00034—How does Neander (a character in Dryden’s 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy') or Dryden himself defend English dramatists and plead for freedom from rigorous classical principles and practices?

Dryden in the person of Neander rises up in defence of English Dramatists and strongly pleads that English dramatists are fully justified in not slavishly accepting the classical principles in many respects.  They have developed their own principles and proved themselves to be superior to the Greek and French dramatists in many ways.

In the first place, French drama, whether comic or tragic, lacks in emotion and fashion.  English dramatists surpass them in both.  English tragedies produce fear and pity more powerfully, and their comedies excel in producing delightful humour and romantic love.

Secondly, Neander defends the vogue of tragi-comedies in English.  He does not agree with Lisideius that it is unnatural to change over from a tragic scene to a comic one or vice versa.  A scene is comprehended and enjoyed by human mind and soul, and not by human organs.  Those who object to this shifting of scenes seem to presume “the soul to be heavier than the senses.”  Furthermore, it is well known that “contraries, when placed near, set off each other.”  Neander says, “We have invented, increased, and perfected a more pleasant way of writing for the stage than was ever known to the ancients or moderns of any nation, which is tragic-comedy.

Thirdly, he defends the insertion of under-plots which highlight the main plot.  Coming to the dramatic unities of time and place, he says that their observance might adversely affect the total impact of a play.  It is unbelievable that sufficient incidents and situations may arise at a single spot within the compass of twenty-four hours only to provide sufficient material for the plot of a good play. 

Finally, coming to Shakespeare, he says, “He was the man who of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul.  He was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards and found her there.”
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00033—How does Eugenius (a character in Dryden’s 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy') defend the English dramatists of the last age?

Eugenius defends the English dramatists of the last age with a highly penetrating insight.  It is true, that the ancient Greek and Roman scholars laid down many basic principles of drama.
1.       The English authors gave due respect to them, but they adhered more to the rules of nature.  The ancients had no clear-cut concept of dividing a play into acts.

2.       The English dramatists set the vogue of dividing a play into five acts.  Most of the ancient Greek playwrights wrote their plays on highly popular episodes of Thebes or Troy on which many narrative poems, epics and plays had already been written.  Therefore the spectators found nothing new in them.  Many times they spoke out the dialogues before the actors spoke them.



3. The English dramatists wrote their plays on new and interesting themes.  In comedies the Greek as well as Roman playwrights repeated a common theme of lost children coming back to their parents as grown up gentleman and ladies after a gap of many years.  The spectators lost their interest in this often repeated theme.  The English dramatists invented new and interesting themes.  So far as the dramatic unities are concerned even the Greek authors who gave their concept, did not always observe them.  In the case of moral teaching too the ancients grossly erred.  They often presented the wicked prospering and the virtuous suffering and languishing.

4.       The English playwrights exhibited poetic justice whereby the virtuous won and the wicked lost in the end.  In all these respects the English dramatists of the last age were better than the Greek or Roman dramatists.

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00032— On what grounds does Crites (a character in Dryden’s 'Essay of Dramatic Poesy') defend the ancient Greek and Roman poets and dramatists?

Crites begins defending the ancient Greek and Roman poets and dramatists by observing at the very outset that “it is our greatest praise to have imitated them well; for we do not only build upon their foundations, but by their models.”   He goes on to say that “all the rules by which we practice the drama of this day were delivered to us from the observations which Aristotle made of those poets who either lived before him, or were his contemporaries. 

Horace’s Ars Poetica is an excellent comment on the art of poetry which our poets follow and feel honoured.  Aristotle also laid down the principles of the three dramatic unitiesthe Unities of Time, Place and Action.  By the Unity of Time he meant that the action of a play should not exceed the compass of a natural day.”   If the action is limited within this compass, it would be thought the nearest imitation of nature.”    By the Unity of Place he meant that the scene ought to be continued in the same place from the beginning to the end for the stage is “but one and the same place.”  It is unnatural to shift the action from one place to another, especially to distant places.  This will give the greatest likelihood to untruth.  By the unity of action he meant that there should be only one action, great and complete enough, to cover the whole plot.  Two or more actions should not go side by side in the play.  In this respect “both the best and the worst of the modern poets will equally instruct you to admire the ancients.” 

