Ans.

In Book X of The Republic, Plato establishes a debate regarding the usefulness

and potentially negativeeffects of poetry. Within this dialogue, he asserts that all
poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of thehearers...hymns to the
gods and praises of famous men are the only poetry which ought to be admitted
into our State(Plato 29, 36). He goes on to explain that this is because poetry
feeds and waters the passions instead of drying themup; she lets them rule,
although they ought to be controlled, if mankind are ever to increase in happiness
and virtue.Plato further argues that poetry or for that matter any form of art is a
secondary imitation and therefore takes thereader a step more form the reality and
therefore it is not something good, but contagious in nature.Plato considers the
value of the poet as nuisance and objects to it because of its dependency on the
divinemadness. Distrust of Plato is expressed in very simple terms. According to
him, poetry Feeds and waters the passion,which is responsible for the creation of
division and unsteadiness in the heart of the reader. And such a thing is
certainlyagainst the civic value. He says:And therefore when any one of these
pantomimic gentlemen (the poets) comes to us, and makes a proposal toexhibit
himself and his theory, (we) will fall down and worship him as a sweet and holy
wonderful being; but we mustalso inform him that in our State such as he are not
permitted to exist; the law will not allow them. And so when wehave anointed him
with myth, and set a garland of wool upon his head, we shall send him away to
another city. For wemean to employ for our souls health rougher and severer poet
or storyteller, who will imitate the style of virtuous onlyand will follow those models
which we prescribed at first when we began the education of our soldiers.An
obvious question could be about the reason of this. According to Plato, it is because
of the nature of poetry thatit produces immoral results. Poetry of course deal with a
diverse range of feelings, and all the feelings might not bedesirable. Some of the
feelings may be good while other may be bad causing pleasure and pain
respectively. Anotherreason is that poetry takes many factious and impossible
characters in consideration. Here Plato talks about Greekpoets like Homer and
Hesiod and also about other Greek dramatists who talk about God. But their gods
are not alwaysgood, but are manlike; they are quarrelsome, deceitful and fallible.
The heroes of these poets and dramatist are alsoemotional and un-heroic. It is in
this context Plato develops his theory of imitation or Mimesis. In different places
inrepublic we can find this idea of Mimesis being developed. In the recent
development of theory, Platos idea of love isconsidered to be one of the earliest
impulse of love between the human being and is given a term Greek
Love.According to Plato it is the responsibility of the reason to transcend the basic
requirements of appetite and spirit.Considering this model of mind let us try to
understand what Plato intends to say about poetry. Contrary to the usualbelief Plato
is not actually advocating to send all the poets into exile, rather he simply means
that a person with trueknowledge would not like to go for poetry and also poetry is
capable of feeding the appetite and the spirit by holding the

reason in check. Plato also takes a step further and compare poets with those of the
mad men and says that themadness of these mad men is contagious. But what is
ironical is that Plato himself is not able to go beyond the use ofpoetical power. Plato
believed that the world is made up of different layers, and the topmost layer is that
of the idea, the real ideaof The Good. The layer beneath is the imitation of the top
layer and the layer which comes after that is the imitation ofthe previous one.
Therefore as we go down the layers we are getting away from the reality and
getting closer to theevil. For Plato evil was something which originates when
someone mistakes something for reality, which is not real, oras Plato puts it as
accident for essence.Q. 2. Examine Wollstonecrafts-An Introduction as constrained
by being the product of its day and age.Ans. Wollstonecrafts work in many ways is
limited by being a product of its days and age. Her work is a responseto many
contemporary writers who wrote against womens education. She held the view that
it is the lack of educationwhich results in the enslavement and suppression of
women. In An Introduction Kamala Das also talks in the samevein and points these
issues.Wollstonecraft was a moral and political theorist whose analysis of the
condition of women in modern societyretains much of its original radicalism. One of
the reasons her pronouncements on the subject remain challenging is thather
reflections on the status of the female sex were part of an attempt to come to a
comprehensive understanding ofhuman relations within a civilization increasingly
governed by acquisitiveness. Her first publication was on the educationof
daughters, but she went on to write about politics, history and various aspects of
philosophy in a number of differentgenres that included critical reviews,
translations, pamphlets, and novels. Best known for her Vindication of the Rightsof
Woman (1792), her influence went beyond the substantial contribution to feminism
she is mostly remembered forand extended to shaping the art of travel writing as a
literary genre and, through her account of her journey throughScandinavia, she had
an impact on the Romantic movement.Apart from Mary, a Fiction and The Cave of
Fancy Wollstonecrafts early writings were of a pedagogical nature.These reveal the
profound influence John Locke had on Wollstonecrafts thought, and several of the
arguments of hisSome Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) are echoed in
Wollstonecrafts conception of morality and the bestmanner to inculcate it in
individuals at the earliest possible age. The opening paragraph of her Thoughts on
theEducation of Daughters speaks of the duty parents have to ensure that reason
should cultivate and govern thoseinstincts which are implanted in us to render the
path of duty pleasantfor if they are not governed they will run wild;and strengthen
the passions which are ever endeavouring to obtain dominion. Similarly, the
beginning of her Originalthat reason must rule supreme is a running theme of
Wollstonecrafts works written prior to her sojourn in RevolutionaryFrance and, all
the more, prior to her travels through Scandinavia. It is stressed in her Vindication
of the Rights ofWoman (1792). Other continuities between her Thoughts on the
Education of Daughters and the Vindication includeher preference for an education
conducted at home, and her insistence that girls and young women be made to

