User:Mango Masala/sandbox: Difference between revisions

It may be argued, for instance, that many of the attitudes I have described are not so novel as I make them out to be. Richards' emotive theories, Burke's concept of action, Leavis’ cultural vitalism, Trilling’s depth-view of manners and imagination, Blackmur’s metaphors of silence in literature, and above all, Herbert Read’s sympathy for the anarchic spirit, certainly open the way to the speculations of younger critics. The latter, however, still distinguish themselves by a certain quality of passion, a generosity toward the perversities of spirit, and a sense of crisis in man’s fate. Two recent books of criticism, R. W. B. Lewis’ ''The American Adam'' and Leslie Fiedler's ''Love and Death at the American Novel'', seem quite disparate in tone and method; yet both, I think, stand in this respect closer to Lawrence’s seminal work, ''Studies in Classic American Literature'', than to Matthiessen’s ''American Renaissance''.

I speak, of course, hyperbolically. Perhaps I can make the point clearer, and sharpen thereby the distinction between two generations of critics, by referring to two eminent theoreticians of literature. Both René Wellek and Northrop Frye are men of vast erudition; both have shaped the course of literary studies in America. This, I think, is entirely as it should be; the timely authority of such works as Wellek and Warren’s ''Theory of Literature'' or Frye’s ''Anatomy of Criticism'' deserves nothing less. Yet at the risk of seeming ungracious, it is to their later, and perhaps lesser, works that I wish to refer. After all, the question still remains: what lies beyond formalist theory?

In ''Concepts of Criticism'', Professor Wellek shows himself to be somewhat out of love with the directions of contemporary criticism. “It seems to me that in spite of the basic truth of the insight of organicism, the unity of content and form, we have arrived today at something like a deadend,” he states.{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=65}} His dissatisfaction, however, is of short duration. Professor Wellek sees the way out in the doctrine of “structuralism," evolved by the Prague Linguistic Circle - alas, now defunct! “Such a concept of the literary work of art avoids two pitfalls,” Professor Wellek hopes, “the extreme of organicism which leads to a lumpish totality in which discrimination becomes impossible, and the opposite danger of atomistic fragmentation.”{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=68}} The way out, as it turns out, comes very close to the ancient ideal of the golden mean. This is judicious. But is it really judiciousness which prompts him in two later chapters, “Philosophy and Post- war American Criticism” and “Main Trends of Twentieth-Century Criticism,” to deride all recent criticism? The brilliant and inventive concern with American literature in the last two decades is deplored as an example of “romantic historicism,” and mythic and existential criticism are condemned as an instance of “the irrationalistic philosophies of Europe” adapted to the pragmatic temper of the United States."{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=333 ff}} Professor Wellek sadly concludes: “Only those who adhere to either the German idealist tradition, in the Kantian or Coleridgean version, or those who rediscover Aristotle, still keep a grasp on the nature of art and recognize the necessity of an aesthetic and the ideal of a study of literature as literature.”{{sfn|Wellek|1963|p=342}} Having defined literature in formalist terms, it is no wonder that Professor Wellek ''still'' believes formalist theory to be the most rewarding view of literature. Thus is the rigor of tautology achieved.