domingo, 31 de julio de 2022

Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: Darwin sobre la evolución humana

En este artículo sobre teoría narrativa evolucionista releemos y comentamos algunos textos y nociones clave de la teoría de Charles Darwin, en El origen de las especies y El origen del hombre, a la luz de la sociobiología cognitiva contemporánea.

 

Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: 

Darwin sobre la evolución humana

https://doi.org/10.17613/w22w-ev03

 

Author(s):
José Angel GARCÍA LANDA (see profile)
Date:
2009
Group(s):
Anthropology, English Literature, Environmental Humanities, Narrative theory and Narratology, Philosophy
Subject(s):
Evolution (Biology), Anthropology, Narration (Rhetoric)--Psychological aspects, Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882, Prehistoric peoples, Ecology
Item Type:
Article
Tag(s):
Narrativity, narratology, charles darwin, Palaeoanthropology, Human evolution, Humanity, Sociobiology, Evolutionary narratology, Evolutionism
Permanent URL:
https://doi.org/10.17613/w22w-ev03
Abstract:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________ This is a paper in evolutionary narrative theory, in which I reread and comment some key texts and notions from Charles Darwin's Origin of Species and The Descent of Man in the light of contemporary cognitive sociobiology.
Notes:
First published 2009 (preliminary version in 'Vanity Fea' and 'Ibercampus'; revised version in SSRN (2012) DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2136181

 

 


 

 

También aquí:

 

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos." In García Landa, Vanity Fea 16 April 2009.*

         http://vanityfea.blogspot.com/2009/04/grandiosa-secuencia-de-acontecimientos.html

         2009

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos (Darwin sobre la evolución humana)." Ibercampus (Vanity Fea) 28 April 2009.*

         http://www.ibercampus.es/articulos.asp?idarticulo=14452

2013

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: Darwin sobre la evolución humana." Humanities Commons 31 July 2022.*

https://hcommons.org/deposits/item/hc:47487/

https://doi.org/10.17613/w22w-ev03

2022

 

 Versión revisada:

 

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: Darwin sobre la evolución humana ("That Grand Sequence of Events": Darwin on Human Evolution)." Social Science Research Network 29 August 2012.* DOI: 10.2139/ssrn.2136181

http://ssrn.com/abstract=2136181

2012

Human Cognition in Evolution and Development eJournal 4.32 (14 Sept. 2012).

http://hq.ssrn.com//Journals/IssueProof.cfm?abstractid=2136181&journalid=1314112&issue_number=32&volume=4&journal_type=CMBO&function=showissue

         2013

http://www.ssrn.com/link/Human-Cognition-Evolution-Development.html (29 Aug. 2012).

         2013

History of Western Philosophy eJournal 5.34 (3 Sept. 2012).*

http://hq.ssrn.com//Journals/IssueProof.cfm?abstractid=2136181&journalid=950374&issue_number=34&volume=5&journal_type=CMBO&function=showissue

2013

http://www.ssrn.com/link/History-of-Western-Philosophy.html (29 August 2012).*

2013

Philosophy of Science eJournal 5.46 (7 Sept. 2012).*

http://hq.ssrn.com//Journals/IssueProof.cfm?abstractid=2136181&journalid=950426&issue_number=46&volume=5&journal_type=CMBO&function=showissue

2013

http://www.ssrn.com/link/Philosophy-Science.html (29 Aug. 2012).*

2013

         Sociobiology eJournal 29 Aug. 2012.*

         https://www.ssrn.com/link/Sociobiology.html

         2017

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: Darwin sobre la evolución humana." Academia.edu 25 August 2012.*

         http://unizar.academia.edu/JoséAngelGarcíaLanda/Papers/1891152

         2012

_____. "Grandiosa secuencia de acontecimientos: Darwin sobre la evolución humana." ResearchGate 1 August 2013.*

         https://www.researchgate.net/publication/253236641

         2013



 —oOo—

 

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Kiss me Kate @ BBC Proms

viernes, 29 de julio de 2022

Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour ~ Truth & Lies

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MACARENA OLONA DEJA LA POLÍTICA POR "RAZONES MÉDICAS"

















Más cosas del Expediente Royuela








Acerca de "El Paraiso Perdido" de John Milton | Joan Curbet



Curbet, Joan. (U Autónoma de Barcelona). "Acerca de "El Paraiso Perdido" de John Milton." Video lecture. (John Milton: Su vida, su obra, su tiempo, 2). YouTube (Fundación Juan March) 28 July 2022.*

https://youtu.be/1hVVDEfXUPo

         2022

jueves, 28 de julio de 2022

Verdades de las buenas

 La verdad como cebolla:

Fernández Cabal, Agustín Joel. (U de Santiago de Compostela). "¿Existe la verdad?" The Conversation 27 July 2022.*

         https://theconversation.com/existe-la-verdad-187116

         2022

 

Y es cierto que a veces la verdad te hará llorar.  Le pongo este comentario al artículo:

 

La verdad es que hay muchas verdades, y que rara vez coinciden plenamente. La verdad es la coincidencia, siempre parcial y provisional, de algunas de esas verdades. Si hay mucha coincidencia, normalmente nos hallamos no ante una verdad sino ante una trivialidad, o quizá una consigna repetida (estos últimos años ha pasado mucho eso, en particular con las supuestas verdades de "la ciencia" que tampoco son únicas ni simples excepto cuando se invocan como 'shibboleths'). Una buena verdad es difícil de lograr, no evidente, y por eso normalmente no muy extendida ni compartida. Y suele imponerse como una iluminación frente a una falsedad que antes nos nublaba la vista. Y puede ser algo que descubre uno mismo, pero normalmente aparece como una revelación o desvelamiento compartido con otros. Si son muchos a repartir, empero, ya no queda casi nada. Las verdades son iluminaciones alcanzadas o compartidas, y consensos forjados. Y las verdades de unos muchas veces son falsedades o escándalos para otros, aunque sean verdades de las buenas, es decir, de las que compartimos nosotros. 

 

Qué es la verdad

 

—oOo—

Theme Time Radio Hour, Episode Five - Coffee (Bob Dylan)

Carlos Cuesta,el apocalipsis climático,una agenda letal de Sánchez contra la propiedad y la libertad

REFLEXIONES ACTUALES DE DON ALBERTO ROYUELA, SANTIAGO ROYUELA, JUAN MARTÍNEZ Y FERNANDO PRESENCIA









miércoles, 27 de julio de 2022

Bob Dylan — Shadow Kingdom

Χάρις Αλεξίου - Από το 1972 έως το 2000 (by Elias)

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Amplia comedia, cruel teatro

Creo que fue Horace Walpole el que sentenció que "el mundo es una tragedia para los que sienten, y una comedia para los que piensan." Al parecer, según nos cuenta Carlos García Gual, a Jean de La Fontaine habría que incluirlo entre estos últimos, pues sus fábulas enseñan una filosofía un tanto cínica, escéptica, desengañada e irónica en cuanto a las motivaciones humanas, o, digamos, las de los animales parlantes. El fabulista mismo parece tener pocas motivaciones al margen de esta observación irónica de los demás....