acquireinner resources so as to make them as psychologically independent as

possible. The Thoughts also reveals
Wollstonecrafts conviction that universal benevolence is the first virtue, as well as
her faith in a providentially ordaineduniverse. She enjoined her readers to prepare
their children for the main business of our lives, namely, the acquisitionof virtue,
and, unsurprisingly given her own history, she urged parents to strengthen their
childrens characters so as toenhance their capacity to survive personal
tragedies.Q. 3. Arnold draws a distinction between the private and public function
of criticism,Discuss.Ans. To Arnold a critic is a social benefactor. In his view the
creative artist, no matter how much of a genius,would cut a sorry figure without the
critic to come to his aid. Before Arnold a literary critic cared only for the
beautiesand defects of works of art, but Arnold the critic chose to be the educator
and guardian of public opinion andpropagator of the best ideas.Cultural and critical
values seem to be synonymous for Arnold. Scott James, comparing him to Aristotle,
says thatwhere Aristotle analyses the work of art, Arnold analyses the role of the
critic. The one gives us the principles whichgovern the making of a poem, the other
the principles by which the best poems should be selected and made
known.Aristotles critic owes allegiance to the artist, but Arnolds critic has a duty to
society
To Arnold poetry itself was the criticism of life: The criticism of life under the
conditions fixed for such criticismby the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty, and
in his seminal essay (The Study of Poetry, 1888) he says that poetryalone can be
our sustenance and stay in an era where religious beliefs are fast losing their hold.
He claims that poetry issuperior to philosophy, science, and religion. Religion
attaches its emotion to supposed facts, and the supposed factsare failing it, but
poetry attaches its emotion to ideas and ideas are infallible. And science, in his view
is incompletewithout poetry. He endorses Wordsworths view that poetry is the
impassioned expression which is in the countenanceof all Science, adding What is
a countenance without its expression? and calls poetry the breath and finer spirit
ofknowledge.As a critic Arnold is essentially a moralist, and has very definite ideas
about what poetry should and should not be.A poetry of revolt against moral ideas,
he says, is a poetry of revolt against life, and a poetry of indifference to moralideas
is a poetry of indifference to life.Arnold even censored his own collection on moral
grounds. He omitted the poem Empedocles on Etna from hisvolume of 1853,
whereas he had included it in his collection of 1852. The reason he advances, in the
Preface to hisPoems of 1853 is not that the poem is too subjective, with its Hamletlike introspection, or that it was a deviation fromhis classical ideals, but that the
poem is too depressing in its subject-matter, and would leave the reader hopeless
andcrushed. There is nothing in it in the way of hope or optimism, and such a poem
could prove to be neither instructivenor of any delight to the reader.Aristotle says
that poetry is superior to History since it bears the stamp of high seriousness and
truth. If truth andseriousness are wanting in the subject-matter of a poem, so will

