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1
 M.E.G.-5
Literary Criticism and Theory
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Answer all questions.

Q. 1. Discuss Aristotle’s view of literature as imitation.
Ans. Though Plato did not appreciate poetry, but his disciple Aristotle had a great respect for poets, and tragic poets in
specific. For him tragic poetry was greater than even that of the epic. Aristotle modified the existing order about the poetry to
form his own perception about it and in that perception Homer and Hesiod were at the top. Aristotle puts his idea in a very logical
manner to redefine the case of the theater; he also argued that that tragedy is the most sublime of all the genres. What we need to
look at is the contribution of Aristotle in revealing the tragic performance and by extension the theatre as a complete art, the art
which not only consists of dialogues, characters and plot, but also the elements of spectacle of music and dance. In fact it would
be unjustified to say that he considered tragedy higher than epic, because tragedy has all these elements. As he says, “…because
it has all the epic elements - it may even use the epic metre - with music and spectacular (visual) effects as important accessories
and these produce the most vivid pleasure”.
(Poetics XXVI : 4)
It has often been considered that we do not have much access to Aristotelian view on other forms of art like comedy, as the
extant text of Poetics is not complete. But we still have the opening where in Aristotle talks about the overall view of art.
Considering the mimetic representation and theatrical practice we can say that whatever applies to tragedy also must go smoothly
with comedy and satyr.
In Poetics, Aristotle starts by praising the method of mimesis a representation of art. He then talks about the rhythm,
language and harmony and how they are responsible to make an artistic representation possible. Aristotle claims that all forms of
art like epic poetry, tragedy, comedy, dithyrambic poetry, flute or lyre playing are all the modes of mimesis. But in all these cases
the mimesis is achieved in different manner.
Aristotle says that all the mediums of mimesis are manifested in the six elements of tragedy, which are: Myth or plot; ethos
or the character; dianoia or argument; lexis or diction; melopiia or music; and opsis or visual spectacle. All these elements of the
tragedy can also be found in comedy and other forms, as we will see later.
Aristotle states that all human actions are mimetic and that men learn through imitation. In particular, ‘mimesis’ is the
distinguishing quality of an artist. He argues that ‘public classifies all those who write in meter as poets and completely misses the
point that the capacity to produce an imitation is the essential quality of the poet’. The poet is distinguished from the rest of
mankind with the ‘essential ability to produce imitation’. A poet may imitate in one of three styles in poetry; he may use pure
narrative, in which he speaks in his own person without imitation, as in the dithyrambs, or he may use mimetic narrative and

2
speaks in the person of his characters, as in comedy and tragedy. A poet may use mixed narrative, in which he speaks now in his
own person and now in the person of his character, as in epic poetry. Mimetic poetry may also differ according to the object of
imitation. In this respect, tragedy differs from comedy in that it makes its characters better rather than worse.
‘Mimesis’, particularly, becomes a central term when Aristotle discusses the nature and function of art. In the Poetics, he
defines tragedy as: ‘as an imitation of human action that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished
with every kind of artistic ornament, the various kinds being found in different parts of the play; it represents man in action rather
than using narrative, through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotion’.
Aristotle is interested in the form of imitation and goes on to consider plot, character, diction, thought, spectacle and song as
constituting elements of a typical tragedy. The action of plot must be complete in itself with a proper beginning, middle and an
end. All parts of action must be equally essential to the whole. Each part of the tragedy is imitation itself. Character in tragedy
imitates the action of noble man who has to be a man of some social standing and personal reputation, but he has to be presented
us in terms of his weaknesses because it is his weakness that will make his fall believable. Aristotle thinks that all types of art are
mimetic but each may differ in the manner, means, and object of imitation. Music imitates in sound and rhythm, painting in colour
and poetry in action and word.
Aristotle’s ‘mimesis’ does not refer to the imitation of Idea and appearances, like that of Plato. He argues that each area of
knowledge is imitation in the sense that as a human being we all learn through imitation. However, he carefully makes a distinction
between different kinds of knowledge. For instance, he claims that art and philosophy deal with different kind of truth; philosophy
deals with concrete and absolute truth, whereas art deals with aesthetic and universal truth. The difference, for instance, between
mimetic poetry and history is stated as ‘one writes about what has actually happened, while the other deals with what might
happen’. Art, unlike science, doesn’t abstract universal form but imitates the form of individual things and unites the separate
parts presenting what is universal and particular. Therefore, the function of poetry is not to portray what has happened, but to
portray what may have happened in accord with the principle of probability and necessity. Since poetry deals with universal truth,
history considers only particular facts; poetry is more philosophical and deserves more serious attention. In addition, aesthetic
representation of reality is not technical, factual, philosophical, and historical.
