece than respect, what do I conclude ? That an able

252 252 Reviews Reviews

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Page 3: Concepts of Criticismby René Wellek; S. G. Nichols, Jr.;Logic and Criticismby William Righter

Reviews 253

critic is prejudiced, or that I am obtuse ? Mr Righter's central pages are among the most helpful I know on these knotty points. Might the remedy lie in part in a return to a major figure like Sainte-Beuve, 'le plus sur liseur qui ait jamais ete', yet one who to judge from both these books, is a spent force? . . MOORE

vW. G. MOORE OXFORD

Beowulf; A New Translation. By BURTON RAFFEL. New York: New American Library. (Mentor Classics.) 1963. xxii + 160 pp. 60c.

Burton Raffel's Beowulf; A New Translation is a long way from a literal translation, longer than one would have thought necessary seeing that his metre is so un- inhibiting. The translator's restraint with words cannot convey the Beowulf poet's mastery; of course, the laughter William Morris caused with his ye olde a-clap- trapping will make the boldest versifier pause before attempting in Modern English what the Old English poem is praised for. Morris turned lines 2672b-2682a into:

With flame was lightly then burnt up The board to the boss, and might not the byrny To the warrior the young frame any help yet. But so the young man under shield of his kinsman Went onward with valour, whenas his own was All undone with gleeds; then again the war-king Remember'd his glories, and smote with main might With his battle-bill, so that it stood in the head Need-driven by war-hate. Then asunder burst Naegling, Waxed weak in the war-tide, e'en Beowulf's sword, The old and grey-marked.

A comparison with the new translation is, however, not entirely in Raffel's favour:

Waves of fire swept at his shield And the edge began to burn. His mail shirt Could not help him, but before his hands dropped The blazing wood Wiglaf jumped Behind Beowulf's shield; his own was burned To ashes. Then the famous old hero, remembering Days of glory, lifted what was left Of Nagling, his ancient sword, and swung it With all his strength, smashed the gray Blade into the beast's head. But then Nagling Broke to pieces, as iron always Had in Beowulf's hands.

If only they could have combined: Morris's courage with words might have been tamed by Raffel's tact. Raffel's translation (though it will hardly cause the Beowulf poet to rejoice in Elysium, as Robert P. Creed thinks-and says in an 'Afterword' the purpose of which, at least in part, seems to be to display a scholar's mantle slashed with literariness) is better than most of the freer prose translations. The translator's Introduction and his flippant Glossary of Names reveal an unfor- givable lack of sympathy as well as a forgivable lack of knowledge. Creed's spelling Scandinavian is preferable to Raffel's Scandanavian.

Translators need Patience as well as Fortitude. For that reason, and for much else besides, Edwin Morgan's translation of 1952 still seems the best of the render- ings into Modern English verse. E. G. STANLEY LONDON

Reviews 253

critic is prejudiced, or that I am obtuse ? Mr Righter's central pages are among the most helpful I know on these knotty points. Might the remedy lie in part in a return to a major figure like Sainte-Beuve, 'le plus sur liseur qui ait jamais ete', yet one who to judge from both these books, is a spent force? . . MOORE

vW. G. MOORE OXFORD

Beowulf; A New Translation. By BURTON RAFFEL. New York: New American Library. (Mentor Classics.) 1963. xxii + 160 pp. 60c.

Burton Raffel's Beowulf; A New Translation is a long way from a literal translation, longer than one would have thought necessary seeing that his metre is so un- inhibiting. The translator's restraint with words cannot convey the Beowulf poet's mastery; of course, the laughter William Morris caused with his ye olde a-clap- trapping will make the boldest versifier pause before attempting in Modern English what the Old English poem is praised for. Morris turned lines 2672b-2682a into:

With flame was lightly then burnt up The board to the boss, and might not the byrny To the warrior the young frame any help yet. But so the young man under shield of his kinsman Went onward with valour, whenas his own was All undone with gleeds; then again the war-king Remember'd his glories, and smote with main might With his battle-bill, so that it stood in the head Need-driven by war-hate. Then asunder burst Naegling, Waxed weak in the war-tide, e'en Beowulf's sword, The old and grey-marked.

A comparison with the new translation is, however, not entirely in Raffel's favour:

Waves of fire swept at his shield And the edge began to burn. His mail shirt Could not help him, but before his hands dropped The blazing wood Wiglaf jumped Behind Beowulf's shield; his own was burned To ashes. Then the famous old hero, remembering Days of glory, lifted what was left Of Nagling, his ancient sword, and swung it With all his strength, smashed the gray Blade into the beast's head. But then Nagling Broke to pieces, as iron always Had in Beowulf's hands.

If only they could have combined: Morris's courage with words might have been tamed by Raffel's tact. Raffel's translation (though it will hardly cause the Beowulf poet to rejoice in Elysium, as Robert P. Creed thinks-and says in an 'Afterword' the purpose of which, at least in part, seems to be to display a scholar's mantle slashed with literariness) is better than most of the freer prose translations. The translator's Introduction and his flippant Glossary of Names reveal an unfor- givable lack of sympathy as well as a forgivable lack of knowledge. Creed's spelling Scandinavian is preferable to Raffel's Scandanavian.

Translators need Patience as well as Fortitude. For that reason, and for much else besides, Edwin Morgan's translation of 1952 still seems the best of the render- ings into Modern English verse. E. G. STANLEY LONDON

This content downloaded from 185.31.195.188 on Sat, 28 Jun 2014 15:59:16 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions