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This study delves into the multifaceted relationship between polemic and literature as examined in Dr. Stephen Ogden's LIBS 7023 course. It explores the nature of art, the aesthetic qualities that distinguish novels from non-fiction, and the role of imagination in literature. By analyzing Lionel Trilling's insights and the principles of literary criticism, the course critiques didactic and discursive writing, advocating for a balance between instructing and delighting the reader. Essential questions of freedom, reliability, and aesthetic appreciation guide this insightful exploration.
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Approaches to Study Dr. Stephen Ogden LIBS 7023
Polemic and Literature • The problem of Art – • The environment of Art is Beauty • How can polemic be beautiful? • What separates a novel from a non-fiction work? • Is it just plot, characters, setting – i.e. elements of fiction – or does art have a entirely different quiddity: quality, element, nature? • Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination
Approaches to Study Polemical • Greek, “Polemos” = “War” • OED: Polemic: a strong verbal or written attack on a person, opinion, doctrine, etc. • Polemic is one type of rhetoric: put in plain English, intended to defeat an enemy with words. As a bellicose form of writing, the object is Victory, not Truth. • Polemic, as an aspect of writing, is a techne: and so is able to be learned by method.
Polemic: absolutist language Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation “Can we even conceive of a project more intellectually forlorn than [Christianity]?” “How can any educated person think this anything but a hilarious, terrifying, and unconscionable waste of time?”
Approaches to Study • Polemic • Absolute • Final • Certainty • Implied Intolerance • Dialectic • Relative –the second idea is a partner • Developing • Doubt • Implied humility: (“two sides to a story”) • Possible unknowns • Possible errors
Lionel Trilling • Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination. • The quality of Imagination separates art from didactic (“teaching”) or discursive (“reasoning”) writing. • Literature – novels, drama, poetry -- is in the realm of Art, and art has its own nature and function. • Imagination creates a virtual experience of an abstract idea – a world with no God, for example – which reveals potential actual effects of ideas.
Polemic and Literature, con’t Dialogic novel • An artistic method – a means of applying literary imagination – which puts ideas in equal dialectic within a novel through use of character, dialogue, and even setting. • Heteroglossia—”multiplicity of voices” • The reader makes his or her own decision about the strongest or most appealing idea • Anti-authoritarian • Allows Free Will to the reader.
Polemic and Literature, con’t • To a dialogical understanding of fiction, Polemic is inartistic: i.e. the more obviously and insistently a novel teaches, or even preaches, the less artistic it is. • Didactic: designed to teach or preach. • An artistic question—balance needed between “instructing” and “delighting” • Questions are: • freedom of the reader • Reliability of the text.
Principles of Literary Criticism: C.T. Winchester (1912) • Art Criticism: “the intelligent appreciation of any work of art and a just estimate of its worth and rank.” • Taste: “the power to appreciate (or faculty of appreciation) the æsthetic qualities of any work of art.” • Literary Criticism: “concerned only with the art of literature, but general nature of criticism is the same whether the subject be literature, painting, sculpture, music.”
