Final Paper(s) - Andrea P. - EN 385 - May 5, 2005

Question Two:
Formalist critics are interested in text in relation to itself. They view the work as an isolated aesthetic object, and critique the strategies and the frameworks that make it up. In their view, each work of literature has a central, focal point. From there, the rest of the story or narrative or et cetera builds. Thence, from its very nature, as more details get added, the structure of the text gets stronger – if the adding is done well. If even one element is placed or stated improperly, the entire text falls apart, in other words is “bad literature.” Perhaps mid-20th century critic Cleanth Brooks states the Formal Critic’s criteria more clearly; he says the strength of a poem, for example “is like that of the arch: the very forces which are calculated to drag the stones to the ground actually provide the principle of support …. In which thrust and counterthrust become the means of stability (p760).” Anything added to the work after the initial idea is proposed modifies or changes the idea, nothing is superfluous. The initial point, the “keystone,” supports the meaning of the rest of the entire work.
Robert Penn Warren had similar ideas. Similar to Brooks’ “keystone” idea, Warren says, “Poetry arises from a recalcitrant and contradictory context; and finally involves that context (p983).” The text as a whole is built from around one central idea, supported and enshrined by pertinent details. However, his writing is tinted by urgency. The industrial revolution has taken its toll, and Science is everywhere. He feels that if poets do not make an effort to engage the reader by employing plot devices, the entire practice will fall to the evils of Scientific Discourse. He states, “A poem, to be good, must earn itself. It is a motion toward a point of rest, but if it is not a resisted motion, it is motion of no consequence (p991).” Each poem that is “good literature” is in balance as far as the main idea to its supporting context, each piece holding up the “keystone” idea as well as supporting the ones around it. Although the central idea is key, if any of the other ideas are removed, the text will still fall apart.
John Crowe Ransom doesn’t like Scientific Discourse either. He states that although both scientists and Platonic Poets (writers of the poetry of ideas) can see ideas, the things themselves in their essences, but only the Platonic Poet can see the “thingness” of a thing, “the things are constant in the sense that the ideas are never emancipated from the necessity of referring back to them as their origninal…. They are not altered or diminished no matter which ideas may take off from them as a point of departure (p875).” The Platonic Poet can build his or her “arch” from around their keystone idea, building worlds of metaphor and meaning around it, but the scientist is stuck with merely the idea.
From there, we have the ideas of Victor Shklovsky. To him also modern life has gone too far. To perpetuate the metaphor used by the other three writers, we have remembered the arch, but forgotten the keystone. The only way to remember it is to make the monotonous habitualized things of daily life unfamiliar and new again. To do this would make it so that “one may recover the sensation of life; [art] exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony…. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object (p720).” We must modify the forms of our poems so that we again see the arch as a whole, not the single pieces.
These Formalist critics attempt to show readers that, to them, the purpose of reading is to appreciate the beauty of art in relation to itself and all its pieces. Art is formulaic, starting with one main idea and growing concentrically from there. Modern Science is endangering this practice by pulling out pieces of the arch and focusing on only one piece, ruining the entire structure. The solution is to modify the old formula so that it makes the old new again, unfamiliar. They want us to look at the arch not only from the front, but also from the bottom, the back side, the diagonal, and the top.

Answering Question Three:
What is at stake in ethical criticism? Why do we even need to pursue the discipline? Perhaps Anahad O’Connor has the answer. In his article Brain Senses the Pain of Someone Else’s ‘Ouch!’ he describes a study in which one half of a married couple was hooked to brain imaging apparatus, while the other to a small device, which emitted electric shocks. As it turned out, empathy is not entirely emotional, “as people watched their companions suffer, their brains appeared to recreate the unpleasant experience, in effect allowing them to feel their partners pain.” Reading literature allows us to become intimately involved with the characters residing between the pages. If we are to allow ourselves to feel as they feel, we must first know if the moral precepts set forth by the text are worth assimilating into our ethical standards. In other words, we have to decide if what we are reading is (to put it simply) “good,” or “bad.” There must be a standard by which to mark the quality of reading we are undertaking, and the degree to which we should accept it.
This being said, how to determine what is “good for us?” There are many ways of answering this question, and the biggest difference from one to another is what the school of thought prizes as the most important moral element of a literary work. For Feminist critics, according to Annette Kolodny, “What is at stake was not so much literature or criticism as such, but the historical, social, and ethical consequences of women’s participation in, or exclusion from, either enterprise (Richter 1388).” Their primary objective was merely to be recognized as legitimate writers, readers, and critics of literature. As Virginia Woolf put it, “The world did not say to her as it said to them [classic writers of the time], Write if you choose; it makes no difference to me. The world said with a guffaw, Write? What’s the good of your writing (Richter 553)?” Women, half the population of the world, were not taken seriously. The answer to the question “is this good for us” was a resounding “no” until the points of view of both genders were allowed to be exposed and examined and valued. Then, only after equity had been reached, could other questions be asked of the text.
Unfortunately not all ethical schools of thought have such clear answers to their primary questions. For example, Ethical critics’ most important question deals with the literary works themselves. In other words, if a text contradicts moral conventions of the time, should it be allowed to be read? Is there ever a time when censorship is acceptable? A prime example was Douglass Howard, an English teacher who came across a derogatory word in a class reading. Should he read the entire quote in the name of freedom of speech and risk deeply offending students, or skip over the word and censor the work of a revered author? As, Howard put it; the answer was “what was right for me and what I could live with (p 2).” Perhaps some of his class members had the morals of their times so deeply ingrained into their thought processes, they could not lift themselves above them and see the quality of a literary work as a whole. Although maybe the answer to the question at stake was ‘yes’ for Howard in his personal life, in his scholastic life, the answer was ‘no,’ to respect those in whom popular ethics were too deeply ingrained. The answer to the Ethical critics’ question, it seems is “it depends.”
Although both types of literary criticism approach the question from different angles, both seek to answer the question “is this literature good?” Their desired destination is the same, to be able to judge the value of absorbing a literary work into their moral and ethical standards, whether or not to allow the work to become a part of them.