Esa despreocupación respecto a las riquezas, los honores y las obligaciones habituales de la vida fue la más notoria virtud de La Fontaine. En el mundo conflictivo y bestial que representan las fábulas de los animales parlantes, la ambición, la vanidad y el afán de venganza son los motivos constantes de la feroz lucha por la vida. Como en la Francia de su época, como en el mundillo cortesano de París, ésos son los motivos de la lucha por la vida: la ambición, la vanidad, las rivalidades que hacen de la sociedad un cruel teatro de peleas y desdichas, Eso es lo que impulsa a unos y otros en su continua refriega cotidiana y lo que trae consigo tantas desgracias y desastres. El mundo es así, y triunfar en él requiere practicar esos engaños y adecuarse a esas violencias. 

Pero quien, como nuestro fabulista, no tiene afán de medro ni lucro, quien no ambiciona ni está ávido de honores, no tiene por qué sentirse entrampado en ese juego de pasiones y astucias. Puede observar el juego desde su retiro, sin tomar partido ni recibir los golpes de unos y otros. Como se aconseja al final de la fábula de El hombre y la serpiente, una de las más amargas del repertorio, para evitar la cólera de los poderosos, el prudente sabe "hablar de lejos o bien callarse". Y quien observa así el espectáculo de la vida puede incluso divertirse con el espectáculo. "Una amplia comedia de cien actos diversos / y cuya escena es todo el universo."

 

            (Carlos García Gual, "El epicureísmo de La Fontaine y la moral de las fábulas." In García Gual, La luz de los lejanos faros: Una defensa apasionada de las humanidades. Barcelona: Planeta-Ariel, 2017. 206-19; 217).

 

—oOo—

ΧΑΡΟΥΛΑ ΑΛΕΞΙΟΥ - ΟΙ ΜΕΓΑΛΥΤΕΡΕΣ ΕΠΙΤΥΧΙΕΣ 1990 - 1999

martes, 26 de julio de 2022

Los 3 retrovisores

 

Los 3 retrovisores

El totalitarismo democrático del Estado moderno

 Dos pasajes que señalan los elementos de totalitarismo que va adquiriendo el Estado moderno, ya sea abiertamente en un régimen fascista, chino o nacional-socialista, o bien de modo "amable" y más insidioso, en las democracias liberales :

Uno de Serrano Súñer, comentando que gran parte del totalitarismo nazi o fascista no les venía necesariamente a esos regímenes de su idearios autoritarios, sino ya de por sí de su mera cualidad de estados modernos:

Ces déviations réconnues, il faut dire également qu'une grande partie des vices que l'on impute aux systèmes totalitaires et fasciestes sont propres à l'État moderne, quelque soit son caractère. Et nous les rencontrons dans l'État libéral aussi bien que dans l'État socialiste ou dans l'État autoritaire. L'État-Léviathan de Hobbes n'a pas été inventé par Hitler ou par Mussolini, et les doctrines sur l'indépendance du pouvoir politique et sur la souveraineté illimitée, base de l'étatisation sociale, furent formulées quatre siècles avant que ne se soit publié Mein Kampf. L'État totalitaire a eu la sincérité de proclamer un principe qui se trouvait impliqué dans touts les systèmes politiques depuis la Renaissance: césarisme, absolutisme, ou autre. Quand l'État, dans les régimes les plus libéraux, monopolise l'enseignement universitaire ou soumet la vie municipale à une rigide uniformité, il ne fait qu'anticiper sur la nationalisation des assurances ou des banques. Ce qui arrive, c'est que l'étatisation ou "statalisation" de la vie sociale s'est trouvée accrue sitôt que le progrès matériel a mis aux mains de l'humanité des moyens de production et de circulation des idées et des richesse[s] dont l'existence ne pouvait être soupçonée à l'époque d'initiation du libéralisme. Le libéralisme n'est que l'âge de la machine à vapeur, alors que le fascisme est celui de la radio, de la rotative, du cinématographe, de la conquête de l'air et de l'énergie atomique. Des forces physiques sont apparues, susceptibles de se convertir en forces morales, et que l'État moderne ne pouvait laisser au pouvoir des particuliers, sous peine d'être menacé dans sa propre existence.

            (Ramón Serrano Súñer, Entre les Pyrenées et Gibraltar: Notes et réflexions sur la politique espagnole depuis 1936. (Bibliothèque du Cheval Ailé). Ginebra: Constant Bourquin – Les Éditions du Cheval Ailé, 1947. (P. 303-5).


Encuentro que este pasaje resuena armónicamente con este otro de Jano García en El rebaño, su libro sobre la plandemia de control ideológico biempensante, "marxismo cultural" de mascarilla morada, y de corrección política virtuosa que nos asola con especial intensidad estos últimos años:

Algunos creen que como Gramsci aspiraba a convertir Italia en una república comunista de de corte soviético a través de la disciplina política, el orden, la organización social y la implementación de un sistema que pudiera ser infinito, la hegemonía cultural actual se centra en eso. Nada más lejos de la realidad. La hegemonía cultural opta por controlar a la población a través de luchas sociales impostadas y peligros inminentes de los que el Estado debe salvarnos, al mismo tiempo que apuesta por un sistema económico "capitalista" que, por supuesto, también pasa por la intervención estatal generando precariedad laboral, altas cargas impositivas y economías de pura supervivencia en el reino zombi que vive conectado a sus dispositivos móviles para expulsar su frustración. Una fusión que consste en que la "derecha financiera" compra el marco mental de la "izquierda antisistema" y la izquierda compra el sistema de la oligarquía derechista. ¿Acaso no le resulta curioso al lector que las conferencias contra el capitalismo estén patrocinadas por los propios bancos? ¿Por qué los antisistema occidentales consiguen obtener repercusión gracias a las subvenciones del sistema? ¿Por qué los supuestos rebeldes ocupan puestos de gran responsabilidad en el ámbito político y mediático? ¿Acaso el pensamiento alternativo real cuenta con la misma capacidad de influencia? Las respuestas son obvias.

En la nueva hegemonía, cuando un dogma queda caduco porque ya no se es capaz de anestesiar al pueblo, se sustituye por uno nuevo para que nunca falte pienso que pueda ser consumido. Encontramos un ejemplo evidente en la cuestión relativa a los homosexuales. En cuanto comenzó a aburrir a la población, el dogma fue sustituido por una larga lista de minorías para que tomaran el relevo. Es el win-win definitivo de un arsenal de cinismo, oligopolios, capitalismo subvencionado, cortoplacismo político y destrucción de los valores que auparon a Occidente. Te doy el problema y también la solución.

