Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Poetic Theorists, While the romantics were worried about the failure of…
Poetic Theorists
Romantics
-
-
-
-
- Romantics often yearned for a simpler time away from capitalism and specialization
- Very concerned with our departure from nature
- anti-industrialisation
- Nostalgic for the Greeks, thought they were better because they were more connected to nature and more inter-disciplinary
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Gerard Genette - “Poetic Language, Poetics of Language” (1969)
- Structuralist
- Very concerned with the gap between the signifier and the signified
- Metaphors as a way to close the gap
- Poets are taking the initiative and motivating this by creating new metaphors / new ways to describe things
- These shortcomings of language creates the very essence of poetry
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Christopher Nealon - The Matter of Capital, or Catastrophe and Textuality (2011)
- How texts reflect and respond to economic conditions
- The inseparability of cultural production from economic structures
- Textuality, attention to itself as a text
- Exploring the historical anxieties of poetry in this period
- Capitalism produces and exploits anxieties, frustrations, and desires
- Poetry can be used to critique the social issues caused by capitalism
- Poetry as an escape from politics by its form
- Authors framed it as liberation in the past, but Nealon argues it's only an escape
Adrienne Rich - “Blood, Bread, and Poetry” (1984)
- Putting the resistance of poetry on the form ignores poems that directly speak about politics
- Every act of writing deals with social and historical conditions surrounding it
- Patriarchal structures have historically marginalized individuals and communities
- To write about being a woman is all about the content and subject in the writing
- Poetry becomes a space for reclaiming identity and resistance
- The personal is political
- Poets have the responsibility to confront power and privilege
-
-
While the romantics were worried about the failure of language, these theorists further question the meaning and stability of the poetic image. All of these authors are concerned with the failure of language and want to close the gap between the signifer and signified via metaphors.
-
-
-
-
-
Schiller expands on Kant's critiques, arguing that aesthetic education is essential for human freedom. Yeats writes about poetry's strong symbolic power, connecting to Schiller and Kant's ideas that poetry is an avenue for language to transcend its base meaning. They all are interested in the disconnect from words to the concepts they attempt to define.
-
-
-
-
These authors all discuss the potential energy of poems. Poems can transfer energy both through their form (control over the readers breath) and their content (conveying emotion, preparing readers for a state of action)
-
-
-
-
These authors are concerned with how late stage capitalism is affecting our society but believe the content is more important than the form. They would argue that all poetry is somewhat political because we bring our own lived experiences to the writing process. Poetry can be used as resistance but only by breaking out of previous calcified forms can progress be made
-
-
-
-
While Plato questions the need of poets in the perfect society, Shelley resoundingly states that they are necessary to shaping our values. Césaire, and the romantics, share the fear that we are losing our humanity due to industrialization and capitalism. Shelley and Césaire both believe that poetry brings freedom and that the poets can save our humanity in society.
-
-
-
These authors are not only concerned with closing the gap but argue that the calcification and stagnation of language is actively harming society. They stress the importance of the poet continuing to combat this by renovating language.
-
-
-
These authors are all concerned with how forms shape meaning. Any writing uses a specific order of words and therefore imposes order. All authors bring some pre-existing biases to their writing. The romantics clearly had things they were concerned about, and these concerns are echoed through our understanding of poetry over several centuries.
-
-
-
These authors are concerned with modern-day scientific advancements and capitalism but believe the form is key to understanding and exploring these issues with poetry.
-
-
-
-
-