New Criticism

& Some More Love Poems

Central Questions

How do we read a poem/text? What do we look for, the author’s intention, our own psychological projection, “the meaning” conveyed through both form and content, or the ways a text respond to its time?What are the values in reading literature? Is it the finest example of culture? What is culture? How is it related to our daily life? Can we resist commercial culture through cultivating our “artistic” sensibility? Do you feel nostalgic about “a certain historical period”?Are we ultimately free? Is our subjectivity unified or fragmentary?

Outline

Key WordsMatthew Arnold: Culture vs. AnarchyT. S. Eliot: Literary values defined New Criticism: organicism & methodsVictorian love poems in the context

of the Victorian vs. Modern Views of Love

Literature as a profession; a Religion

and the only solution to worldly chaos.

from idealism & repression to disunity and franker views of the body and desire)

Key Words

Hellenism vs. Philistinism (Arnold) (Bertens 2-5)Dissociation of Sensibility; Objective Correlative (Eliot) (Bertens 12-13)Intentional Fallacy; Affective Fallacy; Heresy of Paraphrase (New Critics) (Bertens 22-23)Liberal Humanism (Bertens 6)

M. Arnold: Hellenism vs. Philistinism

Culture: “the best that has been thought and said” Hellenism: Greek culture as an example timeless and universalIntellectual refinement and sensibility, disinterestedness, spiritual activity

Anarchy: caused by capitalism and middle-class Protestantism. Philistinism: self-centered, materialistic

Bertens 2-5

Arnold (2): Art’s Timelessness & Liberal Humanism

The “ultimate” autonomy and self-sufficiency of the subject (Bertens 6) we are essentially free. Likewise, literature, or its universal values, is not constrained by its time and space. Good questions on p. 8

objective correlative 客觀對應物 (T.S. Eliot)

An external object used to convey the writer’s feeling, which is elevated to a universal level in writing so that the same feelings can be evoked in the reader. “The only way of expressing emotion in the form of art is by finding an ‘objective correlative’; in other words, a set of objects, a situation, a chain of events which shall be the formula of that particular emotion; such that when the external facts, which must terminate in sensory experience, are given, the emotion is immediately evoked.” (“Hamlet and His Problems”)

objective correlative: e.g. 客觀對應物 (T.S. Eliot)

e.g. Images of coldness in Hardy’s “Neutral Tones”

e.g. “. . . the sun was white, as though chidden of God ”

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”“Let us go then, you and I, When the evening is spread out against the sky Like a patient etherized( 乙醚麻醉 ) upon a table”

( Are they objective or subjective?)

T. S. Eliot: his Value Judgment

dislikes PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY and Tennyson e.g. “Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!” (ODE TO THE WEST

WIND )Favors “metaphysical poetry,” which unites emotions and wits. What comes after 17th century poetry is a dissociation of sensibility. finds ‘organic unity’ in literature

New Criticism: Major Assumptions (Bertens 21-23 )

A poem is an autonomy ( 獨立個體 ), its meanings decided by itself alone, but not by the author’s intention or the reader’s emotional responses to it.

Intentional Fallacy ( 意圖謬誤 ), Affective Fallacy ( 感情謬誤 )

Poetry offers a different kind of truth (poetic truth) than science, conveyed through its dense language which cannot be translated.

Heresy of Paraphrase

Major Assumptions —Textual Autonomy

the poet‘s mind as a catalyst ( 觸媒 )

Experience, objective correlatives CO2+ 葉綠素 光合作用

Organic whole

New Criticism: Major Assumption (2) – organic wholeness

organic unity: – all of its elements (form and content, poetic

elements, tensions) form a “single unified effect.”

– all parts of a poem are interrelated and interconnected, with each part reflecting and helping to support the poem's central idea. ...allows for the harmonization of conflicting ideas, feelings, and attitudes, ...