La hegemonía cultural dominante promueve la alogocracia presentando una visión maniquea de opresores/oprimidos, de buenos/malos, solidarios/insolidarios, redefine la democracia a su antojo utilizándola como coartada para la imposición, inventa una neolengua que se transmite con facilidad para determinar los límites de pensamiento, promueve las entidades colectivas sobre el individuo, la deconstrucción del viejo mundo y, por supuesto, la utilización de dogmas que sean fácilmente defendibles desde una perspectiva puramente emocional y no racional. Adriano Erriguel (o quien se esconde tras su nombre) recurre con acertado criterio a la obra La producción de la ideología dominante de los sociólogos Luc Boltanski y Pierre Bo[u]rdieu, que señalaban:

La filosofía social de la fracción dominante de la clase domannte ya no se presenta como defensora, sino como crítica frente al estado existente de cosas, lo que le permite acusar de conservadurismo a todos los que se resisten al cambio. El poder ya no teme la crítica; por el contrario, la moviliza: hay que cambiar constantemente —o parecer que se cambia— en todos los órdenes de la vida. (Adriano Erriguel, Pensar lo que más les duele, Madrid: Homo Legens, 2021, p. 130).

Y eso hace exactamente la alogocracia bajo la hegemonía cultural actual. Transformándose o, en ocasiones, haciendo como que se transforma, consigue mantener la agitación política y neutralizar los verdaderos riesgos que podrían poner en peligro su poder, que no es otro que la movilización ciudadana de forma masiva. El individuo libre, designado como el gran enemigo, se halla rodeado de colectivos que se adueñan de la vida social y económica, convirtiendo cualquer reclamación de mayor libertad en una amenaza para la sociedad. así, ya no se trata de luchar contra el Estado o los poderes económicos, sino contra esos individuos libres a los que se debe silenciar acusándolos de realizar actos micromachistas, racistas, negacionistas y sexistas en su vida cotidiana. De esta forma, seguro que siempre quedará alguien que falta por ser reeducado y justificará el sistema establecido. Abordaremos en el capítulo dedicado al feminismo, otro de los grandes fenómenos que se utiliza para mantener viva la hegemonía cultural, cómo se hace pasar la excepción como norma. Los dogmas son removidos sin interrupción, a través del hecho aislado para transferir un sensación de peligro inminente que permita garantizar la continuidad del mensaje y su hipervisibilidad.

La hegemonía cultural preponderante expide certificados oficiales de moralidad y dignidad. No importa si tus actos contradicen tus palabras, si has sido agraciado con un certificado oficial podrás retyorcer el discurso la cantidad de las veces que consideres oportunas porrque la verdad es la que indica el mainstream. Bajo esta hegemonía pudes clamar por el respeto de todas las culturas al mismo tiempo que criminalizas la cultura occidental; señalar que no se debe juzgar a las personas por su raza o sexo, pero considerar peligrosos a los hombres blancos; menospreciar a la clase política pero, a su vez, pedir mayor presencia del Estado; insultar a los católicos mientras defiendes las prácticas del islam radical; exigir respeto por la elección de cada individuo, pero querer imponer a todo un país una moral; rasgarte las vestiduras por la libertad de expresión y dos días más tarde exigir la censura de aquellos que no comparten tu punto de vista. Esta lista de incongruencias es propia de la alogocracia que responde a la política de la cancelación. Todo es respetable, excepto si no piensas como yo. Se trata de seducir para posteriormente imponer, sustituyendo la racionalidad por un moralismo de bajo nivel que pueda ser com prendido por todos los segmentos sociales.

        (Jano García, El rebaño: Cómo Occidente ha sucumbido a la tiranía ideológica. Madrid: Espasa, 2021. 5ª ed. 2022)

                                                            —oOo—




      

 

 

 

 

Staline et l'impérialisme Russe selon Serrano Súñer

 

Staline est le génie qui a su pousser jusqu'au terme de son destin messianique le peuple russe. L'U.R.S.S. a été et n'est avant tout qu'un vaste impérialisme, depuis son origine même, ou peu s'en faut. Le marxisme, avec tous ses ressorts mystiques et économiques, lui a servi à établir l'unité politique du pays, que les Tzars ne surent point créer par l'autocratie et la religion. Contre l'incapacité de la démocratie de Kerensky, le communisme russe a triomphé, en contradiction flagrante avec les canons fixés par Marx, sans que se soient posées aucunes des conditions ou des circonstances qu'il avait prévues, car, la Russie étant, au dernier temps des Tzars, le pays industriellement le plus arriéré d'Europe, le phénomène de la concentration ouvrière ne s'y était encore produit. D'une culture inférieure, en possession d'une technique rudimentaire, le peuple, comme un immense troupeau, paissait les vastes zones inarticulées de la Russie. Deux guerres perdues — la russo-japonaise et la première mondiale — la corruption et le favoritisme autour de la médiocrité des politiciens patronnés para la tzarine, furent les facteurs qui permirent à une minorité audacieuse et convaincue, dirigée par un homme qui savait ce qu'il voulait — Lénine — de monter à l'assaut du pouvoir, en étouffant l'anarchie démocratique et le doctrinarisme creux d'un Kerenski.  Mais, si Lénine était sincèrement, intégralement et fanatiquement marxiste, son réalisme le porta bien vite, par-dessus les utopies, sur les sentiers que lui ouvraient son instinct d'animal reévolutionnaire et son sens du gouvernement. De là l'essai et l'établissement de la nouvelle économie (la Nep), saluée, avec un optimisme hâtif, par le capitalisme occidental comme une rectification de la trajectoire communiste, pendant que lui la qualifiait simplement de saut en arrière, pour en mieux faire deux en avant, car il n'entendait point renoncer à son idéal. A sa mort, la lutte entre Trotsky, le plus intellectuel et le plus brillant des hommes de la Révolution, et Staline, le camarade vaillante et obscur de la minorité, se résoud en faveur de ce dernier, qui implante la plus inflexible des dictatutres; et c'en est fait désormais de l'idéalisme. L'unique finalité devient le pouvoir et l'expansion.

 

Serrano Suñer, Ramón. Entre les Pyrenées et Gibraltar: Notes et réflexions sur la politique espagnole depuis 1936. Traduit de l'espagnol par un ami de l'auteur. (Bibliothèque du Cheval Ailé). Geneva: Constant Bourquin – Les Éditions du Cheval Ailé, 1947.* (Cover: Entre les Pyrenées et Gibraltar: Dix ans de politique espagnole. Par Serrano Suñer – Ancien ministre des Affaires étrangères d'Espagne) - p. 330.