The ancients observed the three dramatic unities faithfully, and the Romans, the French and the English dramatists tried their best to observe them, though not always successfully.  Thus the ancients are our first law givers as well as models for the moderns to follow.


00031—Discuss the plan of Dryden's essay on dramatic poesy.

                                                                      Dryden developed a very ingenious plan for writing his Essay of Dramatic Poesy.  In 1665 great plague broke out in London.  In order to escape from the infection of the plague, many people left London and moved out to the countryside.  Dryden takes this situation and develops a plan to write a great treatise on the theory and practice of dramatic poesy.  He imagines he and his three friends sail out of London in a boat on the river Thames.  The journey is long and tedious.  Therefore in order to to avoid the boredom of the journey, the four friends decide to hold some useful discourse on the theory and practice of drama in different ages in Greece, Rome, France and England.
 
The four friends by mutual agreement decide to allot one country or one age to each of the four friends.  Thus there are four interlocutors, each taking up the defense of dramatic literature of one country or one age.  This ingenious device helps Dryden in developing historical, comparative, descriptive, and independent method of criticism.  In final conclusion, Dryden holds that ancient principles should be respected but they should not be followed slavishly.
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00030— Why is Dryden called “the Father of English Criticism?”


                      Dr.Johnson called Dryden “the father of English Criticism who first taught us to determine upon principles the merit of composition.”  Dr.Johnson was very correct in giving Dryden this honour because before him there was no consistent critic in England.  Sidney and Ben Jonson were, of course, there but they only made occassional observations without producing any consistent critical work or establishing any critical theory. 

Dryden’s principal critic work is his Essay of Dramatic Poesy, though his critical observations are also found in the prefaces to several of his works, specially in the Preface to the FablesThe Essay of Dramatic Poesy establishes him as the first historical critic, first comparative critic, first descriptive critic, and the Independent English critic.

The Essay of Dramatic Poesy is developed in the form of dialogues amongst  four interlocuters representing four different literatures or literary ages. They are:
·          
1.  CRITES  speaks for the ancient Greek and      Roman authors.  
     
2.  LISIDEIUS speaks for the French.
     
3.  EUGENIUS speaks for the English literature of the ‘last age.’ 
    
4.  NEANDER speaks for England and liberty. 

In this way he (Dryden) develops historical, comparative, and descriptive forms of criticism, and finally gives his own independent views through the replies of Neander.  He respects the ancient Greek and Roman principles but he refuses to adhere to them slavishly, specially in respect of Tragi-comedy and observance of the three Dramatic Unities.  Thus Dryden began a great regular era of criticism, and showed the way to his countrymen how to be great as creative authors as well as critical evaluators and what makes great literature.  Thus he is indeed the “Father of English Criticism.”





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00029—Analyse Ben Jonson’s observations on style. [To read the best authors/Observe the best speakers/Much exercise of one’s own style.]

      Ben Jonson              


Language and thought, according to Ben Jonson, are inseparable entities.  Language without thought is lame, and thought without language is dumb.  Language owes its life to thought.  It’s also an index of character: it ‘most shows the man.’   Style is the choice and arrangement of words to express one’s thoughts most effectively.  Ben Jonson recommends three steps to develop an effective style:

a)     To read the best authors,
b)    Observe the best speakers, and,
c)     Much exercise of one’s own style.

One should remember that the first word that comes to one’s mind is not always the best word for his purpose, nor is the first construction of the sentence or paragraph.  They must be revised and reconstructed repeatedly to arrive at the best. “So did the best writers in their beginnings; they imposed upon themselves care and industry.  They did nothing rashly.  They obtained first to write well, and then custom made it easy, and a habit.  So the sun of all is: ready writing makes not a good writing: but good writing brings on ready writing.”

