HASSAN II UNIVERSITY - CASABLANCA

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH STUDIES

Aïn Chock

MAJOR TRENDS
IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
Semester 5 — Major: Literature
Groups: A & B

Academic Year: 2020-2021

Instructor: Prof. Mohamed-Saïd Sefiani

Email: [email protected]
 COURSE DESCRIPTION
1. Course Objectives:
The development of European (and English) literature through the different
stages of history represents paradigm-shifts in artistic vision and stylistic fashion.
The movements listed below (see course contents) do not always provide clear-cut
demarcation lines between the timeframes set by historiographers, and at times
seem even to overlap in terms of specific authorial practices (for example,
Shakespeare is said to typify the paradox of writing in the “classical” idiom that is
infused with the spirit of “romantic” ethos). However, what perhaps accounts for
such historical classifications is most often their cultural background, their
ostensibly common worldview, or/and the characteristic forms and patterns of their
artistic expression. By providing a brief a survey of some major trends in English
literature, this course aims to explore their respective traditions, and analyze their
style and vision. Through the study of a selected corpus of representative texts, it
seeks to enable the students to trace European thought back to its origins, and follow
its developments in English poetry and prose. It attends to mainstream theoretical
and critical perspectives about man, nature, society and art, and introduces their
artistic practices as exemplified by a few landmark works.
2. Course Contents:

Chapter One : From Classicism to Neo-Classicism: On the Theory of Art and the Artist
A. Greco-Roman Classicism:
1. Plato’s Charges Against Poetry: the Dialogues
2. Aristotle’s Defense: On the theory of genres, mimesis and catharsis
3. Defining the concept of Classicism: General Characteristics
B. English Neoclassicism:
1. Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for Poetry”
2. Alexander Pope: “An Essay on Criticism” ; “An Essay on Man”
Chapter Two: English Romanticism
1. William Wordsworth and S.T. Coleridge: “Preface to the Lyrical Ballads”
Two Poems: “The Rainbow”; “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal”
2. Romantic Theory: Major Tenets
3. Romanticism vs. Classicism : a Summary

Chapter Three: Realism

1. Social Realism
2. Psychological Realism
3. Naturalism
Chapter Four: Modernism
Chapter Five: Postmodernism
 Chapter One
From Classicism to Neo-Classicism:
On the Theory of Art and the Artist

A. Greco-Roman Classicism:
1. Plato’s Charges Against Poetry: the Dialogues
2. Aristotle’s Defense: On the theory of genres, mimesis and catharsis
3. Defining the concept of Classicism: General Characteristics

B. English Neoclassicism:
1. Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for Poetry”
2. Alexander Pope: “An Essay on Criticism” ; “An Essay on Man”
PLATO
 THE REPUBLIC (Book VII)
The Allegory of the Cave

The Allegory of the Cave – also known as the Analogy of the Cave, Plato's Cave, or
the Parable of the Cave – is an allegory used by the Greek philosopher Plato in his
work The Republic to illustrate "our nature in its education and want of
education". It is written as a fictional dialogue between Plato's teacher Socrates
and Plato's eldest brother Glaucon in Book VII. Socrates describes a group of
people who have lived chained to the wall of a cave all of their lives, facing a blank
wall. The people watch shadows projected on the wall by things passing in front of
a fire behind them, and begin to ascribe forms to these shadows. According to
Socrates, the shadows are as close as the prisoners get to viewing reality. He then
explains how the philosopher is like a prisoner who is freed from the cave and
comes to understand that the shadows on the wall are not constitutive of reality at
all, as he can perceive the true form of reality rather than the mere shadows seen
by the prisoners. (See the reading assignment)
INSIDE THE CAVE

Socrates begins by describing a scenario in which what people take to be real

would in fact be an illusion. He asks Glaucon to imagine a cave inhabited by
prisoners who have been chained and held immobile since childhood: not only
are their arms and legs held in place, but their heads are also fixed, compelled to
gaze at a wall in front of them. Behind the prisoners is an enormous fire, and
between the fire and the prisoners is a raised walkway, along which people walk
carrying things on their heads "including figures of men and animals made of
wood, stone and other materials". The prisoners watch the shadows cast by the
men, not knowing they are shadows. There are also echoes off the wall from the
noise produced from the walkway.

Socrates suggests the prisoners would take the shadows to be real things and the
echoes to be real sounds, not just reflections of reality, since they are all they had
ever seen or heard. They would praise as clever whoever could best guess which
shadow would come next, as someone who understood the nature of the world,
and the whole of their society would depend on the shadows on the wall.
RELEASE FROM THE CAVE
Socrates next introduces something new to this scenario. Suppose that a prisoner
is freed and permitted to stand up. If someone were to show him the things that
had cast the shadows, he would not recognize them for what they were and could
not name them; he would believe the shadows on the wall to be more real than
what he sees.