—oOo—

 

Oops I Did It Again

 

Oops I Did It Again

🔴#ENVIVO/EL MUNDO AL ROJO:publican los nombres de los funcionarios a sueldo de la metamafia de Mena

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Me citan en Kurdistán

 

Me alegro de que esté la cosa más tranquila por allí, que hasta tengan tiempo de leer mis viejos escritos desperdigados por las redes. Peores cosas han visto en Kurdistán.


Omar, Ameen Abdulqader, and Drakhsan Ali Baker (both Dpt. of Kurdish Language, School of Languages, U of Duhok, Kurdistan region, Iraq). " بەرجەستەبوونا تەکنیک و ئاماژەیێن میتا ڤەگێرانێ د رۆمانێن مرۆڤێ بەلەچەک و رەشکۆ دا"  ("Embodiment of Meta-Translation Techniques and Meta-Translation Signs in the novels of Marw Balechek and Rashko") The Journal of Duhok University 25.1 (2022): Section Humanities and Social Science.*

         https://doi.org/10.26682/hjuod.2022.25.1.14

         https://journal.uod.ac/index.php/uodjournal/article/view/1575

         2022

         Online at Academia.*

         https://www.academia.edu/92557305

         2022

 

 

 

 Lo citado son estas Notes on Metafiction.

 

 

 

—oOo—

DIRECTO CON ÁLVARO ARTEAGA, DENUNCIANTE DEL EXP. ROYUELA REPRESALIADO POR EL JUEZ GADEA

martes, 19 de julio de 2022

Bill Evans Greatest Ballads - The Ultimate Bill Evans Playlist

Salmanticensis

Me citan, o citaban, en este artículo sobre representación y ficción de la Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca. Lo citado es mi libro sobre Acción, Relato, Discurso, que también fue publicado en Salamanca, no en la Pontificia.

 

 

García Jalón de la Lama, Santiago. (Chair of Hebrew Philology, U Pontificia de  Salamanca). "Literatura e historia." Salmanticensis 52 (2005): 421-47.  Online at the Internet Archive.* (Mimesis).

         https://web.archive.org/web/20200322084305/https://summa.upsa.es/high.raw?id=0000029748&name=00000001.original.pdf

         2022

 

—oOo—

En la Tormenta Perfecta por negar la realidad

 

Hors-saison

Hors-saison

Una reivindicación del Alzamiento Nacional del 18 de julio

 

lunes, 18 de julio de 2022

Bob Dylan — 28 June, 1984 / Barcelona

LOS NOMBRES DE LOS FUNCIONARIOS A SUELDO DE LA ORGANIZACIÓN NARCOTERRORISTA

Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour ~ The Bible



Dylan, Bob, et al. "Bob Dylan, Theme Time Radio Hour ~ The Bible." (Theme Time Radio Hour, with your host, Bob Dylan, Episode 19, 6 Sept. 2006). YouTube (nightly moth) 2 Dec. 2020.*

https://youtu.be/7EmsUT_Dbns

         2022

 

—oOo—

Eliane, in memoriam

Con Eliane

🔴 La FASCINANTE HISTORIA del Hijo de BIDEN

Playa n Cangas

 

Playa n Cangas

⚫ Lo que DEBES SABER de las Piedras más Famosas🔥 más allá de los Cuentos

domingo, 17 de julio de 2022

Bob Dylan at Salt Lake City

 

Narratología y Complejidad

Me envía John Pier su artículo sobre Complejidad:

"Complexité / Complexity." Réseau des narratologues francophones - Glossaire du RéNaF 10 July 2022.*

         https://wp.unil.ch/narratologie/2022/07/complexite-complexity/


Que aparce en este blog de narratología, uno de los muy pocos que hay:

Réseau des Narratologues Francophones – Pôle de Narratologie Transmédiale. (R. Baroni).*

https://wp.unil.ch/narratologie/

2022

Por cierto, entre las publicaciones de la bibliografía aparece este libro, al que contribuí con un capítulo, "In Hindsight", una de mis últimas publicaciones internacionales:

Grishakova, Marina & Maria Poulaki, eds. Narrative Complexity: Cognition, Embodiment, Evolution, Lincoln, University of Nebraska Press, 2019.

Una anécdota. Dando fin a la redacción de este capítulo, en el patio interior de la cafetería El Jardín, de Bueu, noté en directo cómo mi cerebro tocaba techo como un cohete de feria en la bóveda cósmica de la complejidad, y descendía, ya sin combustible intelectual, apagado y echando humo negro, hacia ocupaciones más a ras de tierra.

 

—oOo—

 

Vox sobre la prohibición la prostitución

Domingo Villar in memoriam (2)

Domingo Villar in memoriam




_______

No es el de Villar el único asesinato que ha habido en la novela negra:







sábado, 16 de julio de 2022

KATY BALBER, EX RESPONSABLE DE ATENCIÓN A AFILIADOS DE VOX CÁDIZ

Tesis norteamericana sobre enseñanza del teatro donde me citan

 Tesis norteamericana sobre enseñanza del teatro donde me citan:

Broomer, Ramona. "Meeting Myself as a Scholarly Practitioner: A Self-Study Exploring the Process of Integrating Instructional Technology into Introductory Theater Courses." Ph.D. diss. Duquesne University, 2021. Online.*

https://dsc.duq.edu/etd/1964

         2022


SNA 16/7/22

 

Covid – Breve historia de una histeria

GRAN SEMANA DE VOX QUE ESTÁ A 4 PUNTOS DEL PSOE

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viernes, 15 de julio de 2022

English Criticism, 1900-1950: Notes from René Wellek's 'History of Modern Criticism 1750-1950'

Notes from René Wellek's A History of Modern Criticism: 11750-1950. Vol. 5. English Criticism, 1900-1950 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1986). Handwritten notes taken by José Angel García Landa, c. 1995.

Preface to vols. 5&6

vii- Minimal interchange in the 20th century. The Americans and English are ignored (by Continental European critics). But Marx and Freud influence them, even if "actual literary critics from the Continent remained virtually unknown." Except Croce for Spingarn and Collingwood. Contacts between England and America are close, with interchange of scholars. But criticism develop quite separately: Bloomsbury group vs. leftists and muckrakers.