the true poetic stamp of diction and movement befound wanting in its style and
manner. Hence the two, the nobility of subject-matter, and the superiority of style
andmanner, are proportional and cannot occur independently.Arnold took up
Aristotles view, asserting that true greatness in poetry is given by the truth and
seriousness of itssubject-matter, and by the high diction and movement in its style
and manner, and although indebted to JoshuaReynolds for the expression grand
style, Arnold gave it a new meaning when he used it in his lecture On
TranslatingHomer (1861):I think it will be found that that the grand style arises in
poetry when a noble nature, poetically gifted, treats withsimplicity or with a severity
a serious subject.According to Arnold, Homer is the best model of a simple grand
style, while Milton is the best model of severegrand style. Dante, however, is an
example of both.Even Chaucer, in Arnolds view, in spite of his virtues such as
benignity, largeness, and spontaneity, lacks seriousness.Burns too lacks sufficient
seriousness, because he was hypocritical in that while he adopted a moral stance in
some of
his poems, in his private life he flouted morality.He says that even the imitation of
Shakespeare is risky for a young writer, who should imitate only his excellence,and
avoid his attractive accessories, tricks of style, such as quibble, conceit,
circumlocution and allusiveness, whichwill lead him astray.Arnold commends
Shakespeares use of great plots from the past. He had what Goethe called the
architectonicquality that is his expression was matched to the action (or the
subject). But at the same time Arnold quotes Hallam toshow that Shakespeares
style was complex even where the press of action demanded simplicity and
directness, andhence his style could not be taken as a model by young writers.
Elsewhere he says that Shakespeares expressiontends to become a little sensuous
and simple, too much intellec-tualized.Shakespeares excellences are: (1) The
architectonic quality of his style; the harmony between action and expression.(2)
His reliance on the ancients for his themes. (3) Accurate construction of action. (4)
His strong conception of actionand accurate portrayal of his subject-matter. (5) His
intense feeling for the subjects he dramatizes.His attractive accessories (or tricks of
style) which a young writer should handle carefully are (1) His fondness forquibble,
fancy, conceit. (2) His excessive use of imagery. (3) Circumlocution, even where the
press of action demandsdirectness. (4) His lack of simplicity (according to Hallam
and Guizot). (5) His allusiveness.Arnold also wants the modern writer to take models
from the past because they depict human actions which touchon the great primary
human affections: to those elementary feelings which subsist permanently in the
race, and whichare independent of time. Characters such as Agamemnon, Dido,
Aeneas, Orestes, Merope, Alcmeon, and Clytemnestra
leave a permanent impression on our minds. Compare The Iliad or The Aeneid
with The Childe Harold or TheExcursion and you see the difference.A modern
writer might complain that ancient subjects pose problems with regard to ancient
culture, customs,manners, dress and so on which are not familiar to contemporary

readers. But Arnold is of the view that a writer shouldnot concern himself with the
externals, but with the inward man. The inward man is the same irrespective of
clime ortime.It is in his The Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864) that
Arnold says that criticism should be adissemination of ideas, a disinterested
endeavour to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in theworld.
He says that when evaluating a work the aim is to see the object as in itself it really
is. Psychological,historical and sociological background are irrelevant, and to dwell
on such aspects is mere dilettantism. This stance wasvery influential with later
critics.Arnold also believed that in his quest for the best a critic should not confine
himself to the literature of his owncountry, but should draw substantially on foreign
literature and ideas, because the propagation of ideas should be anobjective
endeavour.For Arnold there is no place for charlatanism in poetry. To him poetry is
the criticism of life, governed by the lawsof poetic truth and poetic beauty. It is in
the criticism of life that the spirit of our race will find its stay and consolation.The
extent to which the spirit of mankind finds its stay and consolation is proportional to
the power of a poemscriticism of life, and the power of the criticism of life is in
direct proportion to the extent to which the poem is genuineand free from
charlatanism.In The Study of Poetry he also cautions the critic that in forming a
genuine and disinterested estimate of the poetunder consideration he should not be
influenced by historical or personal judgements, historical judgements
beingfallacious because we regard ancient poets with excessive veneration, and
personal judgements being fallacious whenwe are biased towards a contemporary
poet. If a poet is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let
usexplode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class of the very
best . . . enjoy his work.He also condemns the French critic Vitet, who had eloquent
words of praise for the epic poem Chanson de Rolandby Turoldus, (which was sung
by a jester, Taillefer, in William the Conquerors army), saying that it was superior
toHomers Iliad. Arnolds view is that this poem can never be compared to Homers
work, and that we only have tocompare the description of dying Roland to Helens
words about her wounded brothers Pollux and Castor and itsinferiority will be clearly
revealed.To Arnold a critic is a social benefactor. In his view the creative artist, no
matter how much of a genius, would cuta sorry figure without the critic to come to
his aid. Before Arnold a literary critic cared only for the beauties and defectsof
works of art, but Arnold the critic chose to be the educator and guardian of public
opinion and propagator of the bestideas.Cultural and critical values seem to be
synonymous for Arnold. Scott James, comparing him to Aristotle, says thatwhere
Aristotle analyses the work of art, Arnold analyses the role of the critic. The one
gives us the principles whichgovern the making of a poem, the other the principles
by which the best poems should be selected and made known.Aristotles critic owes
allegiance to the artist, but Arnolds critic has a duty to society.It is in his The
Function of Criticism at the Present Time (1864) that Arnold says that criticism
should be adissemination of ideas, a disinterested endeavour to learn and
propagate the best that is known and thought in theworld. He says that when
evaluating a work the aim is to see the object as in itself it really is.