Aristotle compares aesthetic process (mimesis) with the process that takes place in nature. While nature moves through
internal principles, art moves through organic principles like plot, action, characters, diction, and there is a unity among them. In
a sense, art imitates nature and the deficiencies of nature are supplemented in the process of imitation, and art follows the same
method, as nature would have employed. Thus, ‘if a house were natural product, it would pass through the same stages that in fact
it passes through when it is produced by art, they would move along the same lines the natural process actually takes’. Poets, like
nature, are capable of creating matter and form. The origin of nature is nature itself and the origin of art is the artist and the
defining characteristic of the artist is the ability to create, through imitation, as nature does. The artist constructs the plot as an
organizing principle, character constitutes the relation and carries on the action and style gives pleasure.
Mimesis, as Aristotle takes it, is an active aesthetic process. He argues that ‘imitation is given us by nature and men are
endowed with these gifts, gradually develop them and finally create the art of poetry’. The poet does not imitate reality, but brings
reality into existence through ‘mimesis’. The poet recreates and reorganizes already known facts and presents them in a fresh and
attractive way; therefore, though audiences know the story of Sophocles’s Oedipus, they go and watch it. The reality as presented
to us through ‘mimesis’ is superior and universal not only because we are pleased to learn through imitation but also because such
reality is better. Homer, for instance, depicts Achilles not only as a bad character but also depicts his goodness. Mimesis is thus,
copying and changing. The poet creates something that previously did not exist and for which there are no available models.
Even in dealing with historical materials, the poet needs to fashion it in accord with his art rising to a higher-level than is found
in reality. Art is fictitious but the mimetic and aesthetic nature of art pervades the fictitious deviation and a work of art forces the
thing to appear as something more beautiful and better than that nature and human being possess in common, ‘for it is always
writer’s duty to make world better’.
Q. 2. What do Wordsworth and Coleridge have to say on poetic diction.
Ans. It has been generally supposed that Wordsworth’s theory of poetic language is merely a reaction against, and a criticism of,
‘the Pseudo Classical’ theory of poetic diction. But such a view is partially true. His first impulse was less a revolt against pseudo
classical diction, “than a desire to find a suitable language for the new territory of human life which he was conquering for poetic
treatment”. His aim was to deal in his poetry with rustic and humble life and to advocate simplicity of theme. Moreover, he believed
that the poet is essentially a man speaking to men and so he must use such a language as is used by men. The pseudo-classics

3
advocated that the language of poetry is different form the language of prose while Wordsworth believes that there is no essential
difference between them. The poet can communicate best in the language which is really used by men. He condemns the artificial
language. Thus William Wordsworth prefers the language really used by common men.
Wordsworth’s purpose, as he tells in the Preface was, “to choose incidents and situations from common life”, and quite
naturally, he also intended to use, “a selection of language, really used by men”. He was to deal with humble and rustic life and
so he should also use the language of the rustics, farmers, shepherds who were to be the subjects of his poetry. The language of
these men was to be used but it was to be purified of all that is painful or disgusting, vulgar and coarse in that language. He was
to use the language of real men because the aim of a poet is to give pleasure and such language without selection will cause
disgust.
Wordsworth was primarily a poet who had to become a critic by necessity. The new experiment which he had made in the
Lyrical Ballads (1798) called forth a systematic defense of the theory upon which the poems were written.
Wordsworth protested against the traditions and usages set up by the pseudo-classical school during the 18th century. His
views about the language which was to be employed in poetry raised a storm of protest against him even by such a close friend
as Coleridge. He said that there could be no essential difference between the language poetry and that of prose. By expounding
his theory Wordsworth did nothing wrong. He simply emphasized the use of a simpler language well within the reach of the
cottagers and shepherds about whom he was composing his poems. Poetry was now coming out of the narrow groves of town life
and was embracing the life of nature and humanity in its simplest and most unsophisticated forms. Wordsworth rightly felt that
for the new poetry of the new age, a new language was needed. What he earnestly felt, he expressed in the second Preface to the
Lyrical Ballads:
“The principal object proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and relate or
describe them throughout as-far-as this was possible in a selection of language really used by men…”
When we examine Wordsworth’s statement regarding poetic diction, the following facts clearly catch our attention:
1. The language of poetry should be the language “really used by men”, but it should be a selection of such language. All
the words used by the people cannot be employed in poetry. Only some selected words which are used in common
parlance can serve the purpose of poetry.
2. It should be the language of men in a state of vivid sensation. It means that the language used by people in a state of
animation can form the language of poetry.
3. It should have a certain colouring of imagination. The poet should give the colour of his imagination to the language
employed by him in poetic composition.
4. There is no essential difference between the words used in prose and in metrical composition. Words of prose and
poetry are not clearly demarcated, so that words which can be used in prose can find place in poetry and vice versa.
“What Wordsworth means is that the words used in conversation, if they are properly selected, would provide the rough
framework of the language of poetry? When the poet is truly inspired, his imagination will enable him to select from the
language really used by men.”
These are the four basic principles of Wordsworth’s theory of poetic diction. Wordsworth followed the main tenets of his
theory in some of his poems, but it became pretty difficult for him to stick strictly to his theory when he came to such splendid
poems as ‘Tintern Abbey’ or ‘Ode on the Intimations of Immortality’ etc.
