Theory

Keats: " In Poetry I have a few Axioms, and you will see how far I am from their
Centre. 1st I think Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by Singularityit should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a Remembrance2nd Its touches of Beauty should never be half way thereby making the reader breathless instead of content: the rise, the progress, the setting of imagery should like the Sun come natural too himshine over him and set soberly although in magnificence leaving him in the Luxury of twilightbut it is easier to think what Poetry should be than to write itand this leads me on to another axiom. That if Poetry comes not as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all. " First we will see what poets like Wordsworth and Coleridge said about poetry before Keats, then we try to put these axioms in the context of what have been said before him.

Keats was the youngest, and he died very young too.

1st Axiom:
When he said surprise, he meant by it some kind of delight. And the delight here should not be by imposing singularity, which means saying things unsaid before, but by "fine excess." If we take the daffodils for example: the poet says that he saw thousands of daffodils, and that their color was golden, he is putting them in their natural context where we have almost everything . He is not singularizing the daffodils, but talking about them as one aspect of nature. There is also, a fine excess which is a sort of exaggeration that is acceptable. He says that their color is golden and that they are dancing.

In Coleridge's "The Ancient Mariner," we can see that there is some kind of supernaturalism about the mariner, he is strong though old, and this is an exaggeration but it is acceptable and delightful.

In classicism, everything the writer says should be probable, that it could happen to anyone of us. In Macbeth, there is an excess of ambition, but that excess is possible and probable. And whenever we think of Macbeth we think of him as one of us, not as a demigod or supernatural being.

The highest thoughts: finest thoughts.

The images used in poetry should be something that does not appear to you far away from your imagination. They should be taking from reality, from nature, and from things you are familiar with.

2nd Axiom:
Beauty should never be halfway: In "The Daffodils", the beauty of the flowers left the poet breathless. We won't be able to see how beautiful they are if he have only said that the daffodils were so beautiful and so on, but he puts them in the context of shining sun light and the lake with its water dancing with the flower with delight. In the end when he says that he was so delighted that he felt like he is dancing with them, we understand him and understand the beauty. We are not kept thinking how they are beautiful or what does he mean by becoming breathless from their beauty. Here it is related to the impact of poetry on the reader, it should leave him quite satisfied and content with what the writer has given to him.

Sometimes one image is capable of creating this content and satisfaction in the reader, because it creates in his mind many other images and sensations. Like when the poet gives the daffodils the golden color instead

of the yellow one, this leaves us quite sure of how beautiful they are, it would have been enough to just mention this image to satisfy the reader's imagination, but the poet goes on to describe the shining light and the dancing scene and this brings more satisfaction to the reader. He is defining poetry in a very poetic way.

3rd Axiom:
Poetry should be a natural talent, not exaggerated, and not faked, but natural like the leaves of the tree. The questions of satisfaction, exaggeration and singularity should not come to the poet's mind when writing, these question are only for the reader or the critic to ask, and for the poet everything should come naturally. The poet doesn't say to himself, I am going to write a poem and it should be sincere and not exaggerated and so on; his mind should work naturally.

Keats' 3 Axioms:
1. It should be excessive. 2. It should be complete. 3. It should be natural. ____________________________________________________________________

Poe: "I would define, in brief, the Poetry of words as The Rhythmical Creation of
Beauty. Its sole arbiter is Taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience, it has only collateral relations. Unless incidentally, it has no concern whatever with Duty or with Truth." There is a new element which enters poetry in this definition, which is Taste. Nobody talked about taste before, they talked about the beauty, the satisfaction, the completeness, the delight, and the naturalness of all these things, but they have never called them taste. Taste is something that cannot be defined, and that differs from one person to the other. It is

a very complex concept. It can be everything beautiful, and the lack of it can be the lack of anything beautiful within us. It is the sense of distinction between what is beautiful and what is ugly.

The Rhythmical Creation of Beauty : in rhythm there is movement, harmony, cadence and tempo, and there is that sense of beauty that takes all these things together. Like in dancing, if we say that the movement is rhythmical, that means the steps are moving in the right time. In poetry, using onesyllabic word is different from two-syllabic or three-syllabic words. In using one-syllabic words, we feel that the movement of the poem is quite light, and there is a kind of tempo: a harmony between the timing and the movement.

Here he is talking about time, movement and harmony all together. The creation of beauty when it is rhythmical, it means the movement is proper with time and they have harmony together. This is exactly what you see in the daffodils. It is written in four-feet verses, which is very good for the creation of movement. There is a kind of dancing in the poem, and it is an imitation of the dancing images in it.