"Suppose further," Socrates says, "that the man was compelled to look at the fire:
wouldn't he be struck blind and try to turn his gaze back toward the shadows, as
toward what he can see clearly and hold to be real? What if someone forcibly
dragged such a man upward, out of the cave: wouldn't the man be angry at the
one doing this to him? And if dragged all the way out into the sunlight, wouldn't
he be distressed and unable to see "even one of the things now said to be true,"
viz. the shadows on the wall?

After some time on the surface, however, Socrates suggests that the freed prisoner
would acclimate. He would see more and more things around him, until he could
look upon the Sun. He would understand that the Sun is the "source of the seasons
and the years, and is the steward of all things in the visible place, and is in a
certain way the cause of all those things he and his companions had been seeing".
RETURN TO THE CAVE
Socrates next asks Glaucon to consider the condition of this
man. "Wouldn't he remember his first home, what passed
for wisdom there, and his fellow prisoners, and consider
himself happy and them pitiable? And wouldn't he disdain
whatever honors, praises, and prizes were awarded there to
the ones who guessed best which shadows followed which?
Moreover, were he to return there, wouldn't he be rather
bad at their game, no longer being accustomed to the
darkness? Wouldn't it be said of him that he went up and
came back with his eyes corrupted, and that it's not even
worth trying to go up? And if they were somehow able to
get their hands on and kill the man who attempts to release
and lead up, wouldn't they kill him?“.
 PLATO’S CHARGES AGAINST POETRY
Plato’s first charge, and perhaps the most shocking to ancient readers,
is that, from Homer onwards, poetry has been full of lies about the
gods. The entire religious and mythological tradition stands
condemned for blasphemy. It is like someone today proposing to ban
the Bible and all reference to Biblical stories, because the Bible
presents a wrong picture of divinity. None of the stories of God’s
dealings with humankind can be true; and even if some of them were
true, they are morally unsuitable for young ears.
Yet telling false, blasphemous, immoral and passionate stories is not
the worst thing a poet can do, in Plato’s opinion. Such stories corrupt
the young by filling their minds with dangerously wrong ideas about
matters of great moment. But a more enlightened, grown-up mind,
with the aid of philosophy, may come to reject the community’s
religious narratives, as Socrates does in the Euthyphro. Stories as such
are something a rational mind can resist, question and reject. With
visual images and likenesses in sound and music, resistance is not so
easy. The manner of poetic performance is more insidious than the
content. Even the best philosophical minds are at risk.
As a moralist Plato disapproves of poetry because it is immoral, as a
philosopher he disapproves of it because it is based on falsehood.
Philosophy is better than poetry because the philosopher deals with
ideas / truth, whereas the poet deals with what appears to him / illusion.
He believed that truth of philosophy was more important than the
pleasure of poetry.
Plato’s chief interest was in philosophical investigation.
He is not a professed critic or theorist of literature and his critical
observations are occasionally delivered in some of his Dialogues
(particularly in The Phaedrus, The Ion, The Symposium) and in The
Republic.

Plato’s theory of Mimesis (imitation): The arts deal with illusion or

they are imitations of an imitation-(twice removed from reality).
He was the first who inquired into the nature of imaginative literature
and put forward theories which are both illuminating and provocative.
He was poet – dialogues full of poetic beauty (dramatic quality).
THE REPUBLIC (Book X): On the Poet’s Banishment from the Ideal City

To understand why Plato thought that poets were so dangerous it is necessary to

consider how Plato viewed the soul of man. According to him, the soul contains
three parts: the rational part (the part that gives us the ability to calculate and
reason), the appetitive part (emotions and appetites that motivate us to engage in
certain activities, such as our sex drive), and finally the "spirited" part of the
soul. Plato compares this part of our soul to a beast because it represents the
instinctive, bestial desire for survival that emerges when we are facing severe
danger. Perhaps it can be likened to the "fight or flight" response that we talk
about in modern psychology.

When thinking of these three elements of the soul, Plato believed that to be
fully human it was necessary to suppress the bestial nature and appetitive nature
of our soul and keep them under the control of the rational part of the soul.
However, poets, according to Plato, work by arousing raw emotions from deep
within us. Their talent does not lie in proving arguments, but by provoking
emotional responses that cause us to act irrationally. Because of their ability to
arouse the appetitive part of our soul, and give it more power than the rational
part, he thought they should be banished from the ideal city.
 Plato's three main objections to poetry:

Poetry is not ethical, not philosophical and not pragmatic.

