The document traces the major theories of poetry from Plato to the modern era. It discusses Plato's attack on poetry and drama, Aristotle's defense of poetry in Poetics, Sidney and Dryden upholding poetry, Johnson arguing poetry should instruct through pleasure. Wordsworth introduced poetry reflecting common life and emotions. Eliot developed the impersonal theory of poetry. Later approaches included moral, psychological, sociological, formalistic and archetypal analysis. The document ends noting the shift to post-structuralism, new historicism, postcolonialism, feminism, and the current post-truth era.

1. From Plato to Post-Truth:
A Paradigm Shift in
Theory

2. Plato
• “Theory of Ideas”
• “Mimesis”
• Attack on Poetry: Poetic Inspiration, Emotional Appeal, Lack of Poetic
Justice
• Function of poetry
• Attack on Drama: Baser Instinct, Impersonation, Tragic/comic
pleasure

3. Aristotle
• Poetics
• Poet as Imitator
• History vs. Poetry
• Function of Poetry
• Reply to plato: Emotional appeal
• What is tragedy? Structure? Length? Parts of tragedy?
• Plot, character, thought, diction, music, and spectacle.
• Structure of plot

4. Philip Sidney
• Upholds poetry in Apology for Poetry
• Waste of time – virtue
• Mother of lie – higher truth
• Nurse of abuse (wit) –
• Plato rightly banished poetry
• Function of poetry – Tragic-comedy – unrhymed classical metres

5. Dryden
• Upholds modern drama
• An Essay of Dramatic Poesy
• Lively imitation gives pleasure
• Function of poetry: delight and transport
• Neither teacher nor imitator but creator

6. Johnson
• Historical Estimate
• Instruct (truth) by pleasing
• Preface to Shakespeare
• Kinds of poetry : epic, pastoral, Pindaric ode
• Rhyme is essential
• Diction: neither familiar nor too remote

7. Wordsworth
• New type of poetry
• Preface to Lyrical Poetry (1800)
• Concept of poetry
• “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin
from emotion recollected in tranquillity”
• How to write poetry?
•“was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate
or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible, in a selection of
language really used by men; and, at the same time, to throw over them a
certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be
presented to the mind in an unusual way(defemiliarization);” and tracing
the primary laws of our nature in the poetry.

8. Poetic Diction
• Low and rustic life was generally chosen, because in that condition,
the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they
can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer
and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our
elementary feelings co-exist in a state of greater simplicity, and,
consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more
forcibly communicated;

9. Mathew Arnold
• Poetry
• His Classicism
• Grand Style : Homer, Milton, Dante
• Criticism of life
• Touchstone Method

10. T.S.Eliot
• Drama, poetry
• Impersonal Theory of Poetry
• Objective Correlative
• Tradition
• Dissociation of sensibility

11. Five Approaches
• Moral Approach
• Psychological Approach
• Sociological Approach
• Formalistic Approach
• Archetypal Approach

12. Formalism
• Mark Schorer - From Technique as Discovery
• Roman Jakobson - “Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of
Aphasic Disturbances”

13. Structuralism/Poststructuralism
• Jonathan Culler – “Structuralism and Literature”
• Roland Barthes – “The Death of the Author”

14. New Historicism
• Stephen Greenblatt - “Resonance and Wonder”

15. Postcolonialism
• Edward Said - “Introduction” in Orientalism
• Homi Bhabha - “Introduction” in Location of Culture

16. Feminism
• Sandra Gilbert & Susan Gubar – excerpts from The Madwoman in the
Attic
• Simone de Beauvoir - “Woman as the Other” from The Second Sex

17. Post-Truth Era