 

Introduction to volumes 5 and 6. Method and scope

xvi- History without a thesis is impossible (vs. Crane and Saintsbury). Cf. Hegel's history of philosophy, vs. previous doxographies: for Hegel, "the history of a subject depends closly on the concept one has of the subject".

xvii- Criticism is an isolatable subject (vs. Croce & Auerbach); "criticism is any discourse on litrature. It is thus closely circumscribed by its theme." A causal conception of ideology is not applicable, as an element of freedom remains; 

xviii- a work is the necessary condition of another, but does not cause it. There is a seamless relationship between criticism and related activities: aesthetics, literature, etc.

xix- But criticism is bracketable. There are persistent questions all through the history of criticism, which have to be thought anew always. 

xx- We need to assume that an understanding of previous ages is possible (with Dilthey, etc.). "We have to find a way of thinking of an internal history of criticism."

xxi- The History of Criticism is not the same as cultural history; it does not merely place critics as representatives of a period or a trend; it has a point of view.

xxii- An evolutionary history of criticism is impossible. But Wellek opposes Kuhn's paradigms: an Aristotelian model replaced by Kan & Herder and then by Eliot...? Wellek rejects this incommensurability. There is a continuity, a growing core of agreement.


1 - SYMBOLISM IN ENGLISH

W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

1- Yeats developed a Symbolist theory of his own. A weird system of the world, but a striking unity in his theory of poetry.

2- Romantic definition of art as "a traditional statement of a certain heroic and religious truths, passed on from age to age, modified by individual genius but never abandones." Cf. The Celtic Twilight (1893), folk traditions, vs. England and industrialism.

3- —and vs. the "muddy torrent of shallow realism" (Yeats). He edits Blake and tries to make sense of his symbolism. "Art is not a 'a criticism of life' but a 'revelation of hidden life'." He moves between Neoplatonism, Emerson, and Jung. Or: "our minds giving a little, creating or revealing for a moment what I must call a supernatural artist"; macrocosm mirrored in the microcosm of the poet's minor creation. 

4- The poet as a priest celebrating a ritual. Yeats's symbolism is at times apocalyptic. He is little literested in criticism of resources, and is often vague. "A symbol is indeed the only possible expression of some invisible essence", inherent or arbitrary and emotional / intellectual (contemporaries are hopelessly intellectual); he opposes allegory. 

5- Are symbols created or discovered? This is ambiguous. Sometimes a humbler assumption: the symbol as an invocation or suggestion. 

6- Three levels: suggestion, arbitrary construction, and genuine symbolism as vision. He bridges the gap between the sensuous and the spiritual. 

7- Art turns from the mirror to the lamp (Yeat's expression). He favours impersonality, and opposes plot and naturalistic scenery; pro lyricism, vs. comedy and  character types. Yeats: "tragedy is passion alone, and rejecting character it gets form from motives, from the wandering of passion, while comedy is the clash of character."

8-11: Yeats embraces extreemes and finds they are compatible. A Hegelian, pro unity of being in traditional cultures, forfeited by modern civilization, Specialization of man as a deterioration. Literature is gounded on Freedom, God, Immortality. The fading of these leads to the fading of literature. 

12- Yeats never fully accepted modernism; he is anchored in an earlier conception of poetry.



Arthur Symons (1865-1945)

13- The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1900), an influential book but not high criticism.Poetry is always symbolist, but today consciously so. 

14-15: "Symbolism  is  'a revolt against exteriority, against rhetoric, against a materialistic tradition'"; it is "an endeavor to disengage the ultimate essence, the soul, of whatever exists." It is "a kind of religion." There are omissions, errors.... Symons uses few critical tools, and often surrenders the critical task: it is impossible to analyze a good poem. At first he was pro "decadence" as "an intense self-consciousness". Yeats converted him to symbolism, and learnt about the French in turn. Symons is OK as a critic of English poetry (The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, 1909). 

16- He values the "visionary" aspect of Romanticism and (not seeing any contradiction) "art for art's sake";

17- "the book is the last prominent display of metaphorical criticism dominated by a concept of poetry as the intense moment." (Wellek opposes impressionism). Symons's later criticism is scrappy and marred by pathological obscurantist obsessions.


George Moore (1852-1933)

18- Impressions and Opinions (1891); Moore knew the Symbolists before Symons. Sketchy and poorly informed.

19- "An Irishman must fly from ireland if he would be himself" (Hail and Farewell), but he participated in the Irish literary renaissance. Criticism in his late works. Pro pure poetry, as poetry free from thought, ideas, morality, propaganda: it is free from personal emotion, a poetry of things and not of feelings. "The poet creates outside of his own personality". Vs. blighting, the subjective taint. (An Anthology of Pure Poetry, 1924). "Moore wants not descriptions but images, pictorial clarity, the visual world he was seeking as a novelist and critic of novels." 

20- From Zola he turned to Balzac and Turgenev. Avowals & Conversation in Ebury Street, critical dialogues.Violent prejudices and contradictions, easy dismissals.

21- Vs. Fielding, but pro Sterne; vs. Thackeray, pro Dickens, in spite of his 'waste'. Vs. Charloter Brontë 6 Hardy, vs. James, "lost in trifles."

22- Moore is insensitive to what smacks of romanticism. Impressionistic, he trusts only his sensibility. Criticism is only "the story of the critic's soul" (Confessions of a Young Man, 1888; 367-8).



2. ACADEMIC CRITICS

23- "In the early twentieth century criticism found a home in the universities", differentiating itself from journalism. The 'man of letters' who combines both of them disappears. Academic criticism already in Blair and Wharton. "But none of the important critics of the early nineteenth century taught in the university." Arnold becam Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1857. The teaching of literature expands through the 19th c.,

24- but "the teaching of English literature either meant antiquarian factual literary history . . . or was an unsystematic, often preachy or gusty commentary on men and books." "Oxford and Cambridge hold out longest." John Churton Collins pro divorcingh literature and philology, and vs. the upholders of classical education: hope in imitating their methods and standards.


Walter Raleigh (1861-1922) and Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944)

Q-C and Raleigh pro appreciation and praise, vs. technical scholarship. They created a type. Vs. pedantry and novelty. "Walter Raleigh's Letters reveal a crudity of feeling and expression one would not have expected from the erstwhile aesthete who wrote a precious little book on Style (1899). Ashamed of being a critic. Coarse and flippant judgements. Amateurishness, but learning (e.g. The English Novel, 1894). Milton (1900) finds him of the devil's party; Wordsworth (1903) is "a true visionary", etc. Shakespeare (1987) stresses Sh's irony and detachment.

Quiller-Couch is gentler but he shares Raleigh' distaste for criticism. Vs. "all general definitions and theories" (On the Art of Writing 18), vs. German scholarship, vs. Croce and Spingarn; "All critical discernment, or taste, is relative" (Studies in Literature, 1919, 22, 29; 3:208). "No book can mean the same to any two men" (SL 3:211). Vague ideas of poetry approaching to the Platonic harmony of nature, etc.

28- They set a tone, but are of little critical worth. At least they are tolerant. Their influence waned in front of I.A. Richards.