Psychological,historical and sociological background are irrelevant, and to dwell on

such aspects is mere dilettantism. This stance wasvery influential with later
critics.Arnold also believed that in his quest for the best a critic should not confine
himself to the literature of his owncountry, but should draw substantially on foreign
literature and ideas, because the propagation of ideas should be anobjective
endeavour.For Arnold there is no place for charlatanism in poetry. To him poetry is
the criticism of life, governed by the lawsof poetic truth and poetic beauty. It is in
the criticism of life that the spirit of our race will find its stay and consolation.The
extent to which the spirit of mankind finds its stay and consolation is proportional to
the power of a poemscriticism of life, and the power of the criticism of life is in
direct proportion to the extent to which the poem is genuineand free from
charlatanismIn The Study of Poetry he also cautions the critic that in forming a
genuine and disinterested estimate of the poetunder consideration he should not be
influenced by historical or personal judgements, historical judgements
beingfallacious because we regard ancient poets with excessive veneration, and
personal judgements being fallacious whenwe are biased towards a contemporary
poet. If a poet is a dubious classic, let us sift him; if he is a false classic, let
usexplode him. But if he is a real classic, if his work belongs to the class of the very
best . . . enjoy his work.He also condemns the French critic Vitet, who had eloquent
words of praise for the epic poem Chanson de Rolandby Turoldus, (which was sung
by a jester, Taillefer, in William the Conquerors army), saying that it was superior
toHomers Iliad. Arnolds view is that this poem can never be compared to Homers
work, and that we only have tocompare the description of dying Roland to Helens
words about her wounded brothers Pollux and Castor and itsinferiority will be clearly
revealed

Q. 4. What do you understand by cultural studies? Discuss Raymond Williams

contribution to culturestudies.Ans. . Cultural studies is an innovative
interdisciplinary field of research and teaching that investigates the ways inwhich
culture creates and transforms individual experiences, everyday life, social
relations and power.The field ofcultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical
and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinctfrom the
disciplines of cultural anthropology and ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon
and has contributed toeach field. Cultural studies concentrates upon the political
dynamics of contemporary culture, its historical foundations,defining traits, and
conflicts.The movement of cultural studies that has been a global phenomenon of
great importance over the last decade wasinaugurated by the University of
Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in 1963/64 led at the time
byRichard Hoggart (1958) and Stuart Hall. During this period, the Centre developed
a variety of critical approaches forthe analysis, interpretation, and criticism of
cultural artifacts. Through a set of internal debates, and responding tosocial
struggles and movements of the 1960s and the 1970s, the Birmingham group came

to focus on the interplay ofrepresentations and ideologies of class, gender, race,

ethnicity, and nationality in cultural texts, including media culture.They were among
the first to study the effects of newspapers, radio, television, film, and other popular
cultural formson audiences. They also focused on how various audiences
interpreted and used media culture in varied and differentways and contexts,
analyzing the factors that made audiences respond in contrasting ways to media
texts.The concerns of Raymond Williams are summarized in Culture and Society
1780-1950 using his key terms ofindustry, democracy, class, art, and culture. He
was pre-occupied with the relationship between culture and ideology.In the 1960s
he participated in many TV discussion programmes and two of his plays were
broadcast on TV. For himthe medium of television was a crucial cultural form, unlike
most academics, as relevant to education as the printedword.The Long Revolution
was one of Williamss two or three most important and most enduring works. This
publicationmade a substantial contribution to the production of modern cultural
studies in general and advanced his politics,joining culture and democracy. The
Long Revolution looks forward to the next decade and suggests that we are
livingthrough a long revolution that is simultaneously economic, political, and
cultural.Raymond Williams was a man who was ahead of his time. He was doing
cultural studies even before the term wasinvented. He had a very successful life and
accomplished a lot. He wrote more than 650 publications over his 40-yearcareer. His
contribution to cultural thinking was that of a Cambridge professor who never forgot
the Welsh villagewhere he grew up. On January 26, 1988 the world mourned the
loss of one of the worlds best social thinkers andintellectuals.Structure of feeling
was first used by Raymond Williams in his A Preface to Film (with Michael Orrom,
1954)
developed in The Long Revolution (1961), and extended and elaborated throughout
his work, in particular Marxismand Literature (1977), Williams first used this concept
to characterize the lived experience of the quality of life at aparticular time and
place. It is, he argued, as firm and definite as structure suggests, yet it operates
in the mostdelicate and least tangible part of our activities. Later he describes
structures of feeling as social experiences insolution. Thus a structure of feeling
is the Culture of a particular historical moment, though in developing theconcept,
Williams wished to avoid idealist notions of a spirit of the age. It suggests a
common set of perceptions and
values shared by a particular generation, and are most clearly articulated in
particular and artistic forms and conventions.The industrial novel of the 1840s
would be one example of the structure of feeling which emerged in middleclassconsciousness out of the development of industrial capitalism.Q. 5. Compare
and contrast modernist and postmodernist approaches to literature.Ans. Modernism,
by respecting the role of reason, allowed society to seek solutions to many nagging
problemswhich had been allowed to exist during medievalism. Furthermore, by
respecting the individual, modernism alsoencouraged the formation of protective

