I'm not "supporting a position". I'm suggesting a possibility, a way
of looking at something, responding to cris cheek's query, offering a
hypothesis. Nor do I understand your (rhetorical?) question. I thought
the analogy I was suggesting was fairly simple.
The analogy is between a cultural impulse which has lost its real purpose
in society (medieval knighthood) and an artistic activity which is unsure
of its role in society (poetry). The hypothesis is that the symptoms for
both will be similar - self-conscious, ironically detached & solipsistic
artificiality. Postmodernism - specifically as characterized in the
Stallabrass quote cris offered for comment - and late-medieval chivalry -
as described in Huizinga's book - seem to share these symptoms. That's
all I was saying. I'm not arguing that these are the ONLY characteristics
of contemporary poetry, by any means. They represent trends in poetics/
theory - a symbiosis of style & literary criticism which is mutually
supportive.
Henry
>A bizarre way to support a position. To turn this strange analogy around,
>are you saying that the best "self-conscious postmodernism" can produce is
>flamboyant gothic cathedrals?
>
>At 08:23 AM 10/5/2000 EDT, you wrote:
>>I've been reading the new translation of Huizinga's book "Autumn of the
>>Middle Ages" (known to countless history undergrads as "The Waning of the
>>Middle Ages"). He writes much about medieval pageantry, the pervasive
>>"beautification of life" through popular ritual & the dreams of chivalry
>>& nobility, as a sort of middle path between the modern sense of practical
>>social progress & the traditional unworldly asceticism of religion.
>>He talks about how in the late Middle Ages the chivalric forms were
>>still active but had become very self-conscious & artificial -
>>elaborate shells of past orders.
>>
>>Cris's quote here makes me wonder if there is a parallel to the
>>self-conscious postmodernism so characterized. If doubt is cast
>>on the purposes of poetry in the culture at large, then artistic forms
>>might tend to display a solipsistic, ironic artifice as an end in itself.
>>
>>But the role of the poet has always been to give life to dead letters.
>>
>>Henry
>>
>>
>
>
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