Formalism - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1 / 24
About This Presentation
Title:

Formalism

Description:

Formalism. EH 4301. Spring 2006. And though one may consider a poem as an instance of ... Formalism. Declared objective existence of poem ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:1413
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 25
Provided by: cindyw
Category:
Tags: formalism

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Formalism


1
Formalism
  • EH 4301
  • Spring 2006

2
And though one may consider a poem as an instance
of historical or ethical documentation, the poem
itself, if literature is to be studied as
literature, remains finally the object for study.
A poem should always be treated as an organic
system of relationships, and the poetic quality
should never be understood as inhering in one or
more factors taken in isolation. Cleanth
Brooks and Robert Penn Warren Understanding
Poetry
3
Historical Development
  • Early part of 20th century
  • Historical/biographical research dominated
    literary scholarship
  • Extrinsic analysis of times/life of author
  • Philosophical/moral
  • Valued moral qualities exhibited in text
  • Impressionistic
  • What matters is how we feel or what we personally
    see in a work
  • Romanticism remnant
  • Concerned with artists feelings and attitudes
    presented in works

4
Formalism
  • Declared objective existence of poem
  • Only the poem itself can be objectively
    evaluated, not the feelings, attitudes, values
    and beliefs of the author or reader.
  • the text itself
  • Differing approaches to textual analysis among
    formalists
  • Disagreement concerning various elements that
    made up poem

5
Historical Development
  • Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
  • New Critics
  • John Crowe Ransom
  • Robert Penn Warren
  • Cleanth Brooks
  • Alan Tate
  • Andrew Lytle
  • Donald Davidson

6
Historical Development
  • Emerged as a powerful force in 1940s
  • Ill Take My Stand (1930)
  • Understanding Poetry An Anthology for College
    Students by Brooks and Warren
  • Emerged as leading form of textual analysis in
    American universities through the late 1930s
    until the early 1970s.

7
Historical Development
  • Roots in early 1900s
  • British critics and authors who helped lay
    foundation of New Criticism
  • T.S. Eliot
  • I.A. Richards
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • A literary piece exists in its own way.

8
Historical Development
  • Eliot
  • The poem does not infuse the poem with his or her
    personality and emotions, but uses language in
    such a way as to incorporate within the poem the
    impersonal feelings and emotions common to all
    humankind. Poetry is not, then, the freeing of
    the poets emotions, but an escape from them.
    Because the poem is an impersonal formulation of
    common feelings and emotions, the successful poem
    unites the poets impressions and ideas with
    those common to all humanity, producing a text
    that is not a mere reflection of the poets
    personal feelings.

9
Historical Development
  • Eliot
  • Good reader of poetry must be instructed in
    literary technique
  • Perceives the poem structurally
  • Acquainted with established poetic traditions
  • Must be trained in reading good poetry
  • Elizabethans
  • John Donne
  • Other metaphysical poets

10
Historical Development
  • Poor reader
  • Simply expresses his or her personal emotions and
    reactions to a text
  • Untrained in literary techniques and
    craftsmanship

11
Historical Development
  • Poor reader
  • A poem can mean anything its reader or its author
    wishes it to mean.
  • Good reader
  • Only through a detailed structural analysis of a
    poem can the correct interpretation arise.

12
Objective Correlative
  • Indirect and impersonal theory of the creation of
    emotions in poetry.
  • The only way of expressing emotion through art is
    to find an objective correlative
  • A set of objects, a situation, a chain of events,
    or reactions that can awaken in the reader the
    emotional response the author desires without
    being a direct statement of that emotion.
  • When the external facts are presented, they
    somehow come together (correlate) and immediately
    evoke emotion.

13
Assumptions
  • New Criticism
  • The study of imaginative literature is valuable
  • To study poetry or any literary work is to engage
    in an aesthetic experience that can lead to
    truth.
  • Poetic truth involves the use of imagination and
    intuition (discernable ONLY in poetry)
  • Through examination of the poem itself, we can
    ascertain truths that cannot be perceived through
    the language and logic of science.
  • scientific truth Water freezes at 32 degrees F.

14
Assertions
  • NC begins with defining its object of concern
    (POEM)
  • Possess it own being exists like any other
    object.
  • an artifact an objective, self-contained,
    autonomous entity with its own structure
  • Wimsatt poem becomes a verbal icon
  • THE TEXT ITSELF

15
Assertions
  • Objective theory of art
  • Meaning of a poem must not be equated with its
    authors feelings or stated or implied
    intentions.
  • Public text to be understood by applying
    standards of public discourse
  • Intentional fallacy
  • fundamental error of interpretation

16
Assertions
  • Do not deny the poem is somehow related to its
    author.
  • Eliot used the following analogy
  • Chemical reactions occur in the presence of a
    catalyst
  • Catalyst element that causes, but is not
    affected by, the reaction
  • Poets mind is the catalyst for the reaction that
    yields the poem.

17
Assertions
  • NC give little credence to the biographical or
    contextual history of the poem.
  • If intentional fallacy is correct, biographical
    data will not help us ascertain a poems meaning.
  • Although social and political context may indeed
    help in understanding the poem, its real meaning
    cannot reside in this extrinsic or
    outside-the-text information.

18
Assertions
  • Readers emotional response to the text is
    neither important nor equivalent to its
    interpretation.
  • Affective fallacy
  • Confuses what a poem is (its meaning) with what
    it does (the emotions it produces).
  • Leads to impressionistic responses relativism
  • chaos

19
Where do we find the poems meaning?
  • Because it is an artifact or object, meaning must
    reside within its own structure.
  • Like all objects a poem and its structure can be
    analyzed scientifically
  • Through Close Reading, we can ascertain the
    structure of the poem to see how it operates to
    achieve its unity and to discover how meaning
    evolves directly from the poem itself.

20
  • The poets chief concern
  • How meaning is achieved through the various and
    sometimes conflicting elements operating in the
    poem itself.

21
  • Etymology of individual words is important to NC.
  • Word meanings change from one time period to
    another
  • Critic must research and discover what individual
    words meant at the time the poem was written.

22
  • Literary Language
  • Relies on connotation
  • Implications, associations, suggestions,
    evocation of meaning, shades of meaning
  • Communicates tone, attitude, and feeling
  • Father authority, protection, responsibility
  • Scientific language
  • Relies on denotation
  • Father male parent

23
Chief characteristic of poem
  • Coherence
  • Organic unity all parts of a poem are
    interrelated and interconnected, with each part
    reflecting and helping to support the poems
    central idea.
  • Allows for the harmonization of conflicting
    ideas, feelings and attitudes, and results in a
    poems oneness.

24
  • Oneness
  • Achieved through
  • Paradox
  • Irony
  • Ambiguity
  • Tension
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com