The Philosophy of composition

2. The Philosophy of composition The Nature of a literary work • does the literary work spring from a mind rationally aware of what it does? • does the literary work spring from an external force?

3. ROMANTICISM x CLASSICISM • INTUITION x ANALYSIS:Romantics relish things that seem slightly to defy rational explanations. They’re enthusiastic about feeling and wary of the intellect as a guide to life. They believe one shouldn’t always think too much [this is probably the real reason why romantic poets hardly ever define the terms they use, such as Beauty, Nature, Sublime, etc]. In their eyes, it may be unfair to probe a decision or a mood too hard. They like instinct. In particular, they think one shouldn’t always attempt to take apart emotions. • Classicists, on the other hand, are wary of intuition. They’ve learned, often through bitter experiences, how misguided and deluded their own feelings may be; and hence they look rather skeptically and caustically upon them.

4. Ecstatic intuition “Most writers – poets in especial – prefer having it understood that they compose by a species of fine frenzy – an ecstatic intuition – and would positively shudder at letting the public take a peep behind the scenes, at the elaborate and vacillating crudities of thought – at the true purposes seized only at the last moment – at the innumerable glimpses of idea that arrived not at the maturity of full view – at the fully matured fancies discarded in despair as unmanageable – at the cautious selections and rejections – at the painful erasures and interpolations – in a word, at the wheels and pinions – the tackle for scene-shifting – the step-ladders and demons-traps – the cock’s feathers, the red paint and the black patches, which, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred, constitute the properties of the literary histrio”.

5. Percy Shelley’s “A defence of Poetry” (1821) “Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, ‘i will compose poetry’. The greatest poet even cannot say it; for the mind in creation is as a fading coal, which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness”. “Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic, that it is not subject to the control of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence have no necessary connexion with the consciousness or will”.

17. prologue

18. “the Philosophy of composition”Intuition x analysis “I select ‘The Raven’, as most generally known. It is my design to render it manifest that no one point in its composition is referrible either to accident or intuition – that the work proceeded, step by step, to its completion with the precision and rigid consequence of a mathematical problem”.

19. “the Philosophy of composition”Intuition x analysis “it is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incidents, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention”.

20. “the Philosophy of composition”EFFECT “I prefer commencing with the consideration of an effect. […] I say to myself, in the first place, ‘of the innumerable effects, or impressions, of which the heart, the intellect, or (more generally) the soul is susceptible, what one shall I, on the present occasion, select? “[…] afterward looking about me (or rather within) for such combinations of event, or tone, as shall best aid me in the construction of the effect”.

21. “a poem that should suit at once the popular and the critical taste” • Extent • Impression / Effect • Tone • Versification • Locale • dénouement

22. Revolution on the lover =revolution on the reader “This revolution of thought, or fancy, on the lover’s part, is intended to induce a similar one on the part of the reader – to bring the mind into a proper frame for the dénouement – which is now brought about as rapidly and as directly as possible”.