New Criticism: Methodology

New Criticism’s synonyms = objective criticism, practical criticism, textual criticism, close readingthe "text and the text alone" approach

New Criticism on Poetry (Bressler 44 - 45)

1. Pay close attention to the text’s diction its meanings (connotation and denotation) and even its etymological roots. 2. Study the poetic elements closely.

e.g. 詩律（ prosody ）、比喻語言（明喻、暗喻、擬人法、頓呼法）3. Search for structure and patterns; e.g. oppositions in the text (paradox, ambiguity, irony) 4. From Parts to an Organic Wholeness

Parts Denotations, connotations

and etymological roots

Allusions

Prosody

Relationships

among the various elements

Whole

Themes

pattern, tension, ambiguities, paradox,

contradictions

New Criticism: Methodology (1) Poetry

Parts Point of view, dialogue, setting, Plot CharacterizationRelationships

among the various elements

Whole

Themes

pattern, tension, ambiguities, paradox,

contradictions

New Criticism: Methodology (1) Narrative

Victorian love poemsin the context of the Victorian vs. Modern Views of Love

• A Woman’s Desire: EBB• Ending of love: Barbara Allen• A Man’s Desire for Possession

Female DesireNude With a Dog 1861-61 (later dated 1868)

Gustave Courbet

Innocence, implied sexuality

Female Desire

Nu a la pantoufle a carreaux (1917) http://www.pyb.com.au/ptcds/pcres/fo

cus/schiele.htm

Egon Schiele (Austria : 1890 - 1918)

KNEELING NUDE, 1918http://www.donagrafik.com/WUK_KATALOG/HTML/31_e.html

E. B. Browning

“While Robert Browning is famous for being a poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning is famous for being a poet with a romantic life story” (Beard 67) Her life: – Threatened with lung disease, lived in a darkened room

with few visitors (after her brother’s death by drowning).

– Married before elopement. (still following the Victorian moral codes)

– Her elopement with Browning “cured her invalidism.”

E. B. Browning (2) : Critical Reception of EBB as a poet

“Aurara Leigh”: Aurora, who aspires to be a poet, is courted with a marriage proposal by her cousin Romney. Rejecting his offer she proclaims her own `vocation'. Victorians –saw her as a major poet, good enough to be considered for laureatship; Later critics – see her as an adjunct to her husbandContemporary feminists – read her work as Victorian feminist writings

Her sonnets

Different from the Renaissance sonnets because she talks mostly about her own love (and doubts), but not her lover.

Her sonnets: Questions

What are the main ideas of Sonnet 26 and 43?Are they “good” poems from the standard of New Criticism? What do you think about her modes of love? Note: sonnet forms– English (Shakespearean) sonnet: Quartrain (abab c

dcd efef) couplet (gg)– Italian (Petrarchan): Octave (abbaabba ) and Sestet

(cdecde, cdccdc, or cdedce.)

Sonnet forms

Italian: two parts -- "The octave bears the burden; a doubt, a problem, a reflection, a query, an historical statement, a cry of indignation or desire, a Vision of the ideal. The sestet eases the load, resolves the problem or doubt, answers the query, solaces the yearning, realizes the vision.“English: the final couplet -- a commentary on the foregoing, an epigrammatic close. (source: http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/sonnet.html )

Sonnet 43 Thesis: The speaker expresses both through form and content how love is both boundless and limited. Form:– Italian, but with only 4 rhymes; intertwining rhymes; – Repetition of words; – Emotional, long lines not limited by the form; breaks in the middl

e of two lines; Meaning: – Paradox between uncountable love and countable ways; – between boundless love and finality of life. (freely, purely vs. lo

ss and death)– between the spiritual and eternal (open or long vowels) and the

everyday life (short and stressed syllables).

Sonnet 26

Thesis: Form: – two part (before-after) structure; broken by “your” arrival. – Nasal sounds associated with visions, and explosives with the

lover.

Content: – Personification: visions as they– Ambiguities: “wants,” “God’s gifts”; what “overcame” her with

satisfaction?

