LCT JOURNAL 2020
To Handle the Truth; the transition in the representation of truth from between the Neoclassicist and Romantic eras Sanghoon Oh
W
hile the notion of truth is a fluid principle in it of itself, its representation is one that presents itself with equal fluidity. When comparing the topics focused by the Neoclassical and Romantic literary movements, it may appear that the former was dedicated to giving voice universal truths, whereas the latter seems keen on displaying subjective truths. As popular as this distinction is, even by its contemporaries, I hope to show that this is a false dichotomy between the two eras; the apparent shift in the philosophical paradigm of the Neoclassicists to the Romantics was due to a shift in the representative modes of literature, particularly in the changes in literary conventions, as both eras strived towards the same universal truths albeit in different forms. When comparing the Neoclassicists to the Romantics, it seems the two hold fundamentally different philosophical views of the truth. For the Neoclassicists, a poem’s greatness comes out of the poem’s independence from its creator. Such a sentiment can be found in Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Criticism,, a poem/essay which embodies many of the poetic opinions of its Criticism time. Lines like “those rules of old discovered, not devised/ Are nature still, but Nature methodized” (lines 88-89) indicates that the structure of poems are not the products of human creation, but the product of nature manifesting in the poet. To put differently, rather than recognizing truths in the world, the poet merely gives acts as a vessel for nature to speak its own truths. Consequently, if all worthy poems are instances of nature’s formalist conventions, then the truths embodied by the poetic works are embodiments of nature itself, giving the truths of a poem a universal scope. By this assessment, poetic worth is determined by the accuracy of the writing in embodying literary conventions, as these rules of nature are both the criteria for the creation and assessment of a poem. While Pope does acknowledge the presence of natural geniuses (lines 9-11), particularly the likes of Virgil and Homer, he believes that their genius comes from being able to access different parts of nature through previously
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