(完整版)《西方文学理论》题库(含参考答案)
1.What are the origin and features of literary theory in classical times? P1-2
1）It originates in all societies from the very earliest times. And it is related to the Greek forms.
They were tied in very tightly to specific social occasion, for instance, plays recitation of Homeric epics, epinician or victory odes were conducted in different rituals.
2) a.It focused on concept genre , which sprang up almost automatically in Greek ‘literary’ theory.
b. The element of ritual was modified by the element of agon or contest.
c. Greek plays, epics and odes were all performed to an audience. The role of audience was inescapable.
d. The textual object of Greek ‘literary’ theory is the term poiesis. It is in its relations with neighbouring areas of verbal composition.
e. It makes no clear separation between the language of poiesis and the language of legal debate, or political debate, or public speaking.
2. By the first century B. C., the rhetorical critics had established two important systems of classification. What are they? Expound them in details. P4
1)The first system of classification was a division of stylistic registers into the high (or grand), the middle (or moderate), and the low(or plain).The grand style calls for strong emotion and elevated language, the plain style calls for quiet simplicity, and relatively unadorned language, the middle style is a quiet but not simple style, it calls for sweetness, smoothness, flowingness. Each style is considered appropriate for specific audiences and specific forms of persuasion. The grand style serves to sway an audience to resolution and decision, the middle style serves to win an audience by charming conciliation, and the plain style serves to convince by argument.
2)The second system was the system of tropes and figures. A trope is a deviation from the normal use of an individual word, while a figure is a deviation from the normal arrangement of words or the normal sequence of thought. The tropes include metaphor, synecdoche, and metonymy. Figures and tropes are viewed as ornaments or clothing for an already existing material and the same may be said of all other stylistic devices discussed by rhetorical critics
3. What are the features of Rhetoric tradition? P5
1) The first feature of Rhetoric tradition is that the traditional separation of form and content is about all a tradition of rhetorical criticism.
2) Another feature of the rhetorical tradition is the emphasis upon details at the expanse of larger wholes. Large-scale unity is not a major concern for the rhetorical critics.
3) The last feature is that rhetorical criticism was a very conservative discipline. Its history contains no drastic challenges or revolutions of the kind associated with later literary criticism, which has typically been affected by the changeability of the object, literature.
4. What are the three most plausibe criteria for defining literature? P6
1)The quality of dramatization.
2) The quality of fictionality.
3)A special figurative quality of language.
5. Discuss Plato’s theory of imitation or mimesis. P6-10
1)Mimesis is a critical and philosophical term that carries a wide range of meanings, which include imitation, representation, mimicry, imitatio, receptivity, nonsensuous similarity, the act of resembling, the act of expression, and the presentation of the self.
In ancient Greece, mimesis was an idea that governed the creation of works of art, in particular, with correspondence to the physical world understood as a model for beauty, truth, and the good. Plato contrasted mimesis, or imitation, with diegesis, or narrative.
Plato saw in mimesis the representation of nature. Plato wrote about mimesis in both Ion and The Republic (Books II, III, and X). In Ion, he states that poetry is the art of divine madness, or inspiration. Because the poet is subject to this divine madness, it is not his/her function to convey the truth.[citation needed] As Plato has it, truth is the concern of the philosopher only. As culture in those days did not consist in the solitary reading of books, but in the listening to performances, the recitals of orators (and poets), or the acting out by classical actors of tragedy, Plato maintained in his critique that theatre was not sufficient in conveying the truth.[citation needed] He was concerned that actors or orators were thus able to persuade an audience by rhetoric rather than by telling the truth.[citation needed]
In Book II of The Republic, Plato describes Socrates' dialogue with his pupils. Socrates warns we should not seriously regard poetry as being capable of attaining the truth and that we who listen to poetry should be on our guard against its seductions, since the poet has no place in our idea of God.
In developing this in Book X, Plato told of Socrates' metaphor of the three beds: one bed exists as an idea made by God (the Platonic ideal); one is made by the carpenter, in imitation of God's idea; one is made by the artist in imitation of the carpenter's.
2) Imitation imitates men performing actions either forced or voluntary, and believing that they are either successful or not in these actions, and feeling pain or pleasure as a result of it all.