1. It is not ethical because it promotes undesirable passions; poetry, like
all forms of art, appeals to the inferior part of the soul, the irrational,
emotional cowardly part. The reader of poetry is seduced into feeling
undesirable emotions. Poetry causes needless lamentation and ecstasies at
the imaginary events of sorrow and happiness.
2. It is not philosophical because it does not provide true knowledge; an
appreciation of poetry is incompatible with an appreciation of reason,
justice, and the search for Truth. It numbs the faculty of reason for the
time being, paralyses the balanced thought and encourages the weaker
part of soul constituted of the baser impulses. Hence poetry has no
healthy function, and it cannot be called good.
3. It is not pragmatic because it is inferior to the practical arts and therefore
has no educational or civic value. Plato felt that all the world's evils
derived from one source: a faulty understanding of reality.
 Aristotle

Greek Aristoteles, ancient Greek philosopher and scientist, one of the two
greatest intellectual figures produced by the Greeks (the other being Plato). He
surveyed the whole of human knowledge more than any other thinker, for he
determined the orientation and the content of Western intellectual history. He
was the author of a philosophical and scientific system that through the
centuries became the support and vehicle for both medieval Christian and
Islamic scholastic thought: until the end of the 17th century, Western culture
was Aristotelian. Even after the intellectual revolutions of centuries to follow,
Aristotelian concepts and ideas remained embedded in Western thinking.
 Aristotle’s Poetics: On the Theory
of Genres, Mimesis and Catharsis
In Writing Poetics, Aristotle sought to achieve three objectives:
1. To give advice on writing tragedy to contemporary poets;
2. To answer the objections of dramatic poetry expressed by his teacher Plato
in the “Republic”
3. To explain why effective poetry has stayed with audiences for so long.
On Art and the Genres
 In Poetics Aristotle's analysis of poetry provides for careful isolation of the specific character of poetry. In
comparing poetry to history, he states that poetry is more philosophic than history and thus of greater
intrinsic worth. The difference is attributable not to form—history written in metre is still history—but to
the fact that the historian deals with singulars (i.e., with specific events and specific personages). The poet,
on the other hand, creates types and situations that, while imitating nature, are, nonetheless, akin to
universals; that is, the poet describes what is possible as though it were both likely and necessary. Yet
Aristotle also permits the analogy of poetry to oratory as well as the consideration of the moral, political,
and educational effects of both. Tragedy, however, which is the only kind of poetry analysed in the extant
portions of Aristotle's work, is defined in terms of its form, not in terms of its purpose, as a kind of
imitation rather than as a mode of persuasion or excitation. Thus, in the famous definition of the sixth
chapter, it imitates a serious action of great magnitude in a dramatic form and accomplishes the
purification (catharsis) of the “tragic” emotions of pity and fear.
 Using this definition as the basis for the discussion of poetry, Aristotle considered poetic art in terms of the
characteristics and interrelations of the six parts, or components, of tragedy: plot, character, and thought
(the objects of imitation); diction and melody (the means of imitation); and spectacle (the manner of
imitation).
 MIMESIS
  
It is the basic theoretical principle in the creation of art. The word
is Greek and means “imitation” (though in the sense of “re-
presentation” rather than of “copying”). Plato and Aristotle spoke
of mimesis as the re-presentation of nature. According to Plato, all
artistic creation is a form of imitation: that which really exists (in
the “world of ideas”) is a type created by God; the concrete things
man perceives in his existence are shadowy representations of this
ideal type. Therefore, the painter, the tragedian, and the musician
are imitators of an imitation, twice removed from the truth.
Aristotle, speaking of tragedy, stressed the point that it was an
“imitation of an action”—that of a man falling from a higher to a
lower estate. Shakespeare, in Hamlet's speech to the actors, referred
to the purpose of playing as being “. . . to hold, as it were, the mirror
up to nature.” Thus, an artist, by skilfully selecting and presenting
his material, may purposefully seek to “imitate” the action of life.
 CATHARSIS
It is the purification or purgation of the emotions (especially pity and
fear) primarily through art. In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by
Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the
spectator. The use is derived from the medical term katharsis (Greek:
“purgation” or “purification”). Aristotle states that the purpose of
tragedy is to arouse “terror and pity” and thereby effect the catharsis of
these emotions. His exact meaning has been the subject of critical debate
over the centuries. The German dramatist and literary critic Gotthold
Lessing (1729–1781) held that catharsis converts excess emotions into
virtuous dispositions. Other critics see tragedy as a moral lesson in which
the fear and pity excited by the tragic hero's fate (his downfall due to a
tragic flaw “hamartia”) serve to warn the spectator not to similarly tempt
providence. The interpretation generally accepted is that through
experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator's own
anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification
with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged. Tragedy
then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader.
Plato judges poetry from the educational, the
philosophical and the ethical standpoints, not in terms of
its own objectives, and its own criteria of merit.
 Aristotle stands in defence of the theory of art which Plato
condemns on epistemological and ethical grounds. We cannot
fairly maintain that music is bad because it does not paint,
or that painting is bad because it does not sing. Similarly,
we cannot say that poetry is bad because it does not teach
philosophy or ethics. If poetry, philosophy and ethics had
identical functions, how could they be different subjects?
 Plato VS Aristotle
PLATO: ARISTOTLE:
Poetry presents a copy Poetry may imitate
of nature as it is. Poetry men as they are, or
better or worse.
is twice removed from
Poetry gives us an
reality --it is a ‘shadow
idealized version of
of shadows’.
reality.
Philosophy as wisdom Poetry could be
is superior to poetry as superior when turned
mimicry or a servile into a creative
copy of nature. process.
Poetry is compared to Aristotle compared it
painting. to music.
 DEFINING THE CONCEPT OF CLASSICISM