Ben Jonson says that it is fit for the beginner and learner to study others and ‘the best.’  For the mind and memory are more sharply exercised in comprehending another man’s things than our own.  This is applicable to observing and learning from the best authors and best speakers.  Ben Jonson’s concept of style may be summed up in his own words thus: “Choiceness of phrase, round and clean composition of sentence, sweet falling of the clause varying an illustration by tropes and figures, weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention and design of judgement.”


Ben Jonson's concepts of good style are: 

1.choiceness of phrase,
2.round and clean composition of sentence, 
3.sweet falling of the clause,
4.varying in illustration by tropes and figures,
5.weight of matter,
6.worth of subject,
7.soundness of argument,
8.life of invention, and, 
9.depth of judgement. 
  
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00028--Discuss Ben Jonson’s attitude towards the classical theories and principles of literature.

Ben Jonson was the first classical critic of England.  He held the ancient classical theories and principles of literature as laid down by Plato, Aristotle and Horace in high esteem.  He equally loved, admired and adored the ancient Greek and Latin poets.  They were the models fit to be followed and imitated by the moderns. 

The classical models were: Homer and Virgil for epics, Virgil also for pastorals, Seneca for tragedy, Plautus and Terence for comedy, and Juvenal for Satire.  Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus were model dramatists before Shakespeare.  However, with all his respect and admiration for these ancient poets and critics, he did not undermine the genius of the English poets and dramatists.  He did not want the moderns “to rest in their sole authority, or take all upon trust from them.  For to all the observations of the ancients we have our own experience; which if we will use and apply, we have abetter means to pronounce.  It is true they opened the gates and made the way that went before us, but as guides, not commanders.  For rules are ever of less force and value than experiments.  Nothing is more ridiculous than to make an author a dictator as the schools have done Aristotle. 

Jonson’s admiration and adoration of the classics did not shut the windows of his own mind.  He admired the ancients for what they were worth.  At the same time he did not love and admire to any degree less the great english authors like Shakespear, Spenser, Bacon, Marlowe, Sidney, Donne and others.  Thus we see that Jonson’s neo-classical creed did not blind him to the purely English genius and originality of the Elizabethan authors.  He was not to any degree blind to the glories of English literature.        

00027--What’s Ben Jonson’s concept of Humours? How does he apply them in his comedies?

                                      


The term ‘humour’ as used by Ben Jonson, is based on an ancient physiological theory of four fluids found in human body.  According to this theory there are four fluids in human body which determine a man’s temperament and mental state.  These four humours are:
·         BLOOD,
·         PHLEGM,
·         CHOLER (yellow bile), and,
·         MELANCHOLY (black bile).  
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A normal man has these four humours in a balanced proportion.  But the excess of anyone of these humours makes him eccentric in one way or other.  He becomes abnormal and develops some kind of oddity in his temperament and behaviour and thus becomes an object of fun and ridicule.
 
1. The humour of blood makes a man excessively optimistic or sanguine even without the slightest chance of hope or success.

2. Phlegm makes one excessively calm and docile.

3. Choler makes one highly ill-tempered.

4. Black bile makes one excessively melancholy and morbid.
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Ben Jonson explains the theory of humours in the introduction to his play EVERY MAN IN HIS HUMOUR.


Ben Jonson’s comedies are called Comedies of Humours because the principal characters in all his comedies are victim of one humour or the other.  BOBADIL, for example, is characterised by his decorous manners, uttering improbable boasts.  ASPER in EVERYMAN OUT OF HIS HUMOUR is a harsh and pitiless judge.  DELIRO is an idolising husband consistently rebuffed by his wife.  There is a stream of satire in all Ben Jonson’s principal characters.

                                       
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00026— What qualities should a person possess, according to Ben Jonson, to become a great poet?

