The Humanities Index

Notes on Arnold’s “Modern Literature”

Gerald Lucas — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:51:30 +0000

‘Arnold attempts in this speech, “On the Modern Element in Literature,” a “general survey of classical literature” in an effort to deliver his age from its current imperfection, i.e., to comprehend man’s present and past. He suggests that for an epoch to be great, it must have a significant spectacle to contemplate and one who [...]

Arnold’s Disinterested Critic

Gerald Lucas — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:40:12 +0000

Matthew Arnold, in his “The Function of Criticism at the Present Time,” examines the role of the critic in society and the idea that the “critical power” is of lower rank than the “creative power” (260). He suggests that the critic, before s/he puts pen to paper, must inquire of his or her motivations: what [...]

Shelley’s Defense of Poetry

Gerald Lucas — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 15:05:26 +0000

Reason is the enumeration of quantities already known; imagination is the perception of the value of those quantities, both separately and as a whole.

On Kant’s “Aesthetic Judgment”

Gerald Lucas — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:38:00 +0000

The only thing that would be more ponderous and difficult than trudging through Kant’s prose in his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment would be attempting to put his aesthetic philosophy found within to the test. Kant delivers a paucity of practical examples to make his recondite and ostensibly inconsistent abstractions all the more difficult to assimilate. [...]

Plato Revisited: Augustine’s Confessions

Gerald Lucas — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 13:49:37 +0000

Generally speaking, Augustine’s Confessions seems to be a reworking of Plato’s metaphysics in relation to a Christian cosmology. Augustine speaks of the dichotomy between the body and the soul, the falseness of rhetoric, memory, sublimity, and desire. In addressing oratory, Augustine recalls Plato’s Gorgias and its subject matter inspired by rhetoric: Truth and the human [...]

Plato’s Republic, Book X Notes

Gerald Lucas — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:31:51 +0000

In Book X of the Republic, Plato states: “all poetical imitations are ruinous to the understanding of the hearers, and that the knowledge of their true nature is the only anidote to them.” Plato believed that imitation of sensible objects removed the poet, and the observer, from truth and reality by inspiring [...]

Aristotle’s Poetics of Purging

Gerald Lucas — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:02:08 +0000

The two concepts “imitation” and “pity and fear” are at the heart of Aristotle’s Poetics.

Plato’s Phaedrus: Talk of Love

Gerald Lucas — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:05:04 +0000

Phaedrus addresses rhetoric and right living and closes with a discussion of writing -- all springing from the topic of love.

Revenge Tragedy

Nancy Bunker — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:49:00 +0000

Revenge tragedy depicts a son’s revenge for a father’s murder (or vice versa). The murder is revealed and directed to the protagonist by the murdered man’s ghost. Revenge results from conscious and focused action.

Neoclassicism: Major Ideas

Gerald Lucas — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:27:40 +0000

The following are major ideas held by conservative writers and thinkers of Neoclassicism.