Q. Describe the influence of Mathew Arnold upon T. S. Eliot.

The "eternal objects of poetry" are actions: "human actions; possessing an inherent interest in themselves."
The poet must not deal with the outer circumstances of a man's life, but with the "inward man; with [his] feelings and behavior in certain tragic
situations."
Criticism prepares the way for great poetry by "see[ing] the object as in itself it really is."
Criticism strips away political agendas and makes "an intellectual situation of which the creative power can profitably avail itself."
"For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not
enough without the moment."
Criticism's primary quality is to be disinterestedness.
The law of criticism's being is "the idea of a disinterested endeavor to learn and propagate the best that is known and thought in the world."
For a poem to be of real quality, it must possess both a "higher truth" and a "higher seriousness."
Matthew Arnold (1822-1888), the Victorian poet and critic, was 'the first modern critic', and could be called 'the critic's critic', being a champion not
only of great poetry, but of literary criticism itself. The purpose of literary criticism, in his view, was 'to know the best that is known and thought in
the world, and by in its turn making this known, to create a current of true and fresh ideas', and he has influenced a whole school of critics including
new critics such as T. S. Eliot, F. R. Leavis, and Allen Tate. He was the founder of the sociological school of criticism, and through his touchstone
method introduced scientific objectivity to critical evaluation by providing comparison and analysis as the two primary tools of criticism.
Arnold's evaluations of the Romantic poets such as Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats are landmarks in descriptive criticism, and as a poet-
critic he occupies an eminent position in the rich galaxy of poet-critics of English literature.
T. S. Eliot praised Arnold's objective approach to critical evaluation, particularly his tools of comparison and analysis, and Allen Tate in his essay
Tension in Poetry imitates Arnold's touchstone method to discover 'tension', or the proper balance between connotation and denotation, in poetry.
These new critics have come a long way from the Romantic approach to poetry, and this change in attitude could be attributed to Arnold, who
comes midway between the two schools.
For Arnold, the "eternal objects of poetry" are actions: "human actions; possessing an inherent interest in themselves." Those actions are "most
excellent . . . which most powerfully appeal to the great primary human affections." Arnold believes that there is an elementary and shared part of
human nature--"our passions." "That which is great and passionate is eternally interesting . . . A great human action of a thousand years ago is more
interesting . . . than a smaller human action of today." In keeping with this necessity to appeal to human passion, the poet must not deal with the
outer circumstances of a man's life, but with the "inward man; with [his] feelings and behavior in certain tragic situations." Arnold regarded the
classical poets as superior to the moderns in this respect: the classical poets emphasized "the poetical character of the action in itself," while the
moderns emphasize "the separate thoughts and images which occur in the treatment of an action." The classical authors "regarded the whole." The
moderns "regard the parts." Arnold also prefers the simplicity of classical poetic language to the "overcuriousness of expression" found in
Shakespeare, who "appears in his language to have tried all styles except that of simplicity."

Q.3 “Arnold’s assessment of different poets is strongly influenced by his moral bias.” Do you agree?

Q. Do you think Arnold shows his moral bias while assessing Chaucer, Milton and Wordsworth?

Q.4 Who is a classic in Arnold’s opinion? Discuss his assessment of different poets in this regard.

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Q. 1 Write a note on Eliot’s doctrine of impersonality in poetry.

