There seem to be some echoes of Kant in my remarks yesterday about the "strict measures" of beauty. Those places in the Critique of Judgement about "genius". Poetic genius - being the effect of Nature working through the poet - is what applies the "rule of nature" to the products of art. (I'm getting this from the McKeon essay.)

Reading a good essay by Richard McKeon, "Philosophic bases of art and criticism", in my Chicago School anthology, Critics & Criticism (publ. back in late 50s).

McKeon is comparing Plato, Kant, Tolstoy, Horace, Aristotle, Bacon on their approaches to poetry & criticism. Shows how the same basic problems recur, but that different emphases lead to opposing or contradictory usage of the same terms.

(Plato, Kant & Tolstoy take a thematic approach, considering what poetry is in the context of basic issues such as truth, consciousness, nature; Aristotle, Bacon & Horace analyze poetry pragmatically, as a unique thing-in-itself, with respect to how the poet best achieves its unique purposes.)

This probably sounds very dry & abstract. But if the critic isn't aware of basic principles & methods, he or she simply reiterates the biases & blind spots of the past. The Chicago School provides a map for anybody who wants to attempt literary criticism with a general foundation in the fundamentals. & the only way to get beyond a terribly parochial and utilitarian (sub)critical milieu (the current state of poetry criticism in the US), would be to revisit the basic problems of approach.

Who were the "Chicago School", or "Chicago critics"? A group of scholars/critics, several affiliated with U. Chicago, who shared an interest in the philosophy of Aristotle, esp. his approach to criticism outlined in the Poetics. Published around mid-20th century. They rate about a column & a half in the Princeton Encyc. of Poetics. Elder Olson, R.S. Crane, Richard McKeon, et al.

Not finding a whole lot about them off the bat, here in Bruno Library. I suppose their approach got a bit lost in the shuffle of jazzier 60s-80s stuff, like post-structuralism, deconstruction, new historicism, new criticism, etc.

Trends that (very roughly speaking) they seem to follow from Aristotle's lead:

- lit. criticism a branch of philosophy
- criticism not an exact science since based on human productions rather than nature
- there is an empirical, inductive, "differential" approach to examining any subject, which pays great attention to the particular line of inquiry into its object of study; said object can be seen from a variety of aspects, depending on the approach, & doesn't fall neatly into larger systems of abstraction
- poetry can be approached from various aspects & lines of inquiry; the Poetics approaches it with respect to its specifically artistic ends or purposes
- criticism appears in many guises & methods; often conflicts & disagreements arise, not due to genuine disagreements or contradictory positions, but because different critics are working from completely different frames of inquiry
- poems and poetry are two different things
- poems are not reducible to language as such; rather, they are artificial forms or constructs which organize plot (action), character, thought, diction, & "ornament" into an aesthetic unity or system (form).
- the meaning of a poem is not reducible to its lexical, etymological, thematic, etc. coordinates : rather, a poem creates a kind of inference-producing form or system. The audience infers from the verbal evidence, and its inferences have emotional/aesthetic/intellectual consequences, which represent the formal impact of the work
- a poem is an aesthetic whole or unity, within which the verbal material or diction appears as one part among others. One measure of a poem's quality comes through an examination of how well the various parts of a poem are coordinated in creating the totality of effect or aesthetic whole.

Of course I'm bowdlerizing a great deal. Encourage exploration of RS Crane & Elder Olson essays. What I like about what I'm discovering is a kind of historical awareness & systematic approach to some of my own vague tendencies over the years toward "realism", ie. the balance between the verbal texture of poems & the representations they effect. I find very refreshing - startling, even - some of the comments of these critics on the distinction between philosophies which view poetry as a distinct productive activity, on the one hand, and philosophies which view poetry as simply a special form of language or discourse, on the other. Also their inductive approach to reading, analysis & critique.