The Poetic of World Literature

1. F.L. Lucas argues that poetics, a philosophical treatment of the nature and elements of literary
representation, could have emerged only in ancient Greece because among all the people in the
ancient world, The Greeks alone had the intellectual curiosity and capability to raise questions.
2. If poetics is to address the infinitely vast body of literature in all the world’s languages and cultures,
but David Damrosch has offered a more manageable, though still daunting, concept that includes “all
literary works that circulate beyond their culture of origin, either in translation or in their language”
(Damrosch 2003:4).
3. We may define the poetics of world literature as a set fundamental questions about the nature,
qualities , values, and components of literature so understood, rather than a infinite, ungraspable
conglomeration of all the critical views inn the world’s different traditional.
4. As world poetics, it must cross over national and regional boundaries. As Earl Miner points out in
pioneer work, “to consider (poetics) of but one cultural tradition is to investigate only a single
conceptual cosmos, however intricate, subtle, or rich that may be. To consider the other varieties of
poetics is by definition to inquire into the full heterocosmic range of literature” (Miner 1990:7).
5. From the comparative and global perspective, then it is worth nothing that, despite its central
importance in the Western critical tradition. Aristotle’s poetics as Stephen Halliwell reminds us in
ancient or medieval Europe. For Europe, the poetics of the Stagirite was a “rediscovery” during the
Renaissance in the late sixteenth century. The poetics was studied by Arabic scholars notably Abu al-
Walid Muhammad Ibn Ahmad Ibn Rushd (1126-98), known in the West as Avverroes. His commentary
on the Poetics offers an opportunity to open up Aristotle’s workto other, rather different traditions.
6. Aristotle sees poetry as arising naturally from the human instinct of mimesis, which “distinguishes
them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all. It is through mimesis that he develops his
earliest understanding” (Aristotle 1995: 8).
7. Poetry as an arts of mimesis can be analyzed in logical terms, but an earlier concept of poetic
inspiration emphasizes the irrational, even “mad” and certainly unconscious dimensions of poetic
creation.
8. The poem is that to which what is intently on the mind goes. In the mind it is “being intent”;
coming out in language, it is a poem. The affections are stirred within and take on form in words. If
words alone are inadequate, we speak them out in sighs. If sighing is inadequate, we sing them. If
singing inadequate, unconsciously out hands dance them and our feet tap them. (Owen 1992: 40-41)
9. Poetry does not arise from imitation of an external action, but issues forth as the expression of
one’s inner thoughts and emotions. The term “intent” can be understood in different ways as James J.
Y. Liu notes, “those critics who understood it as ‘heart’s wish’ or ‘emotional purport’ developing
expressive theories and those who understood it as ‘mind’s intent’ or moral purpose often combining
the expressive concept with the pragmatic”.
10. In literary creation, any emphasis in the unconscious must be balanced by conscious effort and
this acknowledged almost without exception in all critical traditions.
11. The creative, inspirational, and mysterious dimension needs to be supplemented by the critical,
logical, and interpretive dimension. Poetic genius must be supplemented by learning and hard work.
12. The natural gift of a poetic genius, often symbolized by the mythological Pegasus, always needs
grooming, diligent study and learning, in order to bring out its full potential to real power.
13. Genius is an individual talent and it needs to be balanced by the richness of a literary tradition.
When T. S. Elliot declares in “Tradition and the Individual Talent” that “No poet, no artist of any art,
has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to
the dead poets and artists”. (Elliot 1975: 38)
14. Literature is here seen as almost an impersonal institution, but it is of course also the collected
body of works by individual authors. How to balance the genius and tradition, the unique quality of
individual talent and the exemplariness of the classics, all these are again important questions in
world poetics.