                                                                       


It is popularly believed that poets are born, not made.  But Ben Jonson does not subscribe to this view.  He holds that inborn talent alone would not make one a great poet unless he enriches and refines that talent with industry and practice.  Therefore, according to Ben Jonson, a person must possess or cultivate the following qualities and qualifications in order to become a great poet.  

1 ) Ben Jonson says that in the first place a poet must enrich, refine and enlighten the inborn spark of poetry in him by study, exercise, art and imitation of renowned poets.  Natural endowment must be sharpened by training and practice.  So Ben Jonson says, “First we require in our poet or maker, a goodness of natural wit.  The poet must be able by nature and instinct to pour out the treasure of his mind.”

2) Even if a poet fails to produce something great in his first attempt, he must not lose heart or patience, and try again and again.  He should not end up as a rhymer.  A rhymer and a poet are two different entities.  Art and practice would turn a rhymer into a poet. 

3) The third requisite for a great poet is his power of imitation.  According to Plato, a poet is an imitator, but he must imitate either nature or a highly talented poet.  Let him choose one great poet and imitate him.  But his imitation must not be servile and he should draw forth the best and choicest pearls from him.  

4) In the fourth place, he must develop “an exactness of study and multiplicity of reading which makes a full man.

5) And finally, he must cultivate art.  Ben Jonson sums up by saying that ‘inborn talent’ is the basic condition, but it cannot come to fruition without industry, practice and art.  
1. A poet must improve his talent by practicing.
2. He must be patient and try until he succeeds in creating genuine poetry.
3. He must have the power of imitation.
4. He must develop an exactness of study and multiplicity of reading.
5. He must cultivate art.

00025--Analyse and State Ben Jonson’s advocacy of classical principles and models.

               Ben Jonson was the first great classical English critic.  He was a strong advocate of classical principles and models in all branches of literature.  He advocated that the famous classical models should be kept in view by the English authors while writing their literary works in different genres.  He specially valued Aristotle’s precepts and noted them down in his ‘Discoveries’ for the guidance of English authors.  He earnestly wanted English literary works to be raised to the excellence of Greek and Latin works.  However he advised to avoid ‘excess’ in any case, excess in passion, excess of imagination, and excess of expression.  He was a staunch advocate of ‘discipline and order.’

Ben Jonson laid special emphasis on the UNITY OF ACTION in drama, epic or any type of long poem.  In this respect he lays down the following guide-lines for producing a powerful and unified ‘fable’ or ‘plot.’  He writes, “The fable is called the imitation of one entire and perfect action, whose parts are so joined and knit together, as nothing in the structure can be changed, or taken away, without impairing or troubling the whole.”  He further says that the Action should neither be too vast nor too small.  If the Action be too great, the audience wouldn’t be able to comprehend the whole, or if too small it wouldn’t give sufficient pleasure.  The action should not exceed the compass of one day and it should be one and entire.  The classical models are Homer for Epic, Virgil for Pastoral, Seneca for Tragedy, Plautus and Terence for Comedy, and Juvenal for Satire
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00024--An Article on Plato.


PLATO
   Ca-427-ca. 347 B.C.E.


A monumental figure in the history of Western philosophy; Plato looms nearly as large in the history of European literary theory. Indeed, for many literary scholars he marks the beginning of the tradition of literary theory, although his choice of the dialogue  format, in which historical personages convey particular arguments, suggests that the issue he raises had already been debated before he took them up-as do the extant fragments of the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers. The several dozen dialogues attributed to Plato engage almost every issue that interests philosophers: the nature of being; the question of how we come to know things; the proper ordering of human society) and the nature of justice, truth; the good, beauty, and love. Although Plato did not set out to write systematic literary theory-unlike his student ARISTOTLE, who produced a treatise on poetics-,-his consideration of philosophical issues in several of the dialogues leads him to reflect on poetry, and those reflections have often set the terms of literary debate in the West.


