What
is the function of literature? Or
How for the nature and the function of literature
correlated.
Discuss Horace’s view that poetry is both ‘ducle
(sweet) and utile (useful).
Discuss the plurality of functions of literature.
“Literature is more general than history and
biography, but more particularized than history and Biography.” – Discuss.
“The truth of literature is truth in literature.” –
Explain
Discuss the cathartic function of literature.
Characters in literary works are both types and
individuals” – Discuss.
“The novelist can teach you more about human nature
than psychologists” – Discuss.
The nature and the function of literature are
correlated. The use of poetry follows from its nature. Every object is most
efficiently and rationally used for what it is. It gets a secondary use when
its main function has lost. e.g. an old spinning wheel becomes a specimen in a
museum. Similarly the nature of a following from its use: it is what it does.
An artifact has the structure accordingly to its function.
“Conceptions of Nature and Function
of Literature” – Changed or not? : -
It is necessary to look back in the
history to find out weather the nature and function of literature have changed
in the course of time. One can say yes when one can reach a time when
literature, philosophy, and religion existed undifferentiated. Aeschylus and
Hesiod are examples among the Greeks. But Plato had spoken of the quarrel
between the poets and the philosophers. We must not exaggerate the difference
made by doctrines of ‘art for art’s sake’ or ‘Poesi-pure’. Poe called the
poetry as an instrument of edification. The traditional Renaissance doctrine
says that the poem pleases and preaches, or teaches through pleasing. On the
whole the reading of a history of aesthetics or poetics gives the idea that the
nature and function of literature have not changed.
Poetry; Sweet and Useful:-
Horace
used words ‘dulce’ and ‘utile’ for poetry. Meaning is that poetry is ‘sweet’
and ‘useful’. This appears almost opposite characteristics. Some people call
art ‘play’ and some people ‘work’. If we call poetry only play – the
spontaneous amusement, we fell that care, skill and planning of the artist are
not taken into account. If we call it ‘work’ or ‘craft’, it is purposelessness
according to Kant’s formula itself offers a helpful start. The uselessness of
art does not mean enforcement of a moral lesson. “Useful” can be equal to ‘not
a waste of time’, not a form of ‘passing the time’. ‘Sweet’ is equivalent to
‘not a bore’, ‘not a duty’ ‘its own reward’. It is probable that all art is
‘sweet’ and ‘useful’ to its appropriate users. When a work of literature
function successfully, those two notes of ‘pleasure’ and ‘utility’ not merely
coexist but united. The pleasure of literature is a ‘higher pleasure’. And the
‘utility’ – the seriousness, - the instructiveness of literature is a
pleasurable seriousness that is an aesthetic seriousness.
Plurality of Functions:-
Another
important question is “has literature a function or functions?” In ‘Primer of
Critic’ Boas Gaily suggests a pluralism of interest and corresponding types of
criticism. Eliot laid emphasis on ‘variety of poetry’ and the variety of things
poetry may do it various times. Considering Arnold’s views that poetry could
supersede religion and philosophy, Eliot says, there is no substitute for
anything else. But in practice literature can take place of many things. But
there is no question that has literature a work which nothing else does so
well? Or is it a mixture of philosophy, history, music and imagery? This is the
basic question. One contemporary line of thinking asserts that poetry is useful
and serious as it conveys knowledge. Aristotle has said that ‘poetry is more
philosophical than history, because history ‘relates’ the things which have
happened while poetry ‘what might happen’. Literature gives knowledge of those
particularities with which science and philosophy are not concerned. Neo-Classical
theorist like Dr. Johnson thought of poetry in terms of the ‘grandeur of
generality’, while modern theorists stress the particularity of poetry. For
example Stace says that the play ‘Othello’ is not about jealousy but about Othello’s
jealousy, the particular kind of jealousy a moor married to a Venetian girl
might feel.
Particularity:-
We
may say that literature is more general than biography but more particular than
psychology or sociology. In literature this degree of generality or
particularity shifts from work to work and period to period. For example John
Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ is the pilgrim of everyman, the entire mankind. But Morose ‘the humorist’ of Johnson’s
‘Epicoene’ is a very special idiosyncratic person. The Principe of
characterization in literature is that of combing the ‘type’ with the
‘individual’. Generally the characters defined as ‘type’ or as ‘individual’. But
in reality every person is a mixture of these two. WE often use the term like
‘flat’ or ‘round’ for the characters.