Plato also uses the term mimesis in a more restricted, though still related, sense. That is, he distinguishes between mimesis as the speech of a character directly reproduced, and diegesis as narration of doings and sayings. Plato disapproves of both imitation in general and dramatised dialogue in particular.
Plato disapproval is at bottom a disapproval of any form of copying. Because, in his view, imitation cannot see through to the most real reality, the true. In drama, impersonations rub off very readily onto the impersonator, becoming lasting disposition of personality.
Plato's case against mimesis in the unrestricted sense focuses upon the fact that drama and epic imitate the world of perceptual appearances.
6. There are three worlds in Plato’s opinion. What are they? What are their relationship? P8-9
1)There is, first, the world that consists of physical bodies: of stones and of stars; of plants and of animals; but also of radiation, and of other forms of physical energy. I will call this physical world ‘world 1’.
If we so wish, we can subdivide the physical world 1 into the world of non-living physical objects and into the world of living things, of biological objects; though the distinction is not sharp.
There is, secondly,the mental or psychological world, the world of our feelings of pain and of pleasure, of our thoughts, of our decisions, of our perceptions and our observations; in other words, the world of mental or psychological states or processes, or of subjective experiences. I will call it ‘world 2’. World 2 is immensely important, especially from a human point of view or from a moral point of view. Human suffering belongs to world 2; and human suffering, especially avoidable suffering, is the central moral problem for all those who can help.
By world 3 I mean the world of the products of the human mind, such as languages; tales and stories and religious myths; scientific conjectures or theories, and mathematical constructions; songs and symphonies; paintings and sculptures. The reality of the mental world 2 - and with it, the reality of human suffering -has been sometimes denied; more recently by certain monistic materialists or physicalists, or by certain radical behaviourists. On the other hand, the reality of the world 2 of subjective experiences is admitted by common sense.
Many of the objects belonging to world 3 belong at the same time also to the physical world 1. Michelangelo’s sculpture The Dying Slave is both a block of marble, belonging to the world 1 of physical objects, and a creation of Michelangelo’s mind, and as such belonging to world 3. The same holds of course for paintings.
2) In Plato's opinion, the three worlds are the world of perceptual appearances, the world of the reality of abstractions, and the world of drama,epic, ode and lyric.
Plato sees the world of perceptual appearances as secondary and derivative.
According to Plato, the world of perceptual appearances is nothing more than an imitation of the reality of abstractions. (艺术世界的关系没找到）
7. What are the differences between Plato and Aristotle in their literary theory? P10-14(可能是论述题）
1）Compared with Plato, Aristotle appears as a less absolute theorist, more interested in describing and classifying things as they are, with less regard to ultimate principles. In the Poetics, he follows Plato in defining poetry as mimesis, specifically the imitation of an action. But whereas Plato condemns mere copying, Aristotle views the impulse to mimicry as a natural healthy human impulse: （引文见课本P10）
2）The difference between Aristotle and Plato arises not merely from a difference of temperament but from a difference of general conceptual framework. Aristotle's way of thinking about the world is dominated by the model of the biological organism. Clearly, the Aristotelian version of mimesis is no mere matter of passive copying.
3）Aristotle claims for poetry a higher kind of truth: not the reporting of factual details but the understanding of underlying generalities. Again, this is a rebuttal of Plato and his view that poetry is cut off from the universal because it is cut off from
the reality of pure abstractions. Aristotle envisages another kind of generality: generality of the species.
4）In focusing upon emotional effect, Aristotle is promoting that very aspect of poetry to which Plato most objected. But then Aristotle does not regard the emotions as intrinsically harmful but as a natural part of human life. Aristotle challenges Plato's assumption that people who 'indulge' in fictionally-created emotions will become prone to excessive emotionality in their lives generally.
8. Discuss Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. P12-15
Aristotle asserts that 'the characters [ in tragedy] should be lifelike', he also asserts that 'comedy aims at representing men as worse than they are nowadays, tragedy as better'. He considers the genre of tragedy superior to the genre of epic.
The main goal that Aristotle proposes for both tragedy and epic is the goal of unity-- a natural enough goal when works of art are conceived on the biological model.
Other goals proposed by Aristotle have to do with audience-- effect. For tragedy, Aristotle defines a specific tragic effect, a distinctive emotional response which the genre seeks to arouse in the audience. Tragedy, he says, should represent actions capable of awakening pity and fear.
