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Morality and the Assessment of Literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

David Pole
David Pole
Affiliation:
University of London, King's College.
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Extract

At the beginning of The Principles of Literary Criticism I. A. Richards complained of the chaos of critical theories—a complaint that we hear pretty often, generally from theorists about to add to it, each making his small contribution. Richards' own contribution was a plan for reckoning the merit of poetry in terms of the more or less organised psychological state that it serves to induce in its readers: for poetry, he held, organises our ‘attitudes’—a term that may be taken in different ways. The theoretical picture that Richards connects with it, a vivid enough picture in its way, is of a kind of stock exchange of neural impulses; but perhaps in his practical criticism the word reverts to its ordinary sense. And surely the practical criticism, not the neurological speculation, is what has served to keep Richards' work alive. This is the aspect, at least, to which I shall confine my attention here; my concern is with the use of these and similar concepts in the practical business of criticism. For here we have critical approach, a technique and an orientation, that has in point of fact increasingly established itself. And the fact is one, surely, that aesthetics cannot ignore; a general theory should take notice of practice. But if this is only to add still more to the notorious chaos, I cannot see any alternative course short of abandoning the subject altogether; and that alternative, at least for those who are instinctive theorists and generalisers, is an impossible one.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 37 , Issue 141 , July 1962 , pp. 193 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1962

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References

page 193 note 1 These critics also insist that their concern is, as they say, with the poetry as poetry. That must be born in mind, too; however, it only sharpens the puzzle of this sort of two-in-one evaluation.

page 194 note 1 Matthew, Arnold, Essays in Criticism, 1888, p. 22.Google Scholar

page 195 note 1 We must not ourselves be tempted, however, to win the point too easily, as we may by exploiting the ambiguity of the word ‘form’. Every work has some form—distinguishable from its content or theme. Not every work has a harmonious form.

page 196 note 1 Philosophy and Psycho-Analysis, p. 253.

page 197 note 1 Cf. Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, e.g. I 77-8, II 42.

page 198 note 1 Cf. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, I, 5, 109, 126 and passim.

page 202 note 1 It is arguable that, unlike a photograph, any representation in words, where the representation is vivid and concrete, must carry implicit commentary too. For language embodies attitudes, and merely in stating or showing things in words, we are, whether we will or no, presenting them from a particular point of view. An adequate representation, then, that shows them as they are, will embody an adequate point of view. This, I believe, is what critics have held; I hope I am right in attributing some such position to Dr Leavis. If so, I do not mean to dissent from it; but there remains some sense—and a pretty commonplace one—in which a representation may be true and at the same time entirely chaotic.

page 204 note 1 All these aspects must be simultaneously emphasised, and in an ideal work of art no one would be sacrificed to any other. All actual art involves some compromise; local vitality, for instance, normally requires some measure of autonomy in the parts. Critics have come in recent years to look for the evidence of organisation down to the last image or adjective, which even in Shakespeare (let us say) would hardly be compatible with the real life of art.