A.C. Bradley (1851-1935)

Shakespearean Tragedy (1904), great and influential (except in the 30s); Leavis vs. Bradley. Bradley is indebted to Hegel and other Germans, e.g. Freytag. German discussion of the tragic was unknown at the time in England. England was Aristotelian (catharsis); 

29 - Schelling  "was the first to break with this tradition and to look for the tragic in the dialectic of freedom and necessity." Bradley a monist: the finite is a partial manifestation of the infinite; metaphysics informs his aesthetics. Evil is inevitable (an attempt at isolating finitude) since all part is an imperfect image of the whole. "Tragedy is an image of the world drama . . . a defense of the world order." A collision of forces, of the tragic hero vs. the order of the universe; ultimately he perishes. "We feel that this spirit, even in the error and defeat, rises sublimely into ideal union with the power that overwhelms it" (Bradley, Oxford Lectures on Poetry, 1909: 292);

30- "mere passive suffering cannot be tragic"; the hero must be responsible, free. "Pure chance would destroy tragedy"; madness too, Bradley favours a "strict connection between act and consequence." The hero need not be moral, but sublime, he becomes infinite. Catastrophe as a mysterious justice. He diminishes death as unimportant, the world is all spirit (idealism). Souls vs. the infinite —> character.

32- Bradley on reconstructing hidden aspects in character (cf. Stanislavski); OK, but he sometimes confuses art and life; ridiculed in L. C. Knights's malicious How Many Children Had Lady Macbeth? (1933). Bradley does rather "whimsical mental experiments,

33- . . .  rhetorical devices to make us realize the different characters and situations more clearly." He is not unaware of the stage, as is often argued.

34- "Still, Bradley does belong, after all, to the tribe of Lamb, who would rather read Shakespeare than hear him performed." He accepts, though, things effective on state but not necessarily for the plot, unperceived inconsistencies, etc. He emphasized he criticized from the tragic point of view, not the psychological one. He was the first to appreciate the 'spatial' qualities of Shakespeare's plays (G. Wilson Knight). His interest is wider than character: imagery, language... A poetry of life ("Poetry for Poetry's Sake"); he refutes in advance these accusations. 

Empson (verbal interest) agrees with Bradley's emphasis on the need of coherence of character and action; interest in motivation, not merely metaphor. Bradley does not seek a "spatial pattern" like G. Wilson Knight. He defines tragedy as "a story of exceptional calamity leading to the death of a man in high estate" (Shakespearean Tragedy 11-12); analysis using Aristotle through "Freytag's streamlined modernization."

36- "On the whole B. was wary of finding symbolism and allegory in Shakespeare." He is more interested in "a description of the presumed emotional reaction of the audience, which, when Bradley seems uncertain of its universality, is stated often bluntly as his own personal reaction."

38- Shakespeare's blemishes are (as Samuel Johnson found) unimportant. Tragic emotions are "stirred only when such beauty or nobility of character is displayed as commands unreserved admiration or love; or when, in default of this, the forces which move the agents, and the conflicts which result from these forces, attain terrifying and overwhelming power." Shakespare was unable to dethrone Falstaff: "There is truth in this." Lear's cosmic pessimism is causeed by reasons "outside the dramatic nexus"; —an aesthetic flaw? No, there is redemption at the end ("vs. Kott").  "Religion denies that real life  . . . is the whole and final truth; and this is just whant poetry, which asserts nothing, nevertheless suggests (Bradley, The Uses of Poetry, 1912).

30- Bradley pro the infinite suggestion of poetry; tragedy "forces the mystery on us." Touching infinity —> importance of Wordsworth as a mystic, sublime and visionary. Visionary feeling as "The intimation of something illimitable, over-arching or breaking into the customary 'reality' . . . At its touch the soul, suddenly conscious of its own infinity, melts in rapture into the infinite being" (134).

Wordsworth equivalent to Hegel in his treatment of infinity (in fact with the idealists). Nature is not the mere "outward world" in Wordsworth and Sheleey. Bradley opposes Arnold in this respect. Romanticism as "the great ideal movement" parallel to German philosophy (both are the roots of Bradley). 

The stated ambition of Bradley's criticism is to make us share the author's imaginative conception of his work [equivalent to intention? JAGL]. Bradley raises what Wellek calls "the most burning question of recent criticism: is there or is there not a correct interpretation? There are, indubitably, many incorrect ones." 

Bradley influenced Middleton Murry's Keats and Shakespeare, 1925.

 

Elton, Ker, Grierson and Garrod

Ranging from 1855 to 1960. 

Elton (1861-1945), "The Meaning of Literary History"; Modern Studies (1907). Pro comparative literature and international knowledge. Criticism as a fine art, "like friendship". Vs. analysis of impersonal forces. 

A Survey of English Literature (1730-1880), 1912-32. Expository, OK. Emphatic, unabashed comparisons between writers. 

44- "a tempered, subdued romantic, basically Victorian taste". He notes the ebb and decadence of English literature after praising the "intensely ethical, exalted and didactic temper" of the Victorian age. The English Muse (1935), A Sheaf of Papers (1922), Essays and Addresses (1939). 

In "The Nature of Literary Criticism" he argues the independence of all works, "inner harmony" as the only canon of value, but he admits "a harmony between discords". Pro ranks and values in literature, and pro "defining once more the virtue of the classics."

Ker

45- Epic and Romance (1896), Teutonic epic vs. Romance romance. Ways of telling, feudal vs. courtly. Also an idealized theorist.

46- "On the Philosophy of Art" (1883). Art is an end in itself, creates independent and inexhaustible objects, which remain indifferent to change and history.  Ker assumes nevertheless a Hegelian succession of periods. Art is historic, but alive forever. Elsewhere:

46-47- "Art and literature are living things which assert themselves against the historian and cannot be made into a mere matter of narrative" (of a methodological literary history). Wellek: "This view has not, to my mind, been refuted." 

47- Ker: "The poem as an individual thing is all form; and what is not form is not poetry" —Crocean, but he recognizes the need for a history of forms. The study of literature is a compromise between emphasizing the work or its belonging to a school. "He remained a historian in spite of his ambition to become a critic . .  . Ker did not develop any analytical tools to satisfy his own ambition" of studying the work itself; "he could not emancipate himself from the basically eclectic, indiscriminately tolerant Victorian taste, its basic historicism." 

 

Grierson (1866-1960)

He edited the metaphysicals, he sees in them a "peculiar blend of passion and thought, feeling and ratiocination" (Eliot reviewed him in his essay on 'The Metaphysical Poets'). He deals above all in the history of ideas. Critical History of English Poetry (with J. C. Smith, 1946) is bad, with an unfair estimate of the moderns. Wellek: "Bad poetry is bad poetry as great poetry is great poetry, whatever its age and whatever our particular sensibility" (Wellek vs. literary history).