What binds together Plato's various discussions of poetry is a distrust of mimesis (representation or imitation). According to Plato, all art...,-including poetry-is a mimesis of nature, a copy of objects in the physical world. But those objects in the material world, according to the idealist philosophy that Plato propounds, are themselves only mutable copies of timeless universals, called Forms or Ideas. Poetry is merely a copy of a copy, leading away from the truth rather than toward it. Philosophers and literary critics ever since, from PLOTINUS in the third century C.E. to JACQUES DERRIDA in the late twentieth century, have wrestled with the terms of Plato's critique of poetry, revising it or attempting to point out inconsistencies in his argument.


Plato was born about four years after the beginning of the twenty-five-year-long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta and just after the death of the great Athenian statesman Pericles, who had overseen the city's artistic golden age. His parents both came from distinguished Athenian.families, and his stepfather, an associate of Pericles, was an active participant in the political and cultural life of fifth century Athens. Plato had two older brothers, Glaucon and Adeimantus, who appear as characters in his longest dialogue; Republic (ca. 375 B.C.E.). As a young man, growing up in a city at war and ,in constant political turmoil, he seems to have been destined for a ,political career. But after·the Peloponnesian War ended in 405, with the defeat and humiliation of Athens, the excesses of Athenian political life under the oligarchical rule (404-403) of the so-called Thirty Tyrants and under the restored democracy left Plato disillusioned with political life. The execution in 399 of Socrates, on charges of impiety and corrupting the young, was a turning point in his life. The older philosopher was a close friend of Plato's family, and Plato's writings attest to Socrates' great influence on him. Indeed, the position of Socrates in European philosophy is unique. Though he apparently never wrote a word, his influence on subsequent thought through his' followers, Plato hi particular, is incalculable. After Socrates' death Plato retired from Athenian political life and traveled for a number of years. In 388 he journeyed to Italy and Sicily, where he became the friend of Dionysius I, the ruler of Syracuse, and his brother-in-law Dion. The following year he returned to Athens, where he founded the Academy, an institution devoted to research and instruction in philosophy and the sciences; he taught there for the rest of his life. Plato envisioned the Academy as a school for statesmen where he could train a new kind of philosopher-ruler (or "guardian") according to the principles set forth in his Republic. Unlike the older sophist GORGIAS or Plato's contemporary rival Isocrates, who both taught the arts of rhetoric and persuasion, Plato focused primarily in the Academy on mathematics, logic, and philosophy. However, when Dionysius died in 367, Dion invited Plato to return to Syracuse to undertake the philosophical education of the new ruler, Dlonysius II. Plato went, perhaps with the hope of putting the theory of Republic into practice; but philosophy proved no match for local politics and Dionysius's suspicions. Indeed, a return visit resulted In Plato's brief Imprisonment; by 360 he was back at the Academy for good.


Plato is recognized as a master of the dialogue form and as one of the great prose stylists of the Greek language; His published writings; apparently all of which are preserved, consist of some twenty-six dramatic dialogues on philosophical and related themes. The central problematic posed by this form is that it becomes virtually impossible to attribute any statement directly to Plato: he never speaks in his own person. The only exceptions are a series of thirteen letters (whose authenticity is still a matter of scholarly debate) written in the last decades of Plato's life, most addressing the political situation in Syracuse. Only the seventh-and longest-letter takes up philosophical issues. For the most part, Plato places his arguments in the, mouths of characters who mayor may not be based on historical persons. The speakers can never be assumed' to be voicing Plato's own views or the views of those whose names they bear. In almost all the dialogues, Socrates is the focal character and Plato's mouthpiece, but Plato's Socrates is not the historical Socrates. These complications, which thwart efforts to fix Plato's thought within a series of propositional statements, have attracted much attention, especially from late-twentieth-century post-structuralist philosophers like Derrida.


