MMMiii!

INTRODUCTION

has different focuses or emphasis for every age.

Divisions of History of Critical Theory

• mimetic theories
  • imitation
  • verisimilitude (realisticness?/closeness to the truth/Truth)
• pragmatic theories
  • affective
  • audience
• expressive theories
  • author or artist
• objective theories
  • no author, only thework itself.
  • Death to the author! (Extreme)

Nature, Status, Function of arts

PLATO - Idealism

mimesis - imitation

• World of Being - Ideal World - World of Forms
• World of Becoming - Physical World, a shadowy reflection of the Ideal World
  • the Form is removed from the concept, the unchanging originals
  • Realities
    

Poetry/Arts

• draw us farther away from reality-> Unreliable source of truth
• thrice removed from reality (Form -> Idea->Words->Painting/Imagery)
• imitates an imitated imitation.
• engages the part of our psyche that is both illogical and irrational (Dionysiac) (and unstable)
  • Opposite is rational (Apollonian) - Good for our mind.
  • Induces us to partake in public displays of emotion (This is not needed by the future Philosopher Kings)
• a form of madness.
• above prose; higher form of writing
• must TEACH, not DELIGHT (didactic)

Poet

• Divinely insipired individual
• like rhapsodes (Song interpreter), do their art by possession. (Sanib)
• They don’t understand what they create
• the inspiration is passed down from Poet to Rhapsode to Audience. (Magnet and Rings Analogy)
• Plato recognizes that poets are gifted that’s why they must be banished.

ION is the Rhapsode that interprets Homer. He used the Socratic method.

Art is for the society (didactic)

ARISTOTLE - Realism and Importance of Plot

• does not believe that the world of appearances is merely an ephemeral copy of the changeless ideas
• change is a fundamental process of nature which is a creative force with a direction
• REALITY is a process by which a form manifests itself through the concrete and by which the concrete takes on meaning working in accordance with ordered principles

Art

• IMITATION or MIMESIS is basic in all arts
• Art is not life and life is not art.
• an escape TO life.
• must portray men better or worse because it is not real life.
• vicarious experience
• enhances life
• allows you to experience things without going through the pain.
• an artist just does not copy nature but produces a work of labor
  • An artist must say something significant about the human condition
  • An artist must say something new–a technical innovation. Must say it in a way which has never been used before.
• Art is NOT history. Integrity is more important.

A good work of art must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

Before you break the rules, you must KNOW the rules. (Shakespeare is the greatest rulebreaker of all time.)

Epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, music etc (Different forms of art)

Differences which distinguish artistic imitation

• medium
• objects
• manner of imitation

Plot

• necessity
• Probability
• Inevitability

muthos (plot)
praxis (story)
episodic play - post hoc
Aristotelian play - propter hoc

reversal - peripeteia
recognition - anagnorisis

The best kinds of recognitions are accompanied by reversals.

Plot - both end and soul of tragedy

Deus ex machina is no good.

HORACE

• 2nd greatest next to Virgil
• Sponsored by Mesinas
• Wrote Ars Poetica for the Piso boys (Telephus and Peleus)
• an artist is a craftsman
• ut pictura poesis - the poem is like a picture
  

Advice

• emphasizes decorum–the rightness of each part to the whole.
• advises restraint.
• Poetry must both teach and delight.
• avoid purple patches (Ostentatious, extravagant words, flowery writing)
• a poem should not be just beautiful, it must also be affecting.

On Imitation

• imitate the classics and the classical writers because they have already achieved perfection. (mimesis praxeus)

On critiquing

• Don’t flatter your patrons.
• Quintilius
• 9 years.
• Get advice from a practicioner.

Make friends with poetry but don’t marry poetry.

LONGINUS

On the Sublime - Aristotelian Approach

• Why are there sublime works/people?
• Sublimity is the “echo of a great soul”
• Genius + art/skill = Sublimity
• Inspiration + talent/craftsmanship = Sublimity/success
• needs experience and time.
• What it is not:
  • bombast or bathos
  • inflated hyperbolic language
  • purple patches
  • not just being clever
  • tasteless tumidity
  • frigidity
  • Triviality of expression
• Pragmatic->relationship between the work and audience
• materialism and hedonism kills sublimity (which makes political slavery better than these two)
• inspiration is important
• SUBLIMITY is indefinable
• You must be BORN with it. If you don’t have it, there’s nothing to develop.
• art = craft/skill
• good fortune = talent
• good course = training
• simplicity = sublimity
• it is better to have 1 sublime work than a ton of perfect works.
• You can overlook the flaws of a sublime artist
• Lysias was compared to Plato
• Hyperides <sublimity< Demosthenes

PLOTINUS

hierarchy of emanations

The ONE = [Good -> Intellect -> All-Soul] -> Material Universe -> Matter
———–Reminiscent of the Holy Trinity

Certainty =/=> Beauty

Beauty -> what the artist subdues the material as art
the more beautiful something is, the closer it is to the One.

Artist -> Human being magnified

The image the artist sees = Genius

The subduing process = Skill

Body is impure

Plotinus looks INSIDE.  Aristotle looks INSIDE and UPWARD

St. AUGUSTINE

signs = used to signify something

Words are signs.

Enjoyment = God

Holy Trinity in One God -> God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit

God is incapable of being expressed, but we can express Him in words to signify Him.

Must work for Transcience from earth to Heaven.

Sin = Enjoyment in the wrong direction.

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