An example in Arabic: " " It is what we say in Arabic. Harmony is when things go together to create beauty, that is when the movement, the rhythm, the timing, all goes together in harmony. If we take the word " " in Arabic, we can see how the letters are not harmonious together, and the word becomes ugly and even its meaning is unjust, which is not beautiful.

Its sole arbiter is Taste: the only assessment for its beauty is taste. With the Intellect or with the Conscience: what kind of relationship do we have between poetry and the intellect and the conscience? The intellect means reason, and the conscience means the truth. Plato punished the

poets because the poet makes beautiful of what is ugly. We know that poetry doesn't have to be truthful or reasonable to be acceptable, it has more to do with beauty. It has no concern whatever with Duty: the poet when he writes a poem, he thinks that his aim is to teach people. But he is saying here that the poet has no duty in that sense. or with Truth: Truth is something that we accept as probable. It is something moral too. Poe is saying that whatever the poet comes with as long as it is beautiful, it is enough. It doesn't have to be reasonable, or truthful, and doesn't have to teach us anything, as long as it is beautiful. Here we are heading toward a modern movement in the 19th century, which is Art for Art's Sake. It is far away from classicism, and different from what is said by the romantics.

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Dramatic Poetry Macbeth

Last week was maha's presentation which was abut classicism regarding poetry and she successfully applied its elements on epic. Today we will go further and talk about classicism in theatre and try to apply it on tragedy. Classical literature is the highest and most important kind of writing , which is a perfect model that the writers must imitate. Classicism in the theater was developed by 17the century French playwrights from what they judged to be the rules of Greek classical theater, which includes what is found in poetics of Aristotle "classical unities".

1- First, unity of time, that the entire action of the play takes place in 24 hours period and this is found in Macbeth and King Lear and other plays 2- Second, unity of place, which means that the action should unfold in a single location. a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography nor should the stage represent more than one place and this is seen in Anotny and Cleopatra, the story takes us to Africa and Europe alternatively. 3- Third, unity of action, means that the play should be constructed around a single plot, a play should have one main action that it follows with a few sub plot. The only Unity that has any reason in it, and "Unity of Action really is observed in all dramatic works."

This means that the interest of the play shall be one throughout. It may have more events than one, but the interest must not be divided; and any additional motive must be simply secondary, lying into the main purpose, and leading towards the general conclusion. Aristotle said that the play should take one revolution of the sun, which has been interpreted by neo-classists as 12, 24, or 36 hours (this is only about the actions on the stage). This also leads to the unity of place, because at that time in 12 or 24 hour you cannot go to different places. However, it can be taken from one room, into the street, then into the outskirts of the town, but not further than that, and not from town to town. He also said about the unity of action that it should have a unity of interest. That is if you have more than one action, the actions should be about the same thing. In King Lear, for example, we have two actions which work to strengthen, and highlight each other. While others said that there should be one action. Shakespeare did not consider any of the unties, and when he wrote comedies he integrated certain tragic scene and he did the same for tragedies. In Greek literature the tragedy is the serious story of a strong character of a

great hero who faces a painful destiny as a result of terrible events and bitter conflict. This makes us feel sad and our sadness comes from the tragic ending of the hero which leads to his downfall.

Aristotle defines tragedy as the imitation of an action that is serious and complete achieving a catharsis" hero's guilt that is purged rather than the audience's feeling terror" through incidents arousing pity and terror . E> so back to the definition :Aristotle indicates that the medium of tragedy is drama, not narrative; tragedy shows rather than tells. According to Aristotle, tragedy is higher and more philosophical than history because history simply relates to what has happened while tragedy dramatizes what may happen. The writer presents "incidents arousing pity and fear, to interpret its catharsis of such emotions" (by catharsis, Aristotle means a purging or sweeping away of the pity and fear aroused by the tragic action. Actulay because the tragic hero's suffering is greater than his offense, the audience feels pity; because the audience perceive that they could behave similarly, they feel pity. We will concentrate on poetry, and on our ideas about classicism. We will discuss the first scene according to what we have seen in the definition of poetry.
Act I

Thunder and lightning. Enter three WITCHES.

First Witch 1 When shall we three meet again? 2 In thunder, lightning, or in rain? Second Witch 3 When the hurlyburly's done, 4 When the battle's lost and won. Third Witch 5 That will be ere the set of sun. First Witch 6 Where the place?

Second Witch Upon the heath. Third Witch 7 There to meet with Macbeth. First Witch 8 I come, Graymalkin! Second Witch 9 Paddock calls. Third Witch 10 ALL 11 Fair is foul, and foul is fair: 12 Hover through the fog and filthy air. Anon.

