Poetic presence and illusion : essays in critical history and theory

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Poetic presence and illusion : essays in critical history and theory

Murray Krieger

Johns Hopkins University Press, c1979

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Orignally published in 1979. Poetic Presence and Illusion brings together Krieger's speculation on literature and its effect on the reader. The poem, Krieger argues, is an illusionary presence and an ever-present illusion. It exists for the reader, like a drama before an audience, only within an illusionary context. But the illusion should not be taken lightly as a false substitute for reality. It is itself a real and positive force: it is what we see and, as such, is constitutive of our reality, even if our critical faculty de-constitutes that reality by viewing it as no more than an illusion. The coupling of poetic presence and poetic illusion serves to describe the relationship between poetry as metaphor and the reader's sense of personal and poetic reality. Krieger examines the workings of selected Renaissance and contemporary poems with regard to this dual nature and evaluates the work of literary critics (himself included) who have been concerned with this doubleness. Poetic Presence and Illusion allows readers who have read Krieger's earlier work to understand the development of his critical position.

Table of Contents

  • Preface Acknowledgments Part I. Critical History Chapter 1. Poetic Presence and Illusion I: Renaissance Theory and the Duplicity of Metaphor Chapter 2. Jacopo Mazzoni, Repository of Diverse Critical Traditions or Source of a New One? Chapter 3. Shakespeare and the Critic's Idolatry of the Word Chapter 4. Fiction, Nature, and Literary Kinds in Johnson's Criticism of Shakespeare Chapter 5. "Trying Experiments upon Our Sensibility": The Art of Dogma and Doubt in Eighteenth-Century Literature Chapter 6. The Critical Legacy of Matthew Arnold
  • or, The Strange Brotherhood of T. S. Eliot, I. A. Richards, and Northrop Frye Chapter 7. Reconsideration-The New Critics Chapter 8. The Theoretical Contributions of Eliseo Vivas Chapter 9. The Tragic Vision Twenty Years After Part II. Critical Theory Chapter 10. Poetic Presence and Illusion II: Formalist Theory and the Duplicity of Metaphor Chapter 11. Literature vs. Ecriture: Constructions and Deconstructions in Recent Critical Theory Chapter 12. Literature as Illusion, as Metaphor, as Vision Chapter 13. Theories about Theories about Theory of Criticism Chapter 14. A Scorecard for the Critics Chapter 15. Literature, Criticism, and Decision Theory Chapter 16. Mediation, Language, and Vision in the Reading of Literature Chapter 17. Literary Analysis and Evaluation-and the Ambidextrous Critic Index of Names

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