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| Dr. Joe addressing our students on Theory |
The first part of Dr.Joe's lecture was on traditional criticism,
and the second part was an overview of the theoretical
underpinnings of modern and contemporary literary theory.
Excerpts from his lecture:
Literary History is an irreconcilable binary of theory. M. H.
Abrams who is the Father figure of Liberal Humanism, in his famous work The Mirror and the Lamp, brings out the
four coordinates of criticism corresponding with four theories.
The first coordinate relates to the primacy of the Universe
as the source (or fountainhead) of literature. It was Plato who first talked about the mimetic theory in literature.
The word Mimesis is a Greek word meaning imitation. The world that we look
around is not real. There is an ideal world – a prototype. So, writers imitate this world (the prototype).
Hence,
according to Plato, art is twice removed from reality. His student Aristotle
also spoke aout the mimetic theory of literature, but there was a difference. While
Plato talks about imitation as a servile imitation,
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