Though Wordsworth and Coleridge had been joint authors of the Lyrical Ballads, Coleridge differed from Wordsworth on
some fundamental points. He wanted to clarify his own position. Seventeen years after the publication of the Preface, he took up
Wordsworth’s theory and analyzed it part by part in his Biographia Literaria.
Coleridge wanted to correct Wordsworth’s views about the language of poetry being “the real language of men in a state of
vivid sensation” and also about the suitability of “the incidents of common life”.
As to the falseness and artificiality of much of the neoclassical verse, Coleridge was in complete agreement with Wordsworth.
But he would not accept Wordsworth’s theory that the ideal language of poetry is ‘the natural conversation of men under the
influence of natural feeling’. He is of the opinion that only on the ground of differing from the language of real life a poem cannot
be condemned. Nor could he accept Wordsworth’s contention that ‘there neither is, nor can be, any essential difference between
the language of prose and metrical composition’. He says that this rule may be applicable only to certain classes of poetry and it
need not be practiced as a rule.
Wordsworth said he chose rustic life, ‘because in that condition the essential passions of the heart find a better soil, in which
they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plain and more emphatic language’. To disprove this belief of
Wordsworth, Coleridge remarks that there is nothing extraordinarily fascinating in the characters introduced by Wordsworth in

4
his own poems. These characters appeal to us not because they are rustics, but because they are what Aristotle called, idealized
beings. They are persons of a known class, and their manners and sentiments are the natural product of circumstances common
to that class.
Turning more closely to Wordsworth’s statement that ‘the language too of these men is adopted because such men hourly
communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in
society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the action of social vanity, they convey their
feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions’. Coleridge remarks that ‘a rustic language, purified from all
provincialism and grossness, and reconstructed to be made consistent with the rules of grammar will not differ from the language
of any other man of common sense.’ Thus he denied Wordsworth’s main assertion that a special virtue lies in the language of
those who are in close touch with nature.
He also shows his disagreement with Wordsworth’s assertion ‘that from the objects with which the rustic hourly communicates
the best part of language is formed.’ His first objection to this statement is that the uneducated rustic “would furnish a very scanty
vocabulary”. Secondly, he denies that the words and their combinations, derived from the objects with which the rustic is familiar,
can be justly said to form the best part of language. “The best part of human language”, Coleridge emphatically says, “is derived
from reflection on the acts of the mind itself. It is formed by a voluntary appropriation of fixed symbols to internal acts, to
processes and results of imagination, the greater part of which have no place in the consciousness of uneducated man; though in
civilized society by imitation and passive remembrance of what they hear from their religious instructors and superiors, the most
uneducated share in the harvest which they never sowed or reaped.”
Coleridge further says that the language praised so much by Wordsworth varies from locality to locality owing to various
influences. He then attacks Wordsworth’s conception that words would come out of these simple rustics in their moments of
natural passion spontaneously. Actually the expression depends on the general truths, conceptions and images and words already
stored in mind. Giving illustrations from Wordsworth’s own poems, he disproves Wordsworth’s assertion that he was using the
language of the rustics.
He goes to challenge the last important assertion of Wordsworth, “there neither is nor can be any essential difference
between the language of prose and metrical composition”. He argues that prose itself differs and ought to differ from the language
of conversation just like reading ought to differ from talking. There exist a still greater difference between the order of words
used in a poetic composition and that used in prose, unless Wordsworth had only meant words, and not the style of using them.
Q. 3. Write short notes on the following:
(a) Catharsis
Ans. Catharsis in Greek can mean purification. While purging something means getting rid of it, purifying something means
getting rid of the worse or baser parts of it. It is possible that tragedy purifies the feelings themselves of fear and pity. These arise
in us in crude ways, attached to all sorts of objects. Perhaps the poet educates our sensibilities, our powers to feel and be moved,
by refining them and attaching them to less easily discernible objects. There is a line in The Wasteland, “I will show you fear in
a handful of dust.” Alfred Hitchcock once made us all feel a little shudder when we took showers. The poetic imagination is
limited only by its skill, and can turn any object into a focus for any feeling. Some people turn to poetry to find delicious and
exquisite new ways to feel old feelings, and consider themselves to enter in that way into a purified state. It has been argued that
this sort of thing is what tragedy and the tragic pleasure are all about, but it doesn’t match up with my experience. Sophocles does
make me fear and pity human knowledge when I watch the Oedipus Tyrannus, but this is not a refinement of those feelings but a
discovery that they belong to a surprising object. Sophocles is not training my feelings, but using them to show me something
worthy of wonder.
The definition of tragedy in the Poetics includes the clause ‘effecting through pity and fear the purification (Katharsis) of
such emotions’; and it is clear from the Politics that catharsis is accompanied by pleasure. So it might well seem that a pleasure
derived from a catharsis of pity and fear is a promising candidate for a characteristic pleasure which comes from pity and fear.