Aristotle claims that the emotional experience of a tragedy brings about a catharsis (katharsis) od pity and fear in the audience.
Having defined the appropriate effect of tragedy, Aristotle goes on consider the type of hero required to produce this effect. The fall of a wholly good man does not generate pity and fear. The appropriate type of hero is a man remarkable for neither virtue nor vice, for neither justice nor depravity, but a man whose fall is due to some error or weakness, some hamartia.
9. What is Aristotle’s organic principle? P10-11
Aristotle appears as a less absolute theorist,,more interested in describing and classifying things as they are,with less regard to ultimate principles.His way of thinking about the world is dominated by the model of the biological organism.Art imitates Nature is Aristotle’s general principle,in the sense that the arts,like Nature,work to unfold the potentials hidden within things.In deed ,since a great many accidental factors intervene to prevent things from growing as they “want”in the real world ,Aristotle even suggests that the arts may “on the basis of Nature ,carry things further than Nature can.
10. What are Horace’s literary theories? P15-18
1)Horace’s literary theory appears especially in Epistles 2.1 and 2.2,and above all in the espitle that has come to be known as the Ars poetica.His stance is that of the experienced practioner,passing on valuable advice.Whereas Aristotle expounds principles,Horace lays down rules.
2)Like the schooolroom grammarian,Horace speaks the language of right and wrong,the language of social duty.
3)Horace recognises a larger number of genres than Aristotle ,including his own favourite genre of satire,But his approach is actually more limiting:less an examination of genres which happen to exist,more a designation of genres which may be allowed to exist.
4)Horace’s key concept of decorum.In Horace’s way of thinking ,the ultimate goal is more easily lost gight of .
5)Horace consistently views poesis as a craft,in Horace’s thinking ,”native genius “is indeed akin to aptitude .
6)He continues to speak of imitating from reality.
7)Horace’s new emphasis upon moral value in poetry,he institutes a bifurcation of virtue.
In general,Horace’s importance to the history of literary theory lies not in any profoundly original ideas, but in the new twist that he gave to the ideas of Aristotle.
11. Discuss Longinus’theory of the sublime. P19-21
1)For Longginus,the sublime is not just one option out of a range of options .It is the essence of all great poetry and oratory,Pinning supreme value to a special use of language,he has no time for concepts of genre.Nor is he interested in the usual rhetorical goal of persuasion.
2)The element of preaching in Longinus is reminiscent of more recent manifestos in which poets or novelists have proclaimed their own new way of writing as the only true way ,But Longinus stands in outright opposition to the literary tendencies of his time.
3)For Longinus ,the sublime is a matter of reader response,It is true that he also invokes the author and the need for grand ideas impregnated with a noble inspiration,”Sublimity is the echo of a noble mind”,he writes,But his theory is essentially affective,not self-expressive.
4)Longinus is interested in an extremity of effect that is always in danger of topling over into absurdity.
5)The sublime as defined by Longinus is virtually beyond language,or at least ordinary literal language,He is concerned with what a text commun icates rather than the writer’s uncommunicated soul.
6)Longinus nonetheless gestures towards a poetic “rightness”which somehow transcends the literal meanings involved.
7)He regards concision as generally inimical to the goals of transport,wonder and awe ,instead he favours the appropriate use of amplification and periphrasis ,two standard devices in the rhetorician’s armoury.
12. Dante Alighieri argues that the full four levels of meaning in Biblical exegesis can also be found in secular, vernacular poetry. What are they? Give some examples to expound them.P31-32
13.There is one early battle in the Renaissance between Latin and the national vernacular. What is it? Expound it in detail. P31-32
1)One early battle in the renaissance was fought between those who believed that the new literature should be written in latin and those who believed that it should be written in the national vernacular. On the one hand, the humanist enterprise led to the recovery of a “pure” roman latin, as distinct from the delegat ed church latin of the middle ages. However, the growing power of the centralised ruler, and the growing power of the centralised ruler corresponded to a growth of national consciousness. This curious contradiction between cultural forces and socio-political forces was resolved in favor of the socio-political forces.
2)The battle was fought our first in italy the earliest reasoned argument for a vernacular literature appeared in the 14th century. The argument also became a debate between different forms of the vernacular. Finally, the continuation of the debate into the early renaissance resulted in a victory for the school.