The chronology of Plato's dialogues is highly controversial, but most scholars divide the works roughly into three periods. The earliest works, begun after 399, include the Apology of Socrates and Crito, in which Plato defends Socrates against the charges that led to his death; Gorgias, in which Socrates' opponent is the sophist Gorgias; and Ion (one of our selections), which examines poetry as a kind of divine madness. Characteristic of these early Platonic dialogues is Socrates' disarming claim of ignorance and a formal technique of cross-examination called elenchus, a method of questioning designed to lead a learner through stages of reasoning and to expose the contradictions in an opponent's original statement.  This method of "emptying out" the question by Socrates to reveal his opponents' ignorance is especially evident in his discussion of poetry with Ion, a rhapsode (professional reciter of epic poetry). The middle period, from 380 to 367, includes the Symposium, Cratylus, and Republic, all begun after the founding of the Academy; they develop the theory of Forms or Ideas anticipated in the early dialogues. The Forms constitute a realm of unchanging being to which the world of individual mutable objects is subordinate. Because the Forms are immutable, they are more real-and more true than the changeable material world. The Form of the Good enjoys a unique status, for it is responsible for the being and intelligibility of the world as a whole. Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave" in book 7 of Republic (one of our selections), a passage that has generated much interest among post-structuralist theorists, provides a memorable introduction to the Platonic theory of Forms, which is reiterated in book 10's equally well known critique of artistic imitation. Cratylus is of interest to theorists of language because the dispute in this dialogue concerns the "correctness" of names: do they point unproblematic ally to the "Nature of things"-that is, to the Forms-as Hermogenes contends, or are they merely a matter of convention, as Cratylus argues? Socrates concludes that the matter is unresolvable, but that "no one with any understanding will commit himself or the education of his soul to names, or trust them or their givers to the point of firmly stating that he knows something." To the late period (366-360) belong Timaeus, which throughout the Middle Ages was Plato's most widely known work; Critias; Sophist; and Phaedrus, the latter closing with a notorious attack on writing.


In Ion, our opening selection, Plato's Socrates engages Ion in a debate about the nature of the rhapsode's knowledge of poetry, about the nature of poetry, and about the status of knowledge itself. Poetry, Socrates maintains, is not an art; it is a form of divine madness: "the poet is an airy thing, winged and holy, and he is not able to make poetry until he becomes inspired and goes out of his mind." This debate between the claims of inspiration and those of art would subsequently have a long history in European literary criticism. Is poetry primarily a craft with a set of rules that can be taught and learned, as HORACE, GEOFFREY OF VINSAUF, and ALEXANDER POPE argue, or is it primarily the result of inspiration or genius, as LONGINUS, PLOTINUS, FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER, WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, RALPH WALDO EMERSON, and others, following Plato, have maintained?


Plato's Socrates goes a step further. Not only is poetry a form of divinely inspired madness, but so is criticism. "You are powerless to speak of Homer," he tells Ion, "on the basis of knowledge or mastery." Socrates uses the image of a magnet as a metaphor for divine inspiration: as a magnet attracts iron and passes that attraction along, so the gods inspire the artist, who inspires the interpreter, who, in turn, inspires the audience. For Plato's Socrates, the work of poet and critic is not divided between inspiration and rational analysis, as it is for most modern critics (see, for instance, MATTHEW ARNOLD and the New Critic CLEANTH BROOKS); rather, it lies on a continuum, and the work of the critic is no more rational than that of the poet, the,critic's knowledge no more truthful.


However, it is helpful when reading Plato to remember that his dialogues don't always present a straightforward argument or arrive at a single unambiguous conclusion. The process of elenchus and Socrates' persistent irony often make it difficult to pin him down to anyone position. In Ion, is Socrates making fun of the pomposity of the rhapsode, or does he seriously believe that whatever truth emerges from poetry and the interpretation of poetry results only from divine madness? On the surface, it might seem that Ion treats poetry very differently than does the later Republic, our second selection, where Plato's Socrates argues that far from being divinely inspired, poets lie and ought to be banished from the ideal republic-or, at the very least, heavily censored and kept in check. But Ion presents a view of knowledge that is consistent with the weightier arguments in Republic. However divinely inspired, Socrates argues, poets' and critics' knowledge is of a different order than, and one decidedly inferior to, the knowledge of charioteers, fishermen, or philosophers. To the modern student of literature, this denigration of the poet's learning appears downright odd. Surely the standards by which the knowledge of a charioteer or a fisherman or a mathematician would be judged are irrelevant in judging the value of poetry. Why demand that the poet "know" about horses in the same way that a horseman "knows" about horses?