But since Aristotle provides no further explicit elucidation in the extent Poetics, while the Politics (on Aristotle’s own admission)
gives a brief account that needs to be supplemented from the ‘clearer’ explanation in the Poetics, it is notoriously difficult to
know what is meant by catharsis. Fortunately, we do not have to solve all the problems to make sufficient progress for the
question in hand–though the reader should bear in mind in what follows that there is no such thing as an uncontroversial statement
about catharsis.

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 In the Politics Aristotle links catharsis with healing and with relief. This makes it plausible (though by no means universally
accepted) that catharsis involves some kind of therapeutic or restorative process. If so, the pleasure of catharsis is easily accounted
for, since a process of restoration to a natural state is pleasurable. According to the Rhetoric, pleasure may be defined as a
perceptible movement to a natural state. However, according to the more careful analyses in the Ethics restorative processes are
only ‘incidentally’ pleasurable. The qualification means that such processes are not naturally pleasant; they are not a source of
pleasure when one is in a settled good state.
This creates an obstacle to the identification of cathartic pleasure with the characteristic pleasure of tragedy. If catharsis is in
any sense therapeutic, then it is least available to the best members of the audience, who have least need of therapy. But the
characteristic pleasure should be available to all members of an audience, and especially to the best. Even if the best audience is
rarely, if ever, realised in practice, tragedy should in principle be available to the best audience if it is to be taken with full
seriousness. Otherwise, it becomes uncomfortably analogous to musical performances for the vulgar masses, which make
concessions to their souls’ deviation from the natural state. In the final chapter of the Poetics Aristotle defends tragedy against
critics who regarded it as vulgar, and that defense would be compromised if tragedy’s characteristic pleasure were only or
especially available to inferior audiences. In fact, Aristotle thinks that inferior audiences are least attached to the characteristic
pleasure of tragedy. It is the weakness of audiences that explains their preference for inferior tragedies with ‘comic’ plots.
Either, then, we must abandon the premise that catharsis is in some sense therapeutic, or we must abandon the premise that
the pleasure of catharsis is the characteristic pleasure of tragedy. If we abandon the therapeutic interpretation, then identifying the
pleasure of catharsis with the characteristic pleasure remains possible; but unless we know what catharsis is the possibility throws
no light on the nature of the characteristic pleasure. Moreover, if the pleasure of tragedy is a complex structure comprising a
number of diverse pleasures, we have no grounds for assuming that cathartic pleasure and the characteristic pleasure must be
identical. So it is worth pursuing other lines of enquiry.
(b) Aucitya
Ans. In the West the idea of decorum or what the Indian theoreticians call Aucitya can be traced back at least in its seminal
form in the seventeenth chapter of Poetics where Aristotle recommends that a tragic poet would do well to visualize every scene
that he wants to compose so that what he devises is appropriate and free from incongruities. In Rhetoric also he raises the
question of propriety in his discussion of style. Cicero thinks the word prepon that Aristotle uses in his discussion of style is
actually what the Latin writers - Longinus and Horace, for example-- call decorum. Decorum, in poetry is propriety or what the
Indian aestheticians call Aucitya.
Taking start from Dhvanyaloka of Anandavardhana the concept of Aucitya, regarded as the secret of a poetical creation
emerges as a full-bodied theory in the speculations of Ksemendra who gives an extended scope to the concept and says that in
induction of all poetical elements the principle of propriety is to be followed, because this is an essentiality in the process of
Aesthetic Realisation.
As a matter of fact, the concept of Aucitya is such an all-embracing concept that it is applicable not only to Sanskrit literature,
but to all literary creations, the composers whereof are required to translate into practice the Principle of Propriety, particularly
in the matter of organising events and situations, emotions and experiences, so that the literary documents become acceptable to
the connoisseur through creation of much wanted “suspension of disbelief”, projected by Coleridge as an essentiality for attainment
of Aesthetic Experience.
(c) Superstructure
Ans. Superstructure can be simply defined as the ideologies that dominate a particular era, all that “men say, imagine,
conceive,” including such things as “politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc.” For Marx, the superstructure is generally
dependent on the modes of production that dominate in a given period. Superstructure is a term from Marxist social analysis,
central to the materialist concept of history and social development.
In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will,
relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.

6
 The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis, on which rises a
legal and political superstructure, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness’ - K. Marx in the Preface to A
Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
It is argued that Marx’s attempt to conceptualize social structure cannot be reduced to the base/superstructure model. Marx
shows that the economic structure or base is not a structure of people. It is an abstract and empty structure of the relations
between the productive forces in the economy. The actual persons or forces play no part of the structure. Taken out of the actual
world, and into the empty, abstract domain of the economic structure, a power is simply the ability to perform a particular action.
Taken in aggregate, the economic structure would be a set of these abilities, and the positions with more abilities consequently
become the dominant class.
In this structure there are no normative constraints, there is simply material possibilities, and enabling powers. The normative
image of relations of production only appears after the actors and forces are placed in the structure, and the superstructure is
placed over the top.