3)A side ............................quantitative verse.(32页第二段开始）
4)In hindsight........................assumptions.
14. Discuss the idealising strain in the early Renaissance. P33-35
1)The renaissance period was still creative in its relation to antiquity. But its accurate and less overwhelming.
2)For literary theory, the most........publishing history（33页第二段）. Ariosto filled his romance with fantastic beings and events, and audience reaction clearly showed that such novel inventions had a special appeal of their own. The justification of marvels and the marvelous became one significant strand of renaissance theory.
3)Moreover, the renaissance was still a christian age. For all the fascination of the pagan classics, there were certain christian attitudes that could not be left behind. Above all, literature had to be justified as morally useful.
4)Drawing upon renaissance notions of “divine”inspiration and marvelous invention, sidney effectively outmanoeuvres the whole issue of truth.
5)Theoretically, this..........................important.(35页最后一段）
15. Discuss the Aristotelians’principle of verisimilitude. P39-39
Verisimilitude means, literally, likeness to reality. With the principle of verisimilitude, the Italian Aristotelians gave more weight to believability, less to emotional effect;
In the first place verisimilitude has nothing to do with everyday realism or the limitation of how a majority of people spend the majority of their lives; then, verisimilitude is still the way we tend to judge credibility in relation to public events; last, according to the principle of verisimilitude, credibility depends upon probability, probability depends upon truth-to-type;
Of all the Italian Aristoteans, Castelvetro is the most interesting, and particularly extreme is his insistance upon verisimilitude;
Considerations of verisimilitude also apply to presentation and performance.
16. In the first half of the seventeenth century, there was the purification of language. Explain it in detail. P40-41
From the very start of the seventeenth century, the wholesale naturalisation of foreign terms advocated by du Bellay was reversed by Francois de Malherbe, who sought to restrict and stabilise language in the interests of clear communication.
During the Neoclassical period, the accolades go to perspicuity, that is, the quality of ‘see-through-able-ness’ in language.
Indeed, Neoclassical writers have a general predilection for analogies to sight and light and seeing: sight being the most objectifying sense, where the subject observes at a distance and the object appears as if untouched and unmediated.
17. Discuss the scientific attitude and its influence in the Neoclassical theory. P42-45
Scientific attitude:the rational attitude is objective and looks out beyond what merely happens to be in the immediate vicinity of the subject.This is also the scientific attitude, in the 17tn century,scientists had had to pull down human pride in a very drastic way,displacing the Earth from the centre of the universe..Ideally,scientific attitude involves a kind of modesty in the face of the world,a willingness to accept self-reducing,self-controlling laws.
1)Neoclassical literary theorists embrace this kind of modesty almost for its own sake.Critic must recognise their own limits,but it is not by looking out to the observable factual evidence that Neoclassical critics transcend the subjective point of view.
2)As regards the authority of the past,Neoclassical critics believe that the writer can be just as True Nature by imitating the Greek and Roman classics as by imitating actual reality.There is a sense of self-centred pride reduced to a proper humility.
3)The authority of the past was also accepted on the subject of genres. Neoclassical theory allowed only a small number of genres,and no mixing between genres.
4)This attitude helps to explain the Neoclassical concept of Nature.This is not a Nature of scenes and phenomena uncontaminated by human hand,but a Nature which includes and centres upon human nature.
5)Another recurring Neoclassical concept is decorum which means fittingness,Neoclassical critics give the term a bewildering multiplicity of application.
18. Discuss John Dryden’s literary theory in the Neoclassical period. P46-47
1) In many of Dryden’s critical statements, Dryden shows himself wholly in agreement with the new trend.But he is also aware of a distinctively English literary tradition,with specific reference points in Shakespeare,Beaumont and Fletcher,Joson and Chaucer.
2) He insists that different national audience have their own temperaments and requirement.The Neoclassical assumption of an essential human nature that is constant across cultures and history is here under challenge.
3) Dryden’s most important piece of literary criticism,An Essay of Dramatic Poesy,is in large part a defence of English practice as against French theory,in which,drama is defined as a just and lively imageof human nature.
