Alison, I especially enjoy that quotation from Aristotle. Having studied his
aesthetics so intensively, particularly with respect to music (one of my
dual majors undergrad), I found much to consider there. Thanks! Sheila
On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 4:59 PM, Alison Croggon <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Aristotle said - intriguingly, I think - that plot was the "argument"
> of a play. Which is not quite how people conventionally think of
> narrative...
>
> On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 8:11 AM, Douglas Barbour
> <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > Well, it's unending because people get so confused, Jon. And far too many
> > end p discussing only what they perceive t be 'meaning' or something,
> which
> > ends up being content -- because they're dis-content?
> >
> > I agree that the dichotomy form/content does nothing except start
> arguments
> > unending(ly).
> >
> > I like your take on style/form, although I suspect it might start as many
> > arguments once we try to get down to details, especially as to who works
> the
> > beat best. On the other hand, perhaps I have learned so much from Pound
> only
> > at what you're calling the style level, in the micro-, not the macro-cosm
> of
> > his work; not sure about that. What bothers me is that limiting, I think,
> > factor 'plot' which you introduced.
> >
> > Alison is right, it's so much easier to get away from teh problem in
> music
> > or visual art....
> >
> > We're domed to work with words....
> >
> > Doug
> > On 8-Apr-09, at 5:18 PM, Jon Corelis wrote:
> >
> >> Two comments orthogonal to how this unending aesthetic dispute is
> >> usually considered:
> >>
> >> 1) The argument about the relationship between poetic form and
> >> content assumes that a poem is an utterance, that is, essentially an
> >> utterance and not some other sort of thing which uses utterance.
> >> Today this means a text. A text consists of what is being said, which
> >> is its content, and how it is being said, which is its form.
> >> Aristotle, however, conceived of a poem not as an utterance but as an
> >> action. From this viewpoint, the distinction between form and content
> >> disappears: the poem's action is not a linguistic one but a mental
> >> and emotional enactment (existing at the boundary of the conscious and
> >> unconscious, though A. couldn't have put it that way) which is
> >> expressed by utterance. Talking about the content of a poem makes as
> >> little sense as talking about the content of a religious ritual. Or
> >> to put it another way, it's like trying to separate the dancer from
> >> the dance.
> >>
> >> 2) Which brings us designedly to Yeats, who in a famous passage in
> >> his introduction to The Oxford Book of Modern Poetry said that Pound
> >> had more style than anyone, but more style than form. Yeats seems to
> >> be talking about a different fundamental dichotomy than form and
> >> content: what could the relationship between form and style be? I
> >> think the clue might be to consider the issue in visual arts. Take a
> >> drawing: the way the lines look is the style, and the way the picture
> >> looks is the form. (This suggests why Pound's verse is so impressive
> >> examined through a magnifying glass and so frustrating viewed at arm's
> >> length.) In poetry, form would be what the poem does (its enactment
> >> or Aristotelian plot) and style would be how it communicates what it
> >> does -- a distinction which seems to me more useful to contemplate
> >> than the posthumously abused equine of form/content.
> >>
> >> --
> >> ===============================================
> >>
> >> Jon Corelis http://jcorelis.googlepages.com/joncorelis
> >>
> >> ===============================================
> >>
> >
> > Douglas Barbour
> > [log in to unmask]
> >
> > http://www.ualberta.ca/~dbarbour/ <http://www.ualberta.ca/%7Edbarbour/>
> >
> > Latest books:
> > Continuations (with Sheila E Murphy)
> > http://www.uap.ualberta.ca/UAP.asp?LID=41&bookID=664
> > Wednesdays'
> >
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-from-aboveground-press_10.html
> >
> > The covers of this book are too far apart.
> >
> > Ambrose Bierce
> >
>
>
>
> --
> Editor, Masthead: http://www.masthead.net.au
> Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
> Home page: http://www.alisoncroggon.com
>
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