Eliot develops his theory of the impersonality of poetry. He compares the mind of the poet to a catalyst and the process of poetic creation to the
process of a chemical reaction. Just as chemical reactions take place in the presence of a catalyst alone, so it same happens with the poet’s mind.
The mind of the poet is like the catalytic agent. The mind of the poet is constantly forming emotions and experiences into new wholes, but the new
combination does not contain even a hint of the poet’s mind, just as the newly formed sulphurous acid does not contain any sign of platinum.
Eliot says, “….the more perfect the artist, the more completely separate in him will be the man who suffers and the mind which creates.” So, the
personality of the poet does not find expression in his poetry; it acts like a catalytic agent in the process of poetic composition. The main aspect of
this theory is the relation of poetry with the poet. Eliot says:
“Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.”
Eliot says that in most of the criticisms, we find the name & the creativity of poet, but when we seek for enjoyment of poetry we seldom
get it. In this part Eliot says that the difference between mature and immature poets can be found out by liberty of special and very varied feelings
that can enter into new combinations.
Eliot gives illustration from science-chemistry. In the process of being sulfurous acid; there are two gases needed: oxygen and sulfur dioxide. And
also they must have the presence of filament ‘platinum’. He compares this platinum with the poet. In this whole process filament of platinum plays
vital and inevitable role. But yet that role is indirect. In the process platinum remains quite unaffected by any gases. It remains inert, neutral and
unchanged. Similarly the result (sulfurous acid) that comes out from the process has no any trace of platinum. Eliot insists that the mind of the poet
should be like that shred of platinum. It should give its total contribution in creating poetry, then also it should remain unaffected and separate
when poetry has come out.
According to Eliot the poet’s mind is like a tare or utensil in which numerous feelings, phrases & images can be stored or seized. When a
poet wants them he utilizes them and unites them. It doesn’t mean that the poem created by the poet shows his personality or nature.
Eliot explains very basic thing of his point that, what is expressed by the poet is merely a medium, not a personality. He says:

“…the poet has not a ‘personality’ to express, but a particular medium, which is only a medium and not a personality…”
In this medium, the impressions and experiences come together in unusual and unexpected ways. And other thing is some impressions and
experiences seem valuable for a person, yet they may not be important for poetry. Same way some trivial experiences & impressions can become
so important for poetry. Then Eliot says about context that without context nothing can be understood. He says:
“This balance of constructed emotion is in the dramatic situation to which the speech is pertinent, but that situation alone is inadequate to it.”
He gives example from “The Revenger’s Tragedy” (by Thomas Middleton). He puts some line from that without context to explain this point.
Then he says that emotion in poetry remains very complex thing, and poet’s own personal emotion may be simple or flat. So every time poet’s own
emotion cannot be taken place in poem. And if the poet is always looking for new emotion in poem, then it will be perverse. A poet has not to find
new emotions but he has to use ordinary emotions. He has to deal with every known/unknown emotion. Eliot here twists ‘emotion recollected in
tranquility’. He says it ‘an inexact formula’. To write poetry is a great deal. When a poet becomes personal while writing poetry, he will be
considered as a ‘bad poet’. Because he becomes unconscious, where he should be conscious and he becomes conscious where he must be
unconscious. When a poet escapes from his personality, then & then the great poem comes out. A poet must not show his emotion in poetry. Eliot
says:
“Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality but an escape from personality.”
The experiences which enter the poetic process, says Eliot, may be of two kinds. They are emotions and feelings. The emotion of poetry is different
from the personal emotions of the poet. His personal emotions may be simple or crude, but the emotion of his poetry may be complex and refined.
It is not the business of the poet to find new emotions. He may express only ordinary emotions, but he must convey to them a new significance and
a new meaning. And it is not necessary that they should be his personal emotions.
Eliot rejects Wordsworth’s theory of poetry having, “its origin in emotions recollected in tranquillity”, and points out that in the process of poetic
composition there is neither emotion, nor recollection, nor tranquillity.
The difference between a good and a bad poet is that a bad poet is conscious where he should be unconscious and unconscious where he should be
conscious. But Eliot does not tell us when a poet should be conscious, and when not. The point has been left vague and indeterminate.
Eliot does not deny personality or emotion to the poet. Only, he must depersonalise his emotions. There should be an extinction of his personality.
This impersonality can be achieved only when poet surrenders himself completely to the work. As he says “The emotion of art is impersonality.”

Q.3 What is Eliot’s notion of a perfect critic? / What are the qualities of an ideal critic in Eliot’s opinion?