In ancient Rome, the citizens of the first rank were called classici. When
Aulus Gellius contrasted a scriptor classicus with a scriptor proletarius, the
description carried an implication of quality which is still current: we speak
of a work being a 'classic' in the sense that it is a model which deserves to
be followed. The French were using classique in this manner in the
sixteenth century but it was not until the eighteenth century in England
and France that the term 'the classics' came to mean precisely the
masterpieces of Greek and Latin literature. Since at that time a classical
education was acknowledged as the only correct training for civilized life,
such an extension of meaning is not surprising. In the history of art as in
the history of literature, classicism is an approach to the medium founded
on the imitation of Antiquity, and on the assumption of a set of values
attributed to the ancients. The continuing importance of ancient culture in
many disciplines, such as law and administration or epigraphy and poetry,
is shown in the fusing of the two senses of the word 'classic' in the term
classical tradition, which denotes the retention of, and elaboration upon,
classical values in the art of succeeding generations.
 Classicism has certain basic features in art as in literature. Its
concern is always with the ideal, in form as well as in content.
Classical artists looked back to the ideal of Antiquity as well
as to its varied styles. They were sure that art is governed by
rules which are determined by reason. Beauty, which is one
form of truth, must depend on some system of measurement
and proportion; artists working from classical models made
it their business to rediscover such a system in the works of
art and buildings of Antiquity. For the Renaissance artist,
Man, within the circle of God, is the measure of all things,
and he rules himself and his affairs by the application of
reason. Antique art, centered on the depiction of a noble
human mind in an ideal body, provides convincing models
for imitation.
 GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS
OF CLASSICISM

1. Reason

2. Proportion (order, balance, harmony)

3. Impartiality (dramatic + philosophical )
4. Restraint and moderation

5. Unity (organic wholeness)

6. Purity (of kind or genre)

7. decorum

8. Respect for Tradition: Social Convention, and Commonsense Ideology

9. Concern for Social and Moral Issues

10. Humanism “the proper study of Mankind is Man”

11. Human Limitations and Possibilities

12. Laws of Nature

 IN SUM:

Reason prevails in all provinces of thought. The

universe allows for a rational explanation as an orderly,
purposive, structured, harmonious and regular system;
Belief in reality leaves little validity to emotional or
intuitive insight. Mystery and miracle are to be therefore
dispelled;

Uniform excellence is desired in moral action, social

function, and artistic creation;

The artist should appeal to good taste, and seek to

identify the species, not individual or idiosyncratic
features, i.e., what is common to all.
 English Neoclassicism

Sir Philip Sidney: “An Apology for

Poetry”

Alexander Pope: “An Essay on Criticism”

; “An Essay on Man”
Sir Philip Sidney

An Apology for
Poetry
Four arguments against poetry:
1) poetry is a waste of time;
2) poetry is the "mother of lies";
3) poetry is the "nurse of abuse, infecting us with many pestilent desires";
and for all that
4) poetry was therefore banished from Plato's imaginary republic, so it
must be dangerous.
Four responses:
1) How can poetry be a waste of time if learning leads to virtue and
poetry is the best way to learning?
2) Poetry is outside of the realm of truth and falsehood: "for the poet,
he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth." Since the poet never
claims that he is presenting absolute truth in the first place, the
accusation of falsehood leveled at poetry is merely irrelevant.
3) The abuse of any art (or thing) should not condemn that art: poetry
is not to blame for the abuses committed against it by bad poets.
4) Plato banished "the abuse, not the thing," and by being wary of
poetry's power, Plato honored rather than condemned poetry.
More counter-arguments to restore to poetry its privileged
status:

Poetry serves a noble purpose-- poetry is better equipped to teach

right behavior than either philosophy or history. Poetry shows history
more brilliantly than history, and explains philosophy more cogently
than philosophy. Philosophy originally appeared in poetic form.

