A bird's nest by a pier

The New Criticism and Other Western Formalisms Introduction to Theory of Literature Professor Paul Fry

The lecture starts off considering what happens when we apply anachronistic understanding of words to a poem. It is an attempt to make the poem contemporary but maybe not the most elegant way to do so. However, his criteria for it to work is that what ever happens in the contemplation of a poem has to fit with the idea trying to be realized rather than an arbitrary trait to fixate on.

The following parts of the lecture deal with this effort to realize meaning but in a way that is palatable as well as intellectual. This comes out of two fashions of literary criticism--one which focuses strictly on what the author wrote the poem about and then a fashion in which one is wildly excited about poetry but has little details to share.   

A systematic approach was developed as physiology was added into consideration and extending the criticism to authorial intention and the psychological needs one has when approaching literature. But as science sticks its head into the humanities we see some predictable things start to happen. First the idea that plato has about poets being liars reoccurs. Science being preoccupied with truth has trouble with the fumes that vent up and are giving shape from the unconscious.

It is strange fascination because they are come to the point where they deny poems exist but then say poems fulfil urges in our psyche that have tensions and these tension can be resolved with poetic thinking and not scientific thinking. But there is also scepticism to this resolution and perhaps art is not this method to moderate the creaks of the soul but just to express them as they are in a way that lets us know they are there.

P. 30-42 Ulysses James Joyce

Stephen is now at work teaching and most of the children are lawless. The subject matter is a general who has victories but with heavy casualties. The discussion digresses into a metaphor about a dock being a disappointed bridge.

This section is still as tense as the last one. The children are just as disrespectful to his viewpoints as he was to his mother's religion. And the only child who takes him seriously as a teacher is a student who is struggling. Stephen feels a likeness to this child as well.

There is also another theme about money which causes conflict just as it did with the milk. This time it is a discussion between a coworker who is anti-semetic.

There is also a sense of swirling themes from looking to pagan connectedness with nature, the pious love of a mother, and people behaving like Nietzsche. The themes swirl but do not resolve into one another and my guess is they exist because they are subjects the author is interested in.