Marx argues that the fundamental base of any society, which permeates and shapes all its other legal, political and intellectual
characteristics, is the social relations of production: The social and technological way that production is organized and carried
out.
These relations of production provide the social foundation on which develops the superstructure of legal and political
relations and human intellectual ideas and consciousness.
Law as Superstructure
What is law and who forms it? Actually, at every point in history some of the human minds are always at work to frame law
in order to legitimize the misappropriations of socially generated resources by a few in the society. In fact it is the owing class
which misappropriates the surplus in a legal way. This makes the existing law a perspective for the state to function under, and
also at the same time offers sufficient space to the large bureaucracy and judiciary to expand by the implementation and
administration of justice. The irony is evident here. We need to look at the version of justice, which is projected to the masses by
the privileged section of the society. The way justice is explained and interpreted is completely dependent on the requirement of
mode of production and is projected by the privileged section as something which is moral, spiritual, ethical and universal. Going
on with this point of view we can simply understand justice as the social sanction for the simple purpose of exploitation and
misappropriation, however the owing class would call it their right and not misappropriation. This simple complex is, however,
very complex if worked out in philosophical terms. It would be interesting to notice in this respect, that how legal celebrities go
on with the debates on the topic in all over the world.
We can understand legal superstructure in terms of the working of the mode of production as both are quite close. It deals
directly with the reason or logical justification behind the social distribution and helps in persuading and convincing the working
class that the only right they have is on what they receive as wages. In this way the extremes of their rights are limited and by
extension their psyche and consciousness. Unlike legal superstructure others like philosophical, cultural and legal superstructures
can be said to have a delicate link with base, because the individuals who are operative in these spheres, share a notion of
independent operation.
The Political Superstructure
According to Marx, the most important place of human existence is political realm, as it is the only realm where people
struggle and fight their battle for the change. The formation of political groups, like political parties are very crucial as it reflects
the idea of specific class ad helps in the mobilization of the masses on behalf of that specific class. In this context it is important
to look at the role which trade unions played in England and France in the mid-nineteenth century, as they help in attracting

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attention towards the burning issues of the age. How crucial is politics to the ruling bourgeois class can be very well understood
in terms of the fact that it has enabled entrepreneurship and industry to decisively seize economic power from feudal nobility and
aristocratic class in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Considering the role which politics played in the history, it would not
be unjustified to call it a science of changing the society. One reason that Marx and other later thinkers gave utmost importance
to the political superstructure is that, it works directly on the base to transform its working. Politics is always concerned about
present and contemporary. It also provides an activist edge to philosophy, ideology, religious beliefs, culture and literature.
The Religious Superstructure
It may not sound normal that the concept of God and religion shares a tangible link or connection with the social structure
and that the universal or so called eternal religious values have their roots in the social functioning of their times. These so called
religious principles form a concrete link with the society in which exist and work upon an important a definite role. These help in
changing people’s point of view and ideologies. There is little doubt that these religious and divine values seem to guide people
form a distant spiritual standpoint and does not appear to have any connection with the mundane human existence, but this very
stance of religious outlook is questionable. In fact we can go ahead and label of social pressure and compulsions on the various
religious beliefs and practices which exist in the society. Lots of changes which Christianity has undergone after renaissance can
be related to the various social and political changes in the society of Europe. Another important point which we must bring our
attention to is the two different conceptions of God, i.e., feudal conception of God and capitalist conception of God. The feudal
conception of God is very different from that of the capitalist conception of God; the former is operative, overbearing and
paternally beneficent, while the latter is relatively sympathetic, friendly and persuasive. It would be quite interesting to look at
the various aspects of relational principles from this point of view which lets us peek into the basic foundation of religious belief,
which in fact is deeply rooted in the social practices of the time. In this context looking at the Milton’s idea of God and the son
would be fascinating, as Milton in his magnum opus Paradise Lost attribute highly divine attitudes in his portrayal of God and the
Son. As the there was a radical change at the base, the entire idea of God and Christianity underwent a radical transformation in
the writings of eighteenth century.
Let us now look at the two very clear end points of the religious superstructure. The first end-point of this superstructure
touches the religious, spiritual and emotional state of the ordinary people, whereas the at the second end point we have highly
religious thinkers, poets, and writers who reflects the new responses to the already established norms and notions of religious and
spiritual beliefs. Both of these ends amalgamate to answer the new and fresh social questions. Let us understand this by the help
of Parson Adams, a character from Fielding’s Joseph Andrews. Adams is not a typical and traditional follower and preacher of
Christianity rather he has been portrayed by fielding as a good friend, a person who enjoys a lot, and is interesting in reading and
drinking. Though there is no doubt that his basic foundation is essentially Christian in nature, but within that we witness a new
and radical eighteenth century English response to Christianity. We can say that Adams is a representation of a religious
superstructure and Fielding, who depicts the working of this superstructure in the novel, seems to enjoy the presence of strong
secular component of it. Adams can be seen as the symbol of religious requirement of the time, without whose help the new
emerging merchants and traders can never think of internalizing with the old and traditional view or conception of Christianity.