4) Variety is a recurring concept in Dryden’s criticism.The weighting of character above action had already been advanced by the Italian Aristotelians,but Dryden gives it a distinctively English twist.
5) Dryden is more important as a practical than as a theoretical critic.His appreciations and evaluation and contrast ,would loom much larger in a history of practical literary criticism.
19. Discuss Samuel Johnson’s literary theory in the Neoclassical period. P47-48
1) Samuel’s criticism is remarkable for judgements and insights into particular authors rather than for any development of a consistent theoretical position.Johnson is essentially Neoclassical in his attitudes,but with certain very significant reservations.
2) Johnson values variety:the great source of pleasure is variety.Uniformity must tire at last,though it be uniformity of excellence.
3) He also places temphasis on imitating real life,and dismisses abruptly the imitation of past works of literature:No man was ever great by imitation.Nor will he allow an a priori absolute status to Neoclassical rules:there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature.
4) He suspects the artificial conventionality of the well-established classical genre of the pastoral.,he also insists the moral role of literature,and requires the writer to select from nature with a moral end in view.
5) He believes in starting from actual observation,like the British cist philosophers.Moving away from the apparatus of Neoclassical verisimilitude,he takes a step in the direction of modern notions of realism and the realistic.
20. Discuss the concept of the sublime in the Age of Sensibility in Britain. P53-54
The term has already appeared in quotes from Joseph and Thomas Warton. The general reverence for everything Classical thinking; for a long time, however, the sublime was restricted to a superficial quality of style. John Dennis regarded passion as the essential feature of poetry, and gave highest praise to religious poetry because of its power to generate sublime feelings of admiration and awe. The most important theorist of the sublime was Edmund Burke. He distinguishes between two quite different forms of aesthetic response: our sense of the beautiful versus our sense of the sublime. Although both are valuable in their own ways, it is clear that a higher level of value is associated with the greater
intensity of the sublime. Our sense of the sublime is inspired by ruggedness, irregularity, vastness, power and obscurity. Terror and fear are mind-numbing, reason-numbing emotions.
21. Discuss Giambattista Vico’s literary theory. P57
Vico founded the scientific study of culture.He thought that mythological thinking was determined by the early state of human language which lacked abstract terms.The early state of language is metaphorical ,and myth is a metaphorical way of thinking.He evidently entail a complete rejection of the Neoclassical perspective.Viewed in relation to myth,poetry is n longer something merely added on top of ordinary rational thinking.He argues that metaphor is thinking.(56页第三行，第十一行，第十九行，倒数第二段第三行和第十一行）
22. Discuss Denis Diderot’s literary theory. P57-58
Denis Diderot's paradox-loving manner foreshadows Postmodernism.He was a proponent of sensibility and the virtues of natural emotion.He thought that language already operates at a very great distance from the natural.加上57页十六行到十九行的involved.57第二段倒数第九行到faked.57页第二段最后三句话。58第二段第一句话
23.What are the differences between the “Naive”poetry and the “Sentimental”poetry in Friedrich Schiller’s opinion? Expound them in details. P63-64
64页第一段倒数三句话
24.There are three phases in G.. W. F. Hegel’s dialectical historical sequence for art. What are they? Expound them in details. P64-65
64页最后一段第九行，65页第二行和65页第七行
25.Discuss Immanuel Kant’s concept of aesthetic disinterest and its influence. P67-68
1)Concept of aesthetic disinterest:
The aesthetic cast of mind is distinctive, according to Kant, because it is disinterested. It sets aside considerations as to wether an object ......we delight in the object simply for its own sake.(P67的最后一段）
2)Its influence:
The concept of aesthetic disinterest undermines the lone-held Horatian view, which even the Age of Sensibility had never really challenged, that the purpose of literature is to teach as well as delight. Goethe and Schiller immediately seized upon Kant's argument as a justification for downgrading the moral function in literature. Also incompatible with the free state of aesthetic disinterest is Aristotle's own orientation towards producing certain calculated emotional effects in an audience. 26.Discuss the organic principle in romantic literary theory P69-72
Organic form is produced when the essence of an idea is allowed to unfold according to its own nature.Romantic theory is more interested in the growing process which takes place in the author's mind. The quality of the organic is referred to the synthetic powers of the creative imagination. Inevitably, there are also differences as to what constitutes organic unity of form. Although Romantic theorists talk no less frequently than Aristotle about wholeness and unity, their emphasis is upon inclusion rather than exclusion. The organic model also helped justify the Romantics in their concentration upon the particular or individual as against the general or typical.