 

Garrod (1878-1960)

A Raleighian, his criterion is liking, vs. transcendental questions. But rigorous in textual scholarship. He also appreciates organic unity in the work, and the verdict of ages as proof of genius.

52- Garrod favours an eclectic approach, accepts all methods, and opposes criticism as the self-expression of the critic. He emphasizes the communal participation in art and criticism. Garrod: "The public acts the play, and in a sense it writes it." He thinks of poetry as atemporal. He accepts universality (and he dismisses Jane Austen as narrow); vs. "realism"; but: poetry shows the object in its individuality—he can't decide on a final answer. 


3 - THE BLOOMSBURY GROUP

55- Vanessa and Virginia Stephen, Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, J.M. Keynes, Lytton Strachey, Desmond MacCarthy, E.M. Forster, Vita Sackville-West. Basis: G. F. Moore's Principia Ethica: "by far the most valuable things which we know or can imagine are certain states of consciousness, which many be roughly described as the pleasure of human intercourse, and the enjoyment of beautiful objects." Timeless states of contemplation, aesthetic approach to life. But also social compromise and individual emancipation.

56- Vs. scientism. Vs. anti-romanticism, A& vs. impersonality and moralism"; a "cliquish self-conscious superiority", but separate figures.

Roger Fry (1866-1934) and Clive Bell (1881-1964)

Fry: View of art as communication, a communal product, but subjective reaction. Art is in the main self-contained and has internal principles of development. 

57- Art has no connection with morals or sex. He advocated post-Impressionism, "constantly argued for the rejection of both realistic and impressionistic art, accpeting even the logical conclusion in abstact or non-representational art." Frye: "All the essential aesthetic quality has to do with pure form"; "as poetry becomes more intense the content is entirely remade by the form and has no separate value at all." Special art-emotion exists, but no pure art: "The aesthetic emotion has greater value in highly complicated components than in the pure state." Frye educated the public in the new art, and developed a new vocabulary for painting (from Wölfflin) - Vision and Design, 1920.

58- Bell (Art, 1913) had greater impact; invents "significant form" —Not form that means something beyond formal relations, points to a reality, expresses or conveys an emotion—rather mere aesthetic exaltation—Vs. representation. We become aware of the universal in the particular. Vs. historicism. Art is appreciated in itself, emphasis on the present moment. Opposed by Shaw.

Lytton Strachey (1880-1932)

Biographies; Eminent Victorians (1918). As a critic, after Pater; tolerant historicism, skeptical of theory, neoclassical in spirit. Landmarks in French Art (1912) , pro 18th-c. in England and France; he accepts the conventions of the couplet, or of Restoration comedy, as preconditions. —"In vacuo" - praises Boswell's absurdity as the condition of his consummate art. Pro detachment in critic, "the antithesis of the bestial". He introduces the stock market image in literature (rising and falling reputations, etc.). He recognizes several critical sttandards; too tolerant for Wellek: "Strachey is thinking in therms of a history of sentiment (...) His criticism can be thought of as the exemplification of such a historical scheme."

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

65-66-  Impressionist? No: Personal, metaphorical and whimsical criticism, but a Moorean realist, rather aims at grasping an object. Although she thinks criticism must share "the excitement, the adventure, the turmoil of creation". In favour of poet-critics, but nevertheless assigns a limited and even humble mission to criticism, it teaches how to read. 

67- Pro interest in works apart from their author. Art is rooted in its age even if it transcends it. Vs. Art pour l'art. Woolf on the readers of Sidney's Arcadia: "Each has to read differently, with the insight and the blindness of his own generation. Our reading will be equally partial"; "Writing is a method of communication" - "To know whom to write for is to know how to write" (Woolf). Alliance between writers and readers.

68- Woolf "Sketches a story of the economic support of English literautre" but "She is rather concerned with the writer's declared or implied attitude to his reader." Obscurity is seen as despising the public. She shows different reactions to the same work But Wellek argues that "There is ... a structure of determination which prevents arbitrariness." Woolf rejects judging a novelist with simple morality.

69- "She wants to master the 'perspective', understand 'how the novelist orders his world'"—his "vision." Sidney has forgotten his relationship to his characters in Arcadia, who speaks.

70- On Sterne: obsessed with his own mind, not an analyst of other people (the simple, eccentric, erratic); Woolf: "In no other book are the characters so closely dependent on the author. In no other book are the writer and the reader so involved together." 

71- Woolf is warm to Jane Austen in spite of her narrowness and her fear of passion; cool to Scott, critical of George Eliot and Meredith. George Eliot's heroines "bring out the worst in her, lead her into difficult places, make her self-conscious, didactic and occasionally vulgar" (Woolf). She underrates George Eliot and overrates Emily Bronte's mysticism.

73- (Wellek is impatient with her metaphorical criticism): "She forgives all the shortcomings and failures of Hardy, 'the greatest tragic writer among English novelists." Similar sympathy for Conrad. Woolf has a preference for the universally human, for the power of generalizing, for characters who have

74- "something symbolical about them which is common to us all"; "Imagination is at its freest when it is most generalized." (Cf. Johnson and Wordsworth). Moore and Gissing write only about themselves. On James she is curiously divided: "The horror of The Turn of the Screw is tame and conventional" (Woolf); in Maisie, characters live in a vacuum. She appreciates his rendering of the past and his sanity, but he is "vulgar, a snob, an American". 

75- But she admires him for his design (not for plot or character); "She seems to be describing her own procedures". She rejects Bennett, Wells and Galsworthy, encumbered by "bushels of fact" (she overshoots her mark); Vs. their conventional use of conventions & conventional characters; she advocates a new novel.

76- "Virginia Woolf proclaims the end of realism and phophesies the age of a novel of sensibility." She is not satisfied with Dorothy Richardson; we are inside another mind, OK, but "distressingly near the surface ... never, or only for a tantalizing second, in the reality which underlies these appearances." 

77- Woolf: "We read Mr. Lawrence as one reads Mr. Bennett—for the facts and for the story"; but actually he disturbed her, "Rapture of physical being" is OK, but Lawrence is too moralistic; Woolf pro ridding art of preaching. Joyce's Ulysses: a failure, diffuse, tricky, stunty, pretentious, egotistic. 

78- Woolf eventually thought that the new novel had failed to keep its promise. She classifies novelists: 'Truth-tellers', 'Character-mongers', 'Poets', 'Psychologists', 'Romantics', 'Satirists and Fantasists'. Inevitability of mimesis: balance between "the power of bringing us into close touch with life" and "style, arrangement, construction." She does not care for the term 'form'—pro "emotion" and "process of reading." 