To understand Socrates' remarks about knowledge, the modern reader needs to understand the centrality of poetry to Greek education. In a culture in which literacy was a relatively new and suspect technology, knowledge was frequently encoded and passed :on through the mnemonic devices of music and poetry.·The instruction provided by.the sophists and by Plato's main rival, lsocrates, was almost exclusively rhetorical and literary. Even in Republic, a book concerned with the ideal education of the guardians and citizens, Socrates divides schooling:into physical training for the body and music and poetry for the soul. Socrates' criticism of poetry and its representations appears to be directed against a culture that,believed literally "that poets know all crafts, all human affairs." In such a culture Socrates' insistence makes more sense: a poet needs to know, a horse the way a horseman knows a horse .. In his Academy, however, Plato promoted all earning whose foundation was dialectics, dialogue, and philosophical reasoning.


Both the Allegory of the Cave and Republic 10's infamous critique of mimesis explore the nature of knowledge and its proper objects. The world we perceive through the senses, Socrates argues, is illusory and deceptive. It depends on a prior realm of separately existing Forms, organized beneath the Form of Good. The realm of Forms is accessible not through the senses, as is the world of appearances, but only through rigorous philosophic discussion and thought, based on mathematical reasoning. For Plato's Socrates, measuring, counting, and weighing all bring us closer to the realm of Forms than do poetry's pale representations of nature. All' art and poetry, because they represent what is already an inferior representation of the true original (the Forms), can only lead further away from the truth, and further into a world of illusion and deception. Virtually every subsequent defense of poetry (memorable examples include those by Aristotle, SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, APHRA BEHN, and PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY) has had to come to terms with Plato's devastating attack on poetry as inferior and deceptive mimesis.


Plato's Phaedrus (from which our final selection has been taken) has been of interest
to contemporary literary theory for its discussion of the evils of writing. There Plato has Socrates relate the story of the· invention, of writing by the, Egyptian god Theuth (Thoth), who offers it to King Thamus. Thamus declines the offer, deciding that humans are better of without writing because, it substitutes an alien inscription- lifeless signs-for the ,authentic living presence of spoken. language. Far from aiding memory, writing will cause it,to atrophy. For Plato, the only good memory is anamnesis, the recollection of spiritual truths through 'genuine; living wisdom! that is, through philosophy. Plato reiterates this point in his Seventh Letter, where he says: "anyone who is seriously studying high matters will be the last to write about them and thus expose his thought to the envy and criticism of men. i.e. whenever we see a book, whether the Jaws of a legislator or a composition on any other subject, we can be sure that if the author is really serious; the book does 'not contain his best thoughts; they are stored away with the fairest of his possessions. And if, he has committed these serious thoughts to writing, it is because men, not the gods, 'have taken his wits away.' Yet Plato's use of a myth in Phaedrus to frame his philosophical objections to writing raises questions of its own, since presumably myths suffer from the same defects as the texts of the sophists, rhetoricians, poets, and other purveyors of false wisdom whom Plato criticizes elsewhere. Derrida offers a celebrated unraveling of the logic of Plato's argument against writing in his Dissemination (see below), which may be the most significant encounter between a twentieth-century philosopher and Plato.


Plato is the progenitor of Western didactic criticism and theory: the idea that literature
should serve moral and social functions.' Republic, where, he, describes an ideal well-regulated community in which the educational curriculum promotes respect for law, reason, authority, self.,discipline; and piety, has been specially influential. Although Plato's Socrates loves and regularly cites Homer's Iliad and Odyssey\ he calls for the censorship of many passages in these )works ;that ,represent sacrilegious; sentimental; unlawful, and irrational behaviour'. Above all else, he' requires that literature teach goodness and grace. Plato's relentless application of this standard to all literature marks one of the, most noteworthy beginnings of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry.

