Review of Related Studies

their special character, their accent, is given by their diction, and, even yet more, by their movement. In the best poetry, these two aspects, form and matter, are vitally interrelated. One cannot exist without the other. p.60 b Poetic Diction, A Study in Meaning Owen Barfield Barfield conceives the history of thought and language in the race and in the individual as the progressive alienation of consciousness from the unity of life and mind – the displacement of the concrete, the synthetic, the poetical by the analytic, the abstract, the prosaic. Poets are individuals who possess in a high degree the power of imaginative synthesis, and the ability to express and communicate their imaginative experience in words. The device used to achieve this end are known as poetic diction. The principal device is metaphor. For the reader of hearer poetry has two values: 1 the pleasure of appreciation; 2 knowledge of wisdom. Appreciation and its pleasure involve a “felt change of consciousness”; that is, the change from prosaic to poetical awareness. Appreciation takes place at the exact moment of change. It lives during that prosaic consciousness is indispensable. Without it there can be no “felt change. ” Barfield maintains the paradox that the modern imagination appreciates Homer more than Homer’s contemporaries, just because the modern age is more prosaic than the age of Hom er, and the “felt change” is greater. The wisdom or knowledge communicated by poetry, the expansion of our intimate, immediate awareness of concrete reality, is poetry’s permanent value. p.60 c Poetry’s Sake, in Oxford Lectures on Poetry A.C. Bradley “Poetry for poetry’s sake” means: 1 that the poetic experience has an intrinsic value; 2 that its poetic value is this intrinsic worth alone. Bradley adds 3 that poetic value is lowered by the consideration of ulterior non-poetic ends in the creation or appreciation of poetry this is not necessarily implied in the formula. Such ends tend to make of poetry a part or copy of the real world. But it is the nature of the poetry to be “a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomo us.” The real connection between poetry and practical life is “underground.” Poetry and life are parallel, analogous manifestations of man’s striving for perfection. The values of real life enter the realm of poetry above ground only as aspects of the real world which poetic imagination, they are indeed mighty powers in the world of poetry. The poem is “a resonant meaning, or a meaning resonance.” Poetic value lies in the total experience. Bradley explains the creative impulse through the necessity of form to the realization of poetic meaning. p.61