79- —> the containing principle she calls "art." This balance is at the root of many of her critical judgements of novelists. On Forster's Aspects of the Novel: He neglects language, distrusts beauty. Fiction is parasitic from life... His concepts are too traditional. Woolf: "If the English critic were less domestic, less assiduous to protect the rights of what it pleases him to call life, the novelist might be bolder too. He must cut adrift from the eternal tea-table ... The story mighw wobble, the plot might crumble; ruin might seize upon the characters. The novel, in short, might become a work of art" (The Moment and Other Essays). But she insists on coherence—no ambiguity—one type of reality—> but see her own fiction! Another criterion: the contrast of national types and traditions; she is acutely aware of the class character of 19th-c. fiction. 

80- Remedy vs. the limits of English fiction: the Russian novel—large, sane, sincere and profound ("The Russian Point of Viw")—She is unfair to the English, unreal about the Russians; sweeping generalizations; she is best on the criticism of particular Russian authors. 

81- Turgenev, for Woolf, wrote and rewrote to clear the truth of the unessential, But Dostoesky would say that everything matters. Pro Turgenev's fiction organized around one central Character. She defends inconclusive endings in Chekhov. 

Male vs. Female is another source of preoccupation for Woolf—& the condition of women writers.

82- Sometimes she wants a femininet literature, or attackes the "sentence made by men" as pompous. On Dorothy Richardson: "She has invented, or, if she has not invented, developed and applied to her own use a sentence which we might call the psychological sentence of the feminine gender." But ultimately Woolf can contradict herself and say "a writer has no sex", a writer does not lay stress on sex, or that stress upon the sex of a writer is irritating and superflous. Like Coleridge, she favours the androgynous mind. 

She is mainly interested in the novel and in biography. Rhyme is "childish" and dishonest. "Modern poetry shirks contest with life and is absorbed by the self"—pro poets going out of themselves. Modern poetry is vulgar, coarse, ugly, and obscure.

83- "Again and again she voices her preference for the novel and the drama because they require the writer to enter into other people's minds." Advice to critics, too: "Do not dictate to your author; try to become him. Be his fellow-worker and accomplice." There are no laws in art, no conventions. Vs. moral criticis: pro Lamb, Pater... "The essay should give pleasure", no facts, no dogmas. Some fierce attachment to an idea as backbone. 

84- As in Coleridge, the critic must seem to bring to light what was there beforehand, not imposing anything extraneous. Criticism is not creation but "an interpretation."

Not an important contribution—but she singles out her author and stamps his personality-


E.M. Forster (1879-1970)

Aspects of the Novel (1927), Abinger Harvest (1936), Two Cheers for Democracy (1951).

85- He upholds aestheticism even more extremely than the rest at Bloomsbury.  "I believe in art for art's sake ... A work of art—whatever else it may be—is a self-contained entity, with a life of its own imposed on it by its creator. It has internal order. It may have external form." "A poem points to nothing but to itself." Self-supportive universe, expressly contrasted to the disorder of society. Criticism's aim: 1st, to consider the object in itself; 2nd, in its relations (cf. in phenomenology: the work of art vs. the art object). He unnecessarily rejects the historicity of the work of art in Aspects. Pro seeing literature beyond time (Eliot). Lif in time is inferior to life in values, etc. A preference for space in the simple geographical sense—uncritical, irrelevant view. On his "aspects": 

86- "He loosely mixes an analysis of the strata of a novel with an attempt at a typology of the novel." He minimizes story and plot; interested above all in characters (his best pages), our knowledge, and the illusion of power. "Forster's metaphor of 'flat' versus 'round' has deservedly become established as a fortunate formulation" (Huxley before him). He endorses James's 'exit author', though half-heartedly; for Wellek it is not clear why a writer can't speak about his characters. 

Forster is oddly silent on language, and gives and unsatisfactory typology of novels. Disappointing, though occasionally OK. He appreciates Woolf: she and Joyce are the only innovators on form; and sympathizes with her rejection of naturalis. 

88- "Ultimately we must conclude that Forster, in spite of the apparent advocacy of 'art for art's sake', applies standards of realism to literature and to his own novels. He cannot get away from them as a novelist." Woolf is "a poet" for him, but did not wholly avoid the pitfall of aestheticism, boring to read... "a central deficiency of Forster's criticism, his refusal to think clearly about the creative process, the status of the work of art and its function." "As a good empiricist he disparages theory and criticism. Aesthetic theories are 'beds of Procrustes'." Forster: "The claim of criticism to take us to the heart of the Arts must be disallowed." Criticism is not creation. Forster gestures towards love or affection as standards of criticism—or 'bouncing'! He is enclosed in the tradition of the critical realist, he is narrower and has less force than Lytton Strachey or Virginia Woolf.


Desmond MacCarthy (1878-1952)

Criticism (1932). 

89- "the most conservative critic of the group." Arnoldian, moralistic; the aim of the writer is to "create or suggest a rational coherent ideal" of life. Pro Santayana. Critic as a "creature without a spiritual home" (Sainte-Beuve); his "first obligation is to permit himself to be absorbed in the vision of a writer" (MacCarthy). The psychology of the reader is a part of the critic's subject: the critic must replace the historical perspective, etc. Even impreessionism is accepted at times—making us feel what he felt. MacCarthy vs. Leslie Stephen as "the least aesthetic" of critics. "But in most of his writings, MacCarthy is himself a moralist who judges from an ideal of a sane but somewhat gloomy and disillusioned view of life." Pro Proust, who attempts to turn aesthetic into religious experience; "probably a vain hope" (MacCarthy). MacCarthy rejects obscurity, mysticism and Catholicism. Vs. irrationalism and experiment in Modernism. 

90- D.H. Lawrence is "a religious prophet who was mistaken for a pornographer"—but his mysticism is nonsense to those who believe in civilization for the sake of sanity (i.e. MacCarthy himself). There is some truth in Lawrence's criticism of modern civilization, though. MacCarthy vs. psychoanalysis, vs. stream-of-consciousness, etc. Virginia Woolf is criticized as impressionistic. Joyce is a prodigious talent but also "a frightened enslaved mind. Much of Ulysses is cold, nasty, small and over-serious" (MacC). Stream-of-consciousness is a new convention, artificial as any other. Vs. G. Stein, vs. "patterns of words" like coloured pebbles—pro what makes literature valuable to man. 

MacCarthy is vague on poetry: he can't discuss technique. He uses comparison to achieve his effects—one writer vs. another. As a theatre critic, Ibsen and Chekhov are best for him: realism and symbolisml 

91- "poetry can help us do one thing which religion helps us to do, to live life spirtually, that is, intelligently and disinterestedly" —but it is not a complete substitue. 

MacCarthy is a minor, appealing figure.


4. THE NEW ROMANTICS

92- John Middleton Murry, D.H. Lawrence and G. Wilson Knight "restore romantic or at least irrationalist attitudes which are still with us today."


John Middleton Murry (1889-1957)



 

 

 

To be continued

 

 

 

 

 


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