00023-- Plato's THEORY OF IDEAS (this is necessary to understand why he said ART IS TWICE REMOVED FROM REALITY. see 00001 post.)


Plato's Theory of Ideas is his most original philosophical achievement.  We can summarize it in a few definite statements.  They are:

1) Forms or Ideas are real entities. There is a world of ideas which is real.  The world we live in is the copy of that world of ideas.  When an artist does copy the nature or anything in it, his art becomes something that is twice removed from reality. 
   

2) There is a great variety of forms, including the forms of classes of things(house, dog, man etc.); of qualities(whiteness, roundness etc.) ; of relations(equality, resemblances etc.) ; of values(goodness, beauty etc.).

3) The Forms belong to a realm of abstract entities, a "heaven of ideas," separable from concrete particulars in space and time.  The separation of the forms and their exemplifications is commonly referred to as the Platonic dualism.

4) The forms are superior to particulars in degree of reality and value; the forms are the realities of which particulars are mere appearances. The form is a model or archetype of which the particular is a copy.

 5) The forms are non-mental and subsist independently of any knowing mind.



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00022— On what grounds does Sidney disapprove of tragi-comedy?

Sidney disapproves of tragi-comedy (also tragicomedy) in the strongest possible words.  A tragicomedy presents the greatest violation of the Unity of Action in a play.  A tragicomedy is neither a pure tragedy nor a pure comedy but a mongrel breed of the two.  Therefore neither the admiration nor commiseration nor right spitefulness is produced by a tragicomedy.  In the right spirit a comedy should be full of delight, and a tragedy should produce pity, fear and admiration.  A tragicomedy produces neither pure delight nor pure compassion or admiration.  A comic scene in the midst of tragic scenes, or a tragic scene in the midst of comic scenes is not fit for ‘chaste ears’.  In conclusion Sidney says, “The whole tract of a comedy should be full of delight, as the tragedy should be still maintained in a well raised admiration.”  The tragicomedy fails in both.

However, Sidney’s observations on tragicomedy are based on the plays which were available to him in his time.  Shakespeare’s plays had not yet been written.  We know that Shakespear’s  tragicomedies are artistically developed and and highly successful plays.  Had Sidney seen Shakespear’s plays, he would have revised his views on tragicomedies.

00021— Evaluate Sidney’s views on the three Dramatic Unities.


                                   Sydney               

[see 00006--The Structure of the Plot—Aristotle]


Sidney was a strong advocate of the THREE DRAMATIC UNITIES OF TIME, PLACE AND ACTION.  These three unities must be observed if a play is believed to be a true copy of life.  Sidney regretted that, none of the English plays except “Gorboduck” to some extent observed the three dramatic unities.
1)      The Unity of Time: requires that the plot or action of a play should not exceed the limit of one natural day of twenty-four hours.  If the action exceeds this limit, the play would appear to be highly unnatural.  But English dramatists have most hideously violated this unity.  The events extend for a long time period are packed in two hours space.  Nothing could be more absurd than this.

2)      The Unity of Place: requires that the action of the play should not shift frequently from one distant place top another.  The English dramatists violated the unity of place equally grossly.  “You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africa of the other, and so many other under-kingdoms, that the player must ever begin with telling where he is, or else the tale will not be conceived.”  Also the same stage has to be taken for a garden, a graveyard, a place or an island where there is a shipwreck, or a battlefield.  This is straining the imagination of the spectator to the breaking point.  This should be equally  avoided.


3)      The Unity of Action: requires that there should be no admixture of the comic and tragic scenes in the most unnatural way.  A comedy should be a comedy, and a tragedy should be a tragedy from the beginning to the end.  The tragic and comic scenes and situations should not be mixed up.  The king and clown should not be mixed up on the stage.  It is on this ground that Sidney harshly condemns the vogue of tragi-comedies coming up in English drama. 




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