Cognitive Value:-
One
cognitive value in the drama would seem to be psychological. The novelists can
teach more than the psychologists. Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, Ibsen, Balzat are
wonder sources. E.M. Forster says that we come to know inner motives of a very
few people in our real life. But the novels came reveal such life of a
character. One may say that the great novels are source books for
psychologists.
Discovery of Truth:-
Max
Eastman says that literary mind which is not specialized can not discover
truth. Truth in literature is the same as truth outside literature is the same
as truth outside literature. The novelist has no magic short cut to truth
against which his ‘world’ is to be checked. According to Eastman, the poet or
any imaginative writer has no business to communicate truth. Their real
function is to make use to know what we see, imagine, what we conceptually or
practically know.
It
is difficult to differentiate the views of poetry as realization or as
‘artistic insight’.
Truth is not the Criteria of Art:-
Aestheticians
denied ‘truth’ as the criteria of art. Imaginative literature is fiction. It is
artistic, verbal imitation of life. The opposite of ‘fiction’ is not ‘truth’
but ‘fact’. Fact is stronger than probability with which literature must deal.
Among all arts, literature specifically seems to claim ‘truth’ through the
views of life. Any mature philosophy life must have some measure of truth. The
‘truth’ of literature seems to be ‘truth’ in literature. Truth is the province
of the thinkers and artists are not such thinkers but they many try to be.
Now
the whole problem is what is truth? If all truths conceptual or propositional
the arts can’t be a form of truth. There are various ways of knowing. There are
two basic types of knowledge.
Two Basic Types of Knowledge:-
There
are basic types of knowledge. Each of them use a language system of sings. (1)
The sciences which use discursive mode and (2) The arts which use
presentational mode. But are these both truths? We might call the latter ‘true’
rather than ‘truth’. Art is substantively beautiful and adjectively true. It
has no conflict with truth. In his ‘Ars Poetica’ Mac Leish says that poetry is
‘equal’ to not true; It is as serious and important as philosophy, science,
knowledge and wisdom and possesses the equivalence of truth. It is truth like.
Mrs. Langer stresses the plastic arts and music than literature for
presentational symbolism as a form of knowledge. She thinks of literature as a
mixture of ‘discursive’ and ‘presentational’.
Is literature Propaganda?:-
From
the view that art is discovery or insight into the truth, we distinguish the
view that art- specifically literature is propaganda. The writer is not a
discoverer of truth but the supplier of the truth. The term ‘propaganda’
implies calculation, intention and usually applied to specific, rather
restricted doctoring or programmers. So limiting the meaning we can say that
some are is but no great or good art can be propaganda. If we consider the term
propaganda as ‘effort’ to influence readers to share one’s attitude towards
life. Eliot says that the artists are not irresponsible propagandist. Serious
art gives a view of life which may be philosophical. Between art and
Philosophy, there is a kind of correlation. The responsible artist will not
confuse emotion and thinking, sensibility and intelligence etc.
Cathartic Function:-
Regarding
the function of literature we must consider Aristotle’s view of ‘catharsis’. He
told that tragedy has a cathartic function. Some say that the function of
literature to relieve the writers or the readers from the pressure of emotions.
To express emotion is to get free of them. The spectator of tragedy and the
reader of a novel experiences release and relief. At the end he gets ‘calm of
mind’.
Does
literature relieve us of emotions or instead incite them? Plato thought that
literature nourished and watered our emotions. It is a question weather
literature is cathartic or inciter?
Conclusion:-
The
question regarding the function of literature has a long history – it is from
Plato to the present, Emerson said, “Beauty is its own excuse of being’. But
moralists, philosophers, utilitarian has always raised the question – ‘cui
bono?’ What is poetry for? When such a question was asked some poets and
readers naturally stressed the ‘use’ rather than the such ‘delight’ of
literature. But from the Romantic Movement on, the poets have given a different
answer; it is – ‘poetry for poetry’s sake’.
So
we can say that poetry has many possible functions. Its prime function is
‘fidelity to its own nature.”
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