Poetry has noble roots--much of the Bible is written in poetic form.

Christ teaches by means of parables which (when compared to
unadorned didactic lectures) "more constantly . . . inhabit both the
memory and judgment.”

Comic poetry—supposedly ranking lower than other poetic forms –

holds vices up to such ridicule that no one would want to be like the
ridiculous, vice-ridden characters portrayed therein.
 Sidney draws on various sources (most notably, Plato, Aristotle,
Horace, and Scaliger) in defending poetry against the usual laundry list of
charges.

He begins by arguing that poetry may be found at all times in all

cultures. The first artists and learned men were poets. Sidney gives as
examples Musaeus, Homer, and Hesiod--three poets whose works are at
the foundations of Western culture.

Moreover, philosophy originally appeared in poetic form: Thales,

Empedocles, and Parmenides wrote natural philosophy (the forerunner
of our modern physical sciences) in verse, while Pythagoras and
Phocylides wrote moral philosophy in verse. Plato--that famous banisher
of poets and poetry--wrote using poetic devices such as metaphor,
description, and dialogue. Even historians such as Herodotus relied on
poetic techniques in writing their works.

Sidney considers the prophetic (Latin vates) and creative

(Greek poiein--to make) functions of poetry. The poet (somewhat like the
artist in Plotinus) improves upon nature: "Her world is brazen, the poets
only deliver a golden."
 Sidney follows (with some embellishment) Aristotle in
defining poetry as an "art of imitation," and he divides
this imitation into three kinds:
1) Poetry which imitates "the inconceivable excellencies
of God";
2) Poetry which deals with moral philosophy (Tyrtaeus,
Phocylides, and Cato), natural philosophy (Lucretius),
astronomical philosophy (Manilius and Pontanus), or
historical philosophy (Lucan); and
3) The "right poets" whose works "most properly do
imitate to teach and delight, and to imitate borrow
nothing of what is, hath been or shall be; but range
only reined with learned discretion into the divine
consideration of what may be, and should be."
 Sidney's primary assumption is that the end
of learning (and by extension the end/goal
of art) is virtuous action/behavior. Poetry is
better equipped to teach right behavior than
either philosophy or history. Philosophy
deals in the abstract and the universal, but
not in the particular. History deals only in
the particular, not with general principles.
Poetry deals with both, illustrating universal
principles with particular examples or
embodiments of those principles:
Compared to philosophy and history, poetry excels in
performance (both morally and artistically):
“Now doth the peerless poet perform both: for whatsoever the
philosopher saith should be done, he giveth a perfect picture
of it in someone by whom he presupposeth it was done; so as
he coupleth the general notion with the particular example.”

Another advantage poetry has over philosophy is

greater clarity:
“ the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as
the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he
teacheth them that are already taught. But the poet is the
food for the tenderest stomachs, the poet is indeed the right
popular philosopher.”
Some extracts from Sidney’s Apology for Poetry:

1. Only the poet [...] up with the vigour of his own invention,
doth grow, in effect, into another nature; in making things
either better than nature bringeth forth, or quite anew; forms
such as never were in nature, as the heroes, demi-gods,
Cyclops, chimeras, furies, and such like; so he goeth hand in
hand with Nature, not enclosed within the narrow warrant of
her gifts, but freely ranging within the zodiac of his own wit.
2. Nature never set forth the earth in so rich tapestry as
divers poets have done; neither with so pleasant rivers,
fruitful trees, sweet-smelling flowers, not whatsoever else
may make the too-much-loved earth more lovely; her world is
brazen, the poets only deliver a golden.
3. Poesy, therefore, is an art of imitation; for so Aristotle
termeth it in the word mimesis; that is to say, a representing,
counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speak metaphorically, a
speaking picture, with this end, to teach and delight.
4. Of all writers under the sun, the poet is the least liar; and
though he would, as a poet, can scarcely be a liar [...] For the
poet, he nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth.
5. So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for
whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or
war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the
poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying
it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it
pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell,
under the authority of his pen.
Alexander Pope