File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_2000/phillitcrit.0009, message 23


Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 19:26:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: Howard Hastings <hhasting-AT-osf1.gmu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: The classical, the romantic


On Wed, 13 Sep 2000, David Langston wrote:

> 
> On Sun, 10 Sep 2000, Louis F Caton wrote:
> 
> > And we need difference to be substantial 
> > in order to discuss with a sense of sharpness and distinction.
> 
> If that is true -- and I am far from convinced it is -- then discussions
> of the differences between the terms, "Neo-Classical,"  "Classical," and
> "Romantic," or "Romanticism"  will end in tangled confusion every time. 
> These terms revolve around each other, and poets and philosophers have
> each defined them over against one another to to stake out their own
> positions.

The problem arises when such terms are treated as essential,
transhistorical categories. The confusion is greatly minimized if one
takes historical context and national tradition into account.
 
> I suppose it is obvious that the terms don't carry the same meaning across
> contexts, and deciding whether _Young Man Werther_ is Romantic or
> Classical obliges the maker of the categories to decide on a whole
> basketload of related matters.

Deciding on those related matters is what historicizes the terms and the
project of understanding literary and cultural history.
 
> The touchstone for me is to compare epistemologies (the poetics of each
> position) and to sidestep questions of form, genre, nationality, or
> "period style,"  until the root position on "mind" and "how we are to know
> the world" has been well understood.  Undertaking those operations usually
> means that slogans and classification schemes are only hindrances at
> first. 

DAvid, is it possible to compare epistemologies while sidestepping
"questions of form, genre, nationality or period style"?  THis does not
seem to me self-evidently so.

> Another mistake, I believe, is to assume that these terms reveal anything
> meaningful about historical sequence, or worse, supercession.  I don't
> think they do.

When treated as essentialist categories, perhaps not.  But if there is
"historical sequence" or "supercession" then there ought to be some terms
for describing that.  Seems to me that the comparative epistemology you
value would complement rather than contest literary historical categories.

 hh
.....................................................................



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