Hello again! Recent days, I took some times to read the chapter named Humanist Literary Theory. I got a lot of things through it. About four months ago, I have read it in the apartment of Heibei Normal University. In that days, I have not knew a lot about the knowledge of Aesthetics. So, I thought that this chapter was just some history of famous humanists. However, after I bought this book, I also bought another book named History of Western Aesthetics soon, which is writen by Zhu Guangqian, a famous Aesthetician in China. From this book, I knew the philosophical theory which come from Plato, Aristotle and so many philosophers first time. Also, I realized that this chapter is not history completely, however, it introduces main theory and thoughts in that period. When I reread this part, I have more new feelings than before.

Introduction for Humanist Literary Theory

Why do we need to learn Literary Theory? What is the value of Literary Theory? This question has discussed in last time. Actually, in school, teachers have already told us something about it. They said that literature, or art in general, makes us better human beings. We can use our brain to think about human values, dilemmas. Furthermore, it can help us understand the human condition. For some people, they do not care about this, or they do not believe that this place, such as literature, art, or humanities, can deal with these diffcult topics. Recently, I watch a American TV plays named The Big Bang Theory. Here are some actor’s lines frome Episode 15, Season 4. They are talking about a donate party:

-Or worse—it could go to the liberal arts.

-No.

-Millions of dollars being showered on poets, literary theorists and students of gender studies.

-Oh, the humanities!

As you see, some experts who work in other area, like physics, look down humanities. However, as we know, philosophers or other thinkers help people build government, give people the powerful thinking weapons to fight for their democracy and freedom. I have gotten carried away. I try to come back.

Humanism is a improtanta part in humanist theory. In broad phlisosphical terms, humanism is considered a world-view or perspective that rejects anthing supernatural as an explanation for existing pheonmena. As we know, western philosophy comes from science. In humanism, thinkers, philosophers, and scientists believe that we can explain everything in natural by human investigation and thought instend of some sort of divine spirit, like a god. And since ancient greece, they began trying to understand this world without reference to any kind of divine or extra-human power.

However, after Christ had died 300 years, the power of Christian church developed very rapidly. In medieval period, religion captured most of people. It also reigned over thought area. Until the Renaissance, people really released from religion. Dawn of humanism is marked the ending of medieval period and begining of Renaissance which is the flowering of art, literature, and so many other areas. During Renaissance, people rediscovered Greek and Roman calssical texts, rhetoric, logic, and mathematics as the basis of higher education. Now, historians claim that that period sparked a new era of thinking. And modern science and culture are based on it.

In this post, I would show you fourteen main humanists and basic assumptions of humanism. First, we will start with Plato.

Plato (c. 427-347 BCE)

In ancient greece, they have literature, but not literary theory, until Plato came along. Ancient Greek literature included epic, and dramatic poetry, comedy, and tragedy, and sone other-forms of storytelling. This forms were presented orally, so most of them cannot be seen nowadays. Similar as China, in that period, characters acted out human situations which could give a model for human behavior and interaction. In ancient Greece, natural knowledge was passed on via presentation, or representation by telling or acting out. Because they did not have literary theory, there was no way to distinguish between types of stories: between story, mythology, biography, and fiction.

Plato’s main point is rational thought. He believed that there was a rational world existing. For Plato, art, because it aroused emotions, could never be true. Story, potery, drama, because they appealed to their audiences’ emotions more than to their rational minds, became inferior methods for passing on cultural values, and demonstrating. Truth, for Plato, was just some eterally things which could only be apprehended. For instance, in mathematics, especially geometry, there are some perfect formulae which are gained forever.

Plato and all Platonic phliosophical systems thought that our world that we can perceive resided in forms that were eternal and unchangeing. They believed that our world which we can perceive with our physical senses, is just a illusion or reproduction of another realm, a more perfect world ,which is the world of ideal. In that world, everything has most perfect forms and never change. Everything in our world was merely copies of the forms that exist in the iedal realm. Because they are copies, so they are less perfect than their original forms.

Artists evoked emotions by making representations of world which we can perceive through our physical sense. For Plato, he thought that these works were copies of “nature”, which was called our world in Plato’s thoughts. Thus, art works are just a number of copies from copies. Comparing our world with art works, art works are least perfect things. Because these forms are the copies of copies, and excited feelings rather than reason, Plato worried that these forms, including literary art like poetry, drama, influences their audiences in irrational ways. Moreover, in his book Republic, he firmly banishes all poets as too dangrous to remain in his ideal society.

It is worth nothing, for future reference, that Plato establishes some of the most fundamental and influential and influential ideas in Western thought, ideas that structuralist and poststructuralist literary theorists wrestle with constantly.

–— Literary Theory:A Guide for The Perplexed,Humanist Literary Theory

Aristotle (384–322 BCE)

The another ancient Greek “founding father” of Western thought is Aristotle. He was the Plato’s student. Intrestingly, this special and great student opposed almost everything about his teacher, Plato’s thoughts. Plato was not intrested in literature, and his literary theory mainly was recorded in his book Republic. In contrast, Aristoto’s Poetics is the first full work in the Western tradition devoted specifically to literary criticism. To understannd Aristotle’s view on literary theory, it is useful to start by understanding how Aristotle understand “nature”, the material world.

Aristotle did not think that art forms are just an imitation or a reproduction of nature, of the world which we can perceive with our senses. Thus, art is not a inferior reproduction or copy of nature. However, he believe that art could prove our understanding of the world. Art does not lie, according this view, but reveals the “truth” in another way than rational deduction. In world-view, Aristotle admitted that reality is ever-changing. In contrast, Plato believed that the real world, ideal realm, is a static eternal world. For example, As a chair, Plato thought that in material world, chairs just have the forms, not the essence of chair. The essence of chair cannot be perceived by people dircetly, can only be understood through logical deduction. Neverthless, Aristotle considered that it was not the only way that we can know the essence of chair, the true meaning of chair, is through individual instances of chairs. In other words, for Aristotle, form exists only in the concerate examples of that form, not in some eternal iedal abstraction. Aristotle’s “truth” resides in discovering the rules an principles that govern how things work and take on meaning in our material world.

Aristotelian thoughts forms the foundation for science in Western phliosophy. Aristotle was intrested in observing specific phenomena and deducing from those observations the rules that govern how this kind of phenomena behave. Aristotle’s science desires to catelog and classify thie things of material world. He worked to discover simaritise and differences in form, and deduced the principles from this form. Simarily, Aristotle treats poetry, and all forms of art, that he is fascinated by developing systematic categories through which to classify these forms.

For Aristotle, art does not just imitate nature. For example, when artist or poet draw a picture or write a poem to decribe something, like a tree, or a river, they do not noly imitate the tree or river, however, they create or re-present them. Aristotle’s artist is not just an imitator, but also a creator, and this ability to create gives aritsts a more important role in Aristotle’s world than the suspect on they have in Plato’s Republic. In ancient China, poet and painter also paid attention on this. They believed that poem or painting need to express their emotions in these works. Just imitating would be considered inferior. They also believed that these works do not describe the real things, and poet always liked give some characters to the objects which he wrote.

Plato and Aristotle, these great teacher and student, made great difference in Western philosophy, Aesthetics, and literary theory. After these two about 1000 years, people all followed Plato and Aristotle’s step.