"The art of persuasion was thus perfectly consonant with the art of poetry" (792).
I haven't gotten entirely through the Locke reading as of right now, but where I'm at right now, I'm jiving with. And yes I'm going to stick with that diction. The words don't matter anyway, right? I particularly like the quote, "one man's complex idea seldom agrees with another's, and often differs from his own - from that which he had yesterday, or will have tomorrow" (818). This is an extremely poetic thought, is it not? If you can't depend on words to convey feeling, you must depend on images and style and sound and how the imagination evolves. And that's poetry.
The idea corresponds well with the introduction which discusses a new definition, "rhetoric applies reason to the imagination to move the will" (793). The imagination step is the process which muddles the definition of words because it's where personal interpretation can be applied. This same idea coincides again with the new application of rhetoric for literary analysis. Rhetoric as a logic tool is finally being applied to imaginative and creative discourse, and that creative discourse is finally being considered as relevant to logic and persuasion. I AM SO EXCITED. How about that Enlightenment, eh?
But I'm sorry, I'm getting off track.
I want to consider something: sort of chicken and the egg. In the Classical section, the existence of writing and its growing popularity seemed to drive its cultural force and thus evolved the idea on writing once we reached Quintilian. Now, is the existence and greater prominence of literature and poetry requiring its consideration in rhetoric? Would it be too much and too blind to continue ignoring poets at a point when they're more visible? But why did they become more visible? Was it because rhetoric considered them or did they come first?
Or was it, as Locke might assert, simply because words were less reliable? "The very nature of words makes it almost unavoidable for many of them to be doubtful and uncertain in their significance" (817). Perhaps people in this time are less dependent on logic, more inspired by imagination.
I agree that the admission that words can have many different significations to different people has interesting implications for poetry. In a realm where sound and imagination and the like are of the upmost importance, words that have different meanings can be used to make a nevertheless significant impact. But I don't think Locke gives a jot about poetry. In fact, he seems quite hostile in relation to the creative arts, as shown when he argues that a man's fantastical imaginations "may fill his discourse, and perhaps another man's head, with the fantastical imaginations of his own brain, but will be very far from advancing thereby one jot in real and true knowledge" (Locke 826 9.30). Locke's frustration is focused on the problems that uncertain significations pose for the philosophical and logical thinker, and art forms like poetry don't help him reach the simplification and clarity in language that he desires.
ReplyDeleteI think that Locke's acknowledgment but ultimate dismissal of the fantastical imagination is quite interesting, especially when viewed in connection to the geographic differences in the application and discussion of rhetorical forms that was going on at the time. While people like Locke were closeted away in England bemoaning the lack of clarity in language, the French were hanging out on the mainland forging connections between rhetoric and artistic forms (Bizzell and Herzberg 797). Perhaps this is where we are going to see the big split between scientific methodology and the arts that persists in some cases even to this day, as English majors argue with engineers about whether the arts are really as important as we claim.
After taking Literary Criticism and comparing it to this course, like Nathaniel, I too am skeptical about Locke's "jot about poetry". I was actually waiting for us to read through Sir Philip Sidney during the Renaissance period, who uses rhetoric on a view powerful level while defending poetry. I found him very interesting and was excited to tackle his text from a rhetorical perspective, rather than literary. While I'm on the literary topic, I picture Locke as a Reader Response Theory kind of guy. Since the use of words is up for so many different levels of interpretation, across cultures, languages, and every individual. It mostly hangs upon the reader's interpretation and imagination of words. Granted, the writer chooses which words are to be used, but the meaning will change on every reading of the text.
ReplyDeleteAs from a rhetorical perspective, I believe Locke has great points. Words establish credibility, evoke pathos, and illuminate effective logo. It's as if they are the backbone behind all the faculties and parts of rhetoric. This is most likely why we see rhetoric effective to different audiences. Take, for example, science writing—if done by a scientist, the language is deep, complex, and seems to only be decipherable to professionals. When done by journalists, the complexities are brought down to a different level for the reader's benefit. Word choice drives this change almost completely.