27.What is the role of critic in Herd’s opinion? P72
1)Herder believed that, with a sufficient effort of the imagination, one could fell one’s way into different mentalities, no matter how unfamiliar.
2)Herder himself applied the ‘fell into’ process to individual authors when he declared that one should strive to ‘liv e in the spirit of an author’ .
3)Moreover, the critic should seek to become the ‘servant of the author, his friend’, seeking out values rather than finding faults.
4)Criticism here becomes appreciation i n the ‘praise of beauties’ mode, which was to persist throughout the nineteenth century.
28.Discuss the three British themes in the Romantic period: language, moral effect and the definition of the poet. P74-77 1)The notion of a return to real language has been a recurring motif in the history of British literature. Like British philosophers, British poets have always had a fear of language flying off on its own. losing contact with its own. Coleridge’s view harks forward to Symbolist and Modernist theory, which gives the poet special responsibility for guarding the health of the language.
2)Another theme of the British poet-critics concerns the moral effect of poetry. The British poet-critics came up with a new
moral effect which could operate in a more indirect manner. It is the p oet’s business not to inculcate any specific moral code, but to encourage in the reader a wide-minded openness and responsiveness to others.
3)The definition of the poet is anther favorite theme of the British poet-critics. Wordsworth concerned to characterize a distinctive qualities of the text produced. Especially famous is his assertion that ‘Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin prom emotion recollected in tranquillity’ . Shelley also describes poetry in terms of the poet. More radical than Wordsworth, he resembles Schleiermacher is his view that the highest poetry exists not on the page but in the poet’s mind.
29.Discuss Sainte-Beuve’s biographical approach in literary study. P78
Sainte-Beuve tended to value sincerity, and he tended to think more highly of authors whose lives, as well as works, were admirable. For these and those reasons, the biographical approach was later condemned by Modernist writers and related schools of criticism, and his reputation plummeted. His portraits of writers depict a gallery of individual character types, in some ways analogous to the character galleries of the great nineteenth-century novelists.
30.Discuss Emerson’s concept of Nature.P79
Emerson developed a Transcendentalism in which the physical appearances of Nature are envisaged as merely the outward manifestation of an immanent over-soul. He places comparatively little value upon the poem as a creation in language. He proposes a particularly strong version of organic theory in which the poet’s experience entirely determines the content, and the content entirely determines the form. He even prophesies a tine when literature as such will become unnecessary, when everyone will become a poet reading Nature for themselves. He claims that Nature offers all her creatures to the poet as a picture-language.
31. What are the continuities between romanticism and realism? Expound them in details.P81-82
1)There is one significant continuity in the concept of the characteristics. Romantic theory had overthrown the old reverence for the general or typical in favor of an interest in the unique individuality of things. The realism of the nineteenth-century novel is fueled by a fascination with the sheer thusness of life. Individual human characters, local regional settings, particular details of experience are all to be enjoyed for their own distinctive flavor. And as regards individual human characters, the psychological concerns of the nineteenth-century novel clearly benefit from the Romantic model of the human psyche: more personalized, more complicated and less rational than the Neoclassical model.
2)Another continuity may be traced in the concept of history. Romantic theory had launched the idea that every historical period has its own distinctive outlook. The historical novel carried through into the Age of Realism, but often with a much more recent setting. It was only one small further step to the notion of actually chronicling contemporary society under a historical perspective. There is a sharp contrast between Romantic imagination versus ‘true-to-life’observation, between historical romance versus realistic novel. The sharpness of the contrast is elided by a more gentle transition from historical romance to contemporary history.
32.Discuss Belinsky’s literary theory in our textbook. P84-85
1)His overall trend was away from German Romantic theory and towards a distinctively Russian social theory. Subjectivity must give way to wider, less egotistical concerns which were especially national concerns. It was imperative to develop a national literature that would give expression to the true spirit of Russia, but not the Russia of the past. Belinsky did not believe in going back to roots; traditional Russian folk-poetry he associated with the traditional evils of serfdom. The true spirit of Russia was still to be fully defined and realised, and Belinsky looked to the writers to define and realize it.