E. B. Browning (3) : love & desire

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)The physical sources of desire is presented with metaphors: (Kern 91-92)– She hears “footsteps of the soul” and waits with “trembling

knees.” – The hand of love is “soft and warm” and brings “souls to

touch” – Her heart opens wide to “fold within the wet wings of thy

dove”– Her own pulse and her beloved’s “beat double”

E. B. Browning (3) : desire

Exchange of a lock of hair: – R. Browning “Give me . . . so much of you—all preciou

s that you are—as may be given in a lock of your hair—I will live and die with it.”

Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850)– “. . .from my poet’s forehead to my heart . . . [I] lay the gift where nothing hindereth; Here on my heart, as on thy brow, to lack No natural heat till mine grows cold in death.” (Sonnet

19 qtd Kern 345)

V. Ending

Arthur Hughes (1832-1915) Aurora Leigh's Dismissal of Romney- (The Tryst) 1860 http://freespace.virgin.net/k.peart/Victorian/hugheslove.htm

The lovers composed, with reasons (the book) clearly given.

M. Ending

Edward MunchAshes (1894)

Both lovers frustrated, in a mess.

Ending in conflict

While the Victorian were acutely aware of conflict, they were less willing than the moderns to see it as intrinsic to love or as having a constitutive function. In art they displaced conflict onto fictitious characters, often onto femme fatales in distant, ancient, or imaginary places. (Kern 373)The other solution – joining in death. (sometimes quite liteterally; e.g. Wuthering Heights; Dante Gabriel Rossetti)

Barbara Allen

Ballad: – brevity (omission of some plot), – matter-of-fact tone;– repetition with variation

Why do you think Barbara Allen rejects the young man? And why does she die? How is the young man presented?How does the form of ballad adds depths to this ballad?

Barbara AllenThesis: Though apparently about unrequited love and reunion after death, Barbara’s motivation in refusing the young man or death is not clear. Form: – Repetition: “slowly” “Goodbye” – the turning point: one line said by Barbara to Grove; – External actions (words) described but not inner feelings;

Content– Why does she know that he is dying? – What type of sorrow does she die of? – “dying” “soft and narrow” bed

Barbara Allen: another version, misunderstanding

4. "Don't you remember the other day When you were in the tavern, I toasted all the ladies there And slighted Barbara Allen?"5. "O yes, I remember the other day When we were in the Tavern, I toasted all the ladies there, Gave my love to Barbara Allen." 9. . . .Sweet William died for me today, I'll die for him tomorrow." 11. . . . And out of hers, a briar.

Different musical versions

http://entertainment.msn.com/Song/?song=1256807

Barbara Allen on Angel Clare by Art GarfunkelThe same musicAnother version

Jean-Leon Gerome (1824-1904) (French) "Phryne before the Areopagus“ 1861 http://www.kingsgalleries.com/1024x768/galleries/gerome/expanded/picture-12.htm

Male Desire

Male Desire

S. Dali The Great Masturbator 1929

Male Desire in “Porphyria’s Lover”

Dramatic Monologue: elements – – situation, “who, where, when, and why”– the listener,

Can you analyze the working of this speaker’s mind? Is he sane or insane? Where do you see the clues? How is Porphyria presented?

Male Desire in “Porphyria’s Lover”

Thesis: The speaker, with his deranged mind, solves all the conflicts in Porphyria, but not his desire to control and be controlled.Form: – one continuous speech without stanza divisions;

Content – The lover: deranged and disturbed; – Porphyria: active, pleading, in conflict; – Final attempt at getting a pure and eternal love. – Paradoxes: speaker, both passive and active; P: alive after de

ath– Final appeal to God

Reference

Literary Theory: The Basics. Hans Bertens. NY: Routledge, 2001. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. 2nd Ed. (Bressler, Charles E. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1999.) TEXTS AND CONTEXTS - INTRODUCING LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE STUDY. Adrian Beard. Routledge, 2001.The Culture of Love: Victorians to Moderns. Stephen Kern. Harvard UP, 1992.

Readings for next week

“Psychoanalytic Criticism” chap 3 (pp 147-153 Reader: 29- 32 )

"Eveline" by James Joyce (Reader: 67-69)