He can be seen as the concrete construction of Christian idea of the eighteenth century, which shows genuine spirit if helpfulness,
learning, loyalty and optimism.
The working of philosophical and cultural superstructure is still more intricate. And the dominant reason which makes them
work in a very peculiar fashion is that they deal directly with the ideas, feelings and emotions. The key point which distinguished
philosophy with that of the religion is ‘faith’. In religion one has to just preach or tell, and everything else is being done by the
faith of listener, but in philosophy one has to work out, analyze and explain in order to make people understand. In religion faith

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does not allow people to question the tenet but question is the mainstay of philosophy, without which the entire concept would
fall. This concept of philosophical superstructure makes it more independent from base and the two end-points that we have
discussed earlier do not exist in case of philosophical superstructure.
While understanding these key concepts one must keep in mind that there is no one-to-one correlation between these
superstructures and the economic mode and that people would only see economic mode as distortion than in realist proportion.
(d) ‘Pleasure’ and ‘instruction’ as ends of literature
Ans. The concepts of ‘pleasure’ and ‘instruction’ are classical. Their association with literature has got a long history which
can be traced back to the Antiquity. In his Poetics, one of the earliest seminal works of literary theory, Aristotle conceives the
goal of tragedy as catharsis, or the liberation of the mind of its viewers. This psychological redemption results from the arousal
and purification of intense fear and pity in the audience, and it is in this arousal-and-purification business that the audience
derives the true tragic pleasure.
Furthermore, what make the audience enjoy a tragedy are the poet’s perfect technique of imitation, or the ‘reproduction of
objects with minute fidelity’, and their recognition of the model being imitated. Pleasure, not ethics or instruction, is thus
central to Aristotle’s theory of tragedy. Very close to Aristotle’s theory of cathartic pleasure, and yet more affective and radical
than it, is Longinus’s conception of ‘Sublimity’. In his famous treatise On the Sublime, he states that “Sublimity is always an
eminence and excellence in language; and that from this, and this alone, the greatest poets and writers of prose have attained the
first place and have clothed their fame with immortality”. The effect of the sublime, he adds, is not the persuasion of the
audience, but their ecstasy, or their experience of an intense and ineffable feeling of delight: For it is not to persuasion but
to ecstasy that passages of extraordinary genius carry the hearer: Now the marvellous, with its power to amaze, is always
and necessarily stronger than that which seeks to persuade and please: To be persuaded rests usually with ourselves, genius
brings force sovereign and irresistible to bear upon every hearer, and takes its stand high above him. Longinus thus, affirms the
supremacy of ecstasy over persuasion and pleasure. He argues that while one can control their reasoning in terms of what to
admit and what to refuse, the power of ecstasy that the sublime exerts cannot be resisted. It is like a bolt of lightning which
scatters everything before at a single stroke.
Dryden’s theory strikes a subversive chord in his neoclassical era where the belief that the promotion of virtue is the sole
duty of literature was a commonplace among literary critics. This changed with the advent of Romanticism. Indeed, the
notion of the primacy of pleasure found its fullest expression in Romanticism, with such poets and theoreticians as
Wordsworth, Coleridge and Keats. It is reported that in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth uses the word
‘pleasure’ (and its cognates) more than fifty times, proposing that ‘the end of poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence
with an overabundance of pleasure’. As a matter of fact, right in the first two paragraphs where he talks about the
unexpectedly successful ‘pleasure-giving’ career of the first volume of their poems, Wordsworth uses the word ‘pleasure’
three times, two of which in the same sentence; the passive ‘pleased’ two times; the verb ‘please’ one time, and their opposite
‘dislike’ two times – the first time as a verb, and the last as a noun.
Dryden’s theory strikes a subversive chord in his neoclassical era where the belief that the promotion of virtue is the sole
duty of literature was a commonplace among literary critics. This changed with the advent of Romanticism. Indeed, the notion
of the primacy of pleasure found its fullest expression in Romanticism, with such poets and theoreticians as Wordsworth,
Coleridge and Keats. It is reported that in his 1802 Preface to Lyrical Ballads, Wordsworth uses the word ‘pleasure’ (and its
cognates) more than fifty times, proposing that ‘the end of poetry is to produce excitement in coexistence with an overabundance
of pleasure’ (Bennett and Royle 2004: 258). As a matter of fact, right in the first two paragraphs where he talks about the
unexpectedly successful ‘pleasure-giving’ career of the first volume of their poems, Wordsworth uses the word ‘pleasure’

9
three times, two of which in the same sentence; the passive ‘pleased’ two times; the verb ‘please’ one time, and their opposite
‘dislike’ two times – the first time as a verb, and the last as a noun.