Exeunt.

1. Imitation:
Is it an imitation of nature, or an imitation of another writer before him? We know that he has taken the story from a source book, but it is only the actions and not the poetry. Here we have three witches, and they are talking like real witches. There are some kind of supernatural characteristics about them. The language they speak is not the same as Lady Macbeth's or any other character. They talk in equivocations. Though the language they speak is the language of human beings, but the way their language is put, the choice of their words is what is different. The language itself bears the traces of the supernatural. So, there is an imitation of nature.

2. Propriety:
We have three witches talking together, and dancing in the same time, waiting for Macbeth. Most of the words here are one-syllabic words. The use of one-syllabic

words means the movement. They are waiting for an action to take place. There is a relationship between words and time, they are shorter and therefore taking shorter time. This is what the classists called the prosperity of words, actions and characters.

3. Reason:
According to the effect that the witches like to create, their language sounds very reasonable. They want to create confusion on the level of the actions, and so they create confusion on the level of language, which also creates confusion on the moral level. The effect is created, and we see reason here. We see them as reasonable witches, because we know how they are capable of evil and they act accordingly. So, it is probable and reasonable. This scene of confusion and disorder goes in harmony with the theme of the play.

4. Delighting and teaching:

For the first scene only as a separate work, we can find it delighting and teaching in the same time. When we read "fair is fowl and fowl is fair" we learn something about the witches. We are informed about how the witches work, and how these witches are not the characters to be followed.

5. Symmetry and Balance:

In fair/ fowl, lost/ won, there is symmetry and balance. There is symmetry in the length of lines, and there is balance of ideas, too. Even though the scene is short we can find many characteristics of classicism in it.

6. Nature:
Shakespeare's language is closer to nature, than to study. There is a study of the languages of the witches, and their equivocation. There must be a study of the witchcraft in order to understand how the witches talk or act; surely this cannot come naturally. So, there is a part of study and a part of nature here.

Blank Verse

Blank Verse is any verse comprised of unrhymed lines all in the same meter, usually iambic pentameter. It was developed in Italy and became widely used during the Renaissance because it resembled classical, unrhymed poetry. Marlowe's "mighty line," which demonstrated blank verse's range and flexibility, made blank verse the standard for many English writers, including both Shakespeare and Milton, and it remained a very practiced form up until the twentieth century when Modernism rebelled and openly experimented with the tradition. Regardless, blank verse was embraced by Yeats, Pound, Frost, and Stevens who skillfully brought the tradition through this century. While it may not be as common as open form, it retains an important role in the world of poetry. Blank verse can be composed in any meter and with any amount of feet per line (any line length), though the iamb is generally the predominant foot. Along with the iamb are 3 other standard feet and a number of variations that can be employed in a blank verse poem. It is difficult--almost impossible--to write a blank verse poem consisting of all iambs, and other types of feet get used more often than one may think. These are: 1. Iamb- two syllables, unstressed-stressed, as in "today". 2. Trochee- two syllables, stressed-unstressed, as in "standard". 3. Anapest- three syllables, unstressed-unstressed-stressed, as in "disengage" 4. Dactyl- three syllables, stressed-unstressed-unstressed, as in "probably". Variations include: 1. Headless Iamb or Tailess Trochee- one stressed syllable. Labeling the foot depends on where it is located in the line. 2. Spondee- two stressed syllables, as in "hot dog" 3. Amphibrach- three syllables, unstressed-stressed-unstressed, as in "forgetful" 4. Double Iamb- four sylalbles, unstressed-unstressed-stressed-stressed, as in "will you eat it?" A double iamb is counted as two feet.

We are not going to take the versification as far as that. But we need to take an idea about it: It was first used in drama, because it lends itself more to the action than the rhymed verse. It liberated the play from the difficulty and superficiality that is created by the rhymed verse. In the blank verse we have more freedom. It is closer to the natural speech, and more adaptable than the rhymed verse. Even the language itself becomes more active in this way.

With rhymed verse the poet may repeat himself or use less proper words just because they rhyme. It was very popular for dramatists, such as Marlow and Shakespeare. Dryden used to write in rhymed verse, then he realized the difficulty and linguistic obstruction of the use of rhymed verse in drama, and this is why he started to use and call for the use of blank verse in drama. The revival of the rhymed verse in drama came in the modern era with T. S. Eliot, but it failed and plays were not written in rhymed verse anymore.

So we can say that the blank verse is: 1. It is unrhymed. 2. It is mostly written in iambic pentameter (not always)

Next Time:
Shelley: "Ode to the Wind." We continue with the theories.