individual rights.But things went too far. Because modernism defines humanity in
terms of the thinking self, it fails to understandthe non-rational elements of human
nature, including the spiritual. It also utterly fails to comprehend the limits ofreason
and objectivism. In effect, modernism dehumanizes us by convincing us that we are
only a small cog in a greatmechanistic universe. And modernism leads to a
breakdown in human relationships by exalting individualism andanalysis. On the
whole, modernism has kept us from a relational, holistic approach to life.
Postmodernism seeks to correct the imbalances of modernism. It reminds us that we
do not possess an unlimitedpotential to understand and change the world for our
own purposes. Rather, we exist in the world and in relation to it.Postmodernism is a
reaction to modernism. It corrects problems from the past, but also over-reacts to
thoseproblems, leading to an exaggeration. So, the chief strengths of
postmodernism are in what it corrects, and its chiefweaknesses are in what it overcorrects.Lets look at an example. Under modernism, the prevailing theory of truth
was known as the correspondencetheory of truth. That is, something was felt to be
true in so much as it corresponds to objective reality found in theworld. The
correspondence theory of truth caused people to believe that scientific truth equals
absolute truth.Postmodernism corrects this by denying the equivalency between
scientific truth and absolute truth. All scientificconclusions are now understood to be
tentative simply because no one has ever made the infinite number of
observationsrequired to learn if there are any exceptions.So, postmodernism
corrects modernism by helping us to understand the limits of our reasoning ability
and knowledge.But postmodernism then presses things too far.It adheres to a
coherence theory of truth. That is, something is true for us only in so much as it
coheres with ourother perceptions about the world. But this new theory of truth
makes science to be just a collection of independentresearch traditions, each having
its own perspectives and language games. But if taken to the extreme, this can lead
tothe absurd.Modernism began in the 1890s and lasted till about 1945.
Postmodernism began after the Second World War,especially after 1968. Modernism
was based on using rational, logical means to gain knowledge while
postmodernismdenied the application of logical thinking. Rather, the thinking during
the postmodern era was based on unscientific,irrational thought process, as a
reaction to modernism. A hierarchical and organized and determinate nature of
knowledgecharacterized modernism. But postmodernism was based on an
anarchical, non-totalized and indeterminate state ofknowledge. Modernist approach
was objective, theoretical and analytical while the postmodernism approach
wasbased on subjectivity. It lacked the analytical nature and thoughts were
rhetorical and completely based on belief. Thefundamental difference between
modernism and postmodernism is that modernist thinking is about the search of
anabstract truth of life while postmodernist thinkers believe that there is no
universal truth, abstract or otherwise.Modernism attempts to construct a coherent
world-view whereas postmodernism attempts to remove the differencebetween high
and low. Modernist thinking asserts that mankind progresses by using science and
reason whilepostmodernist thinking believes that progress is a only way to justify

the European domination on culture. Modernistthinking believes in learning from

past experiences and trusts the texts that narrate the past. On the other
handpostmodernist thinking defies any truth in the text narrating the past and
renders it of no use in the present times.Modernist historians have a faith in depth.
They believe in going deep into a subject to fully analyze it. This is not thecase with
postmodernist thinkers. They believe in going by the superficial appearances, they
believe in playing onsurfaces and show no concern towards the depth of subjects.
Modernism considers the original works as authenticwhile postmodernist thinkers
base their views on hyper-reality; they get highly influenced by things propagated
throughmedia.