Q. 4. What does I. A. Richards talk about in Practical Criticism?
Ans. I.A. Richards was among the first to make a systematic study of how his students actually read poetry under the
guidance of their own strategies and resources. He describes his methods in his famous book, Practical Criticism (1929), from
which the following passages are taken. Richards simply gave his students many poems but with no adjunct materials, not even
the titles or authors indicated, and asked them write commentaries about their processes of reading the poems. Though his
experiments were focused on reading poetry, we can generalize to reading other sorts of literature as well.
After examining the responses of many of his very well prepared students, I.A. Richards decided there are several typical
ways that their readings went astray. While his observations have an air of negative commentary which derives, no doubt, from
a philosophy that believes, since art is “communication,” one should find the core meaning in it, and that anything other than this
meaning is a “misreading,” we can still learn much from his list of “chief difficulties” these readers encountered:
A. First must come the difficulty of making out the plain sense of poetry. The most disturbing and impressive fact brought
out by this experiment is that a large proportion of average-to-good (and in some cases, certainly, devoted) readers of
poetry frequently and repeatedly fail to understand it, both as a statement and as an expression. They fail to make out its
prose sense, its plain, overt meaning, as a set of ordinary intelligible, English sentences, taken quite apart from any further
poetic significance. And equally, they misapprehend its feeling, its tone, and its intention. They would travesty it in a
paraphrase. . . . [Moreover] it is not confined to one class of readers; not only those whom we would suspect fall victims.
Not is it only the most abstruse poetry which so betrays us. In fact to set down, for once, the brutal truth, no immunity
is possessed on any occasion, not by the most reputable scholar, from this or any of these critical dangers.
B. Parallel to, and not unconnected with, these difficulties of interpreting the meaning are the difficulties of sensuous
apprehension. Words in sequence have a form to the mind’s ear and the mind’s tongue and larynx, even when silently
read. They have a movement and may have a rhythm. The gulf is wide between a reader who naturally and immediately
perceives this form and movement . . . and another reader, who either ignores it or has to build it up laboriously with
finger-counting, table tapping and the rest; this difference has most far-reaching effects.
C. Next may come those difficulties that are connected with the place of imagery, principally visual imagery, in poetic
reading. They arise in part form the incurable fact that we differ immensely in our capacity to visualise, and to produce
imagery of the other senses. Also, the importance of our imagery as a whole , as-well-as of some pet particular type of
image, in our mental lives varies surprisin-gly. Some minds can do nothing and get nowhere without images; others
seem to be able to do everything and get anywhere, reach any and every state of thought and feeling without making use
of them. Poets on the whole (though by no men as all poets always) may be suspected of exceptional imaging capacity,
and some readers are constitutionally prone to stress the place of imagery in reading, to pay great attention to it, and
even to judge the value of the poetry by the images it excites in them. But images are erratic things; lively images
aroused in one mind need have no similarity to the equally lively images stirred by the same line of poetry in another,
and neither set need have anything to do with any images which may have existed in the poet’s mind. Here, is a
troublesome source of critical deviations.
D. Thirdly, and more obviously, we have to note the powerful very persuasive influence of mnemonic irrelevancies. These
are the misleading effects of the reader’s being reminded of some personal scene or adventure, erratic associations, the
interference of emotional reverberations from a past which may have nothing to do with the poem. Relevance is not an
easy notion to define or to apply, though some instances of irrelevant intrusions are among the simplest of all accidents
to diagnose.
E. More puzzling and more interesting are the critical traps that surround what may be called stock responses. These have
their opportunity whenever a poem seems to, or does, involve views and emotions already fully prepared in the reader’s
mind, so that what happens appears to be more of the reader’s doing than the poet’s. The button is pressed, and then the
author’s work is done, for immediately the record starts playing in quasi (or total) independence of the poem which is
supposed to be its origin or instrument.

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 Whenever this lamentable redistribution of the poet’s and the reader’s share in the labour of poetry occurs, or is in
danger of occurring, we require to be especially on our guard. Every kind of injustice may be committed as well by those
who just escape as by those who are caught.
F. Sentimentality is a peril that needs less comment here. It is a question of the due measure of response. This over–facility
in certain emotional directions is the Scylla whose Charybdis is inhibition.
G. This, as much as Sentimentality, is a positive phenomenon, though less studied until recent years and somewhat masked
under the title of Hardness of Heart. But neither can well be considered in isolation.
H. Doctrinal adhesions presents another troublesome problem. Very much poetry–religious poetry may be instanced–
seems to contain or imply views and beliefs, true or false, about the world. If this be so, what bearing has the truth-value
of the views upon the worth of the poetry? Even if it be not so, if the beliefs are not really contained or implied, but only
seem so to a non-poetical reading, what should be the bearing of the reader’s conviction, if any, upon his estimate of the
poetry? Has poetry anything to say; if no, why not, and if so, how? Difficulties at this point are a fertile source of
confusion and erratic judgement.