2) He advocates realism and life as it is, not the ideal of life. On the other hand, he dismisses precise observation, and argues that a great novelist has not made a copy of actuality. He has beheld it all in a prophetic vision. Writers of the new generation must actively mould society.Realism for Belinsky is necessary to the extent of establishing a connection between literature and life, above all a connection to contemporary life. He thinks that a work of literature must be in tune with the historical moment of its writing. Writers should be aware of current social trends and to bring to public consciousness developments which are only just starting to take shape. He is particularly interested in the recognition of emerging social types, new classes and kinds of people.The nation’s future direction had to be- and was about to be- decided once and for all. He consistently invokes our age and our time as the ultimate reference point in his discourse. The notion of catching the wave of the future here makes its first appearance in literary theory.
3)He had little time for questions of artistic form or style. His criticism is focused on such characters and situations as can be directly referred to contemporary social reality. He thinks that literature is never subordinated to extra-literary
requirements.
33.“In the Criticism of the three radicals, the overriding emphasis upon rationalities allows no room for any distinctively aesthetic mode of knowing.” What does the sentence mean? Explain it in details. P86
本页第二段
34.There are some paradoxes in Mathew Arnold’s literary theory? What are they? Expound them in details. P89
The paradox of Arnold’s position is that literature serves the social purpose he prescribes not by becoming more socially purposive, but by remaining, above all, literary.
1)Instead of preaching religion or teaching morality, literature must itself take on the status of a kind of religion, a kind of morality.
2)He insists upon morality as forcibly as he rejects didacticism.
3)In fact, he sees literature as promoting a general capacity for morality rather than directing any specific line of conduct.
4)He tends to equate moral capacity with a certain kind of mood: a quasi-religious mood of deep solemnity.
35.Discuss Hippolyte Taine’s concepts of race, milieu and moment. P91-92
1)Taine’s concept of race is curiously dated, involving ‘some very general disposition of mind and soul, innate and appended by nature to the race, or acquired and produced by some circumstance acting upon the race’.
2)As for ‘some circumstance acting upon the race’, he typically invokes the role of climate. Climate explanations as ‘Rain, wind, and surge leave room for naught but gloomy and melancholy thoughts.’Had been a favorite of amateur cultural theorists ever since the eighteenth century, and Taine’s explanations are scarcely less amateurish.
3)The influences of the social environment come under moment(i.e. the pervasive attitudes the species of works of arts; it permits only those which are comfortable to it, and suppresses other species, through a series of obstacles interposed, and a series of attacks renewed, at every step of their development.
[Resources Online]
Taine used these words in French (race, milieu et moment); the terms have become widespread in literary criticism in English, but are used in this context in senses closer to the French meanings of the words than the English meanings, which are, roughly, "nation", "environment" or "situation", and "time".
Taine argued that literature was largely the product of the author's environment, and that an analysis of that environment could yield a perfect understanding of the work of literature. In this sense he was a sociological positivist (see Auguste Comte), though with important differences. Taine did not mean race in the specific sense now common, but rather the collective cultural dispositions that govern everyone without their knowledge or consent. What differentiates individuals within this collective "race", for Taine, was milieu: the particular circumstances that distorted or developed the dispositions of a particular person. The "moment" is the accumulated experiences of that person, which Taine often expressed as momentum; to some later critics, however, Taine's conception of moment seemed to have more in common with Zeitgeist.
Though Taine coined and popularized the phrase "race, milieu, et moment," the theory itself has roots in earlier attempts to understand the aesthetic object as a social product rather than a spontaneous creation of genius. Taine seems to have drawn heavily on the philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder's ideas of volk (people) and nation in his own concept of race; the Spanish writer Emilia Pardo Bazán has suggested that a crucial predecessor to Taine's idea was the work of Germaine de Sta?l on the relationship between art and society.
36.Discuss Marx’s concept of consciousness. P92-93
1)In the first place, Marx is a materialist who believes that mental consciousness is very definitely secondary to social existence.
2)Secondly, no effort of free will or mind can outweigh such material determinants.
3)Thirdly, Marxist theory allows that consciousness may become quite divorced from the real material state of affairs, i.e., may become false consciousness. Hence, he imagines false or illusory forces.