I. Passing now to a different order of difficulties, the effects of technical presuppositions have to be noted. When something
has once been done in a certain fashion we tend to expect similar things to be done in the future in the same fashion, and
are disappointed or do not recognize them if they are done differently. Conversely, a technique which has shown its
ineptitude for one purpose tends to become discredited for all. Both are cases of mistaking means for ends. Whenever
we attempt to judge poetry from outside by technical details we are putting means before ends, and - such is our
ignorance of cause and effect in poetry - we shall be lucky if we do not make even worse blunders. We have to avoid
judging pianists by their hair.
J. Finally, general critical preconceptions (prior demands made upon poetry as a result of theories–conscious or unconscious–
about its nature and value), intervene endlessly, as the history of criticism shows only too well, between the reader and
the poem. Like an unlucky dietetic formula they may cut him off from what his is starving for, even when it is at his very
lips.
Richards is refreshing when, in the first observations, he says “no immunity” is possessed by the “reputable scholar” for we
assume he is including himself in the group and thus, is admitting he is also vulnerable to these problems. Much later in the book
he makes this clear:
The wild interpretations of others must not be regarded as the antics of incompetents, but as dangers that we ourselves only
narrowly escape, if, indeed, we do. We must see in the misreading of others the actualization of possibilities threatened in the
early stages of our own readings. The only proper attitude is to look upon a successful interpretation, a correct understanding, as
a triumph against odds. We must cease to regard a misunderstanding as a mere unlucky accident. We must treat it as the normal
and probable event.
Q. 5. Comment on Lacan’s main contribution to critical theory.
Ans. Lacan’s first major theoretical publication was his piece “On the Mirror Stage as Formative of the I.” Lacan’s article
“The Mirror Stage as Formative of the I” (1936, 1949) lays out the parameters of a doctrine that he never foreswore, and which
has subsequently become something of a post-structuralist mantra: Namely, that human identity is “decentered.” The key observation
of Lacan’s essay concerns the behaviour of infants between the ages of 6 and 18 months. At this age, Lacan notes, children
become capable of recognizing their mirror image. This is not a dispassionate experience, either. It is a recognition that brings the
child great pleasure. For Lacan, we can only explain this “jubilation” as a testimony to how, in the recognition of its mirror-
image, the child is having its first anticipation of itself as a unified and separate individual. Before this time, Lacan contends
(drawing on contemporary psychoanalytic observation), the child is little more than a “body in bits and pieces,” unable to clearly
separate I and Other, and wholly dependent for its survival (for a length of time unique in the animal kingdom) upon its first
nurturers.
It is on the basis of this fundamental understanding of identity that Lacan maintained throughout his career that desire is the
desire of the other. What is meant by him in this formulation is not the triviality that humans desire others, when they sexually
desire (an observation which is not universally true). Again developing Freud’s theorization of sexuality, Lacan’s contention is

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rather that what psycho-analysis reveals is that human-beings need to learn how and what to desire. Lacanian theory does not
deny that infants are always born into the world with basic biological needs that need constant or periodic satisfaction. Lacan’s
stress, however, is that, from a very early age, the child’s attempts to satisfy these needs become caught up in the dialectics of its
exchanges with others. Because its sense of self is only ever garnered from identifying with the images of these others (or itself
in the mirror, as a kind of other), Lacan argues that it demonstrably belongs to humans to desire–directly–as or through another
or others.
The principle that desire is the desire of the other is also decisive in how Lacan reformulates Freud’s theory of the child’s
socialization through the resolution of its Oedipal complex in its fifth or sixth year. Lacan agrees with Freud that this event is
decisive both in the development of the individual, and in the aetiology of any possible subsequent mental illness. However, in
trying to understand this stage of subjective development, Lacan distances himself from Freud’s emphasis on the biological
organ of the penis. Lacan talks instead of the phallus. What he is primarily referring to is what the child perceives it is that the
mother desires. Because the child’s own desire is structured by its relationships with its first nurturer (usually in Western societies
the mother), it is thus the desire of the mother, for Lacan, that is the decisive stake in what transpires with the Oedipus complex
and its resolution.
A castrating acceptance of its sovereignty precipitates the child out of its ambivalent attempts to be the fully satisfying Thing
for the mother. As Lacan quips, when the child accedes to castration, it accedes to the impossibility of it directly satisfying its
incestuous wish. If things go well, however, it will go away with “title deeds in its pocket” that guarantee that, when the time
comes (and if it plays by the rules), it can at least have a satisficing substitute for its first lost love-object. What has occurred, in
this event, is that the individual’s imaginary identifications (or “ideal egos”) that exclusively characterised its infantile years have
been supplemented by an identification of an entirely different order: what Lacan calls a symbolic identification with an “ego
ideal.” This is precisely the identification with and within something that cannot be seen, touched, devoured, or mastered:
Namely, the words, norms and directives of its given cultural collectiveness. Symbolic identification is always identification with
a normatively circumscribed way of organizing the social-intersubjective space within which the subject can take on its most
lasting imaginary identifications: (for example, the hysterical-vulnerable female identifies at the symbolic level with the patriarchal
way of structuring social relations between sexes, outside of which her imaginary identification would be meaningless).

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