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Q. Discuss three kinds of liking as described by kant.

In the Analytic of the Beautiful, Kant begins by saying that the judgement of the taste is aesthetic, in order to discern whether something is
beautiful or not, we relate the representation through Imagination and not by relating the representation of its object by means of rational
understanding. Therefore, the judgement of taste is not a cognitive judgement, it is not logical, but is aesthetic, which means its determining
ground is subjective. Kant, believes judgements of taste are subjective in nature, but can be objectively right or wrong. Kant begins his theory on
judgement of taste by dividing this judgement into three types. The three kinds of liking:
a liking for the beautiful
a liking for the agreeable
a liking for the good
A liking for the beautiful. This is the judgement from contemplation alone. I may be at an art gallery looking at an Arthur Boyd and reflect to myself
that this is a beautiful painting. There is no analysis, no discussion, just a feeling that this work is beautiful to me.
 A liking for the agreeable is all about our physical senses. A desire based on the gratification anticipated. For eg, the liking of a bar of chocolate.
We feel the desire for this substance even before we taste it.
A liking for the good. We call something good for when we refer to it as a means. Extending this further, of we like something for its own sake we
call it intrinsically good. So I may desire to keep a promise because it morally correct. Instrumental good is where for example I drink a glass of
water which satisfies my thirst. For things to be good I must have a determinate concept of that thing (unlike the beautiful – where I just like it).
When a person decides they find something beautiful, and they do so with disinterest (ie, without bias/prejudice), he will believe he is justified in
expecting everyone to find it beautiful. Kant describes this as speaking with a ‘universal voice’. This is not to say that everyone else will hold the
same opinion, but because the judgement is made impersonally and freely, he is demanding others to agree or disagree. If I were to disagree, I
would then be left to give reasons, also disinterested, as to why I do not find the object beautiful.
The universal voice is not about agreeing with each other. It is about engaging others in a worthwhile discussion of the art around us.
The satisfaction or feeling of the beautiful is disinterested—you experience the object as beautiful without a desire, aim, or purpose associated with
the object. And your experience is free of any moral or intellectual concerns associated with the object. Kant goes so far as to claim that you don’t
even have "the liking we connect with the presentation of the existence of an object". This distinguishes it from "simple" pleasure taken in the
agreeable or satisfaction in the good.
The “merely agreeable” experience of an object, for example “the green color of meadows...belongs to subjective sensation, to feeling, through
which no object [of cognition] is presented, but through which the object is regarded as an object of our liking (which is not a cognition of it).” Kant
distinguishes here between the feeling—the subjective sensation—and the property or attribute of the object of perception in the landscape, i.e.
the objective world of nature distinct from the subjective sensation that arises in response to the perceptual object. “Now, that a judgment by
which I declare an object to be agreeable expresses an interest in that object is already obvious from the fact that, by means of sensation, the
judgment arouses a desire for objects of that kind, so that the liking presupposes something other than my mere judgment of the object...”,
emphasis added. Thus, my experience of the agreeable is not disinterested and not the same as the Judgment of Taste.
The JT is not like a moral judgment either, since the latter implies a purpose or goal. That which is good must be good relative to some purpose, i.e.
it must be good-for-something or good as an example of a kind of thing for which a purpose or end exists. (Note that Kant also distinguishes
between that which is good as a means to an end, and that which is good in itself. Both entail a concept, purpose, or aim.) In the case of the
morally good, once reason leads you to grasp that which is good, your will is determined to bring it about, i.e. to bring it into existence. Thus, my
experience of the good is not disinterested and not the same as the Judgment of Taste.
On the other hand, when the above criteria for satisfaction in the beautiful are met, the judgment of taste is “free” and “pure”—independent of
interest and engaging one’s own inner faculties and “powers”.
“Flowers, free designs, lines aimlessly intertwined and called foliage: these have no significance, depend on no determinate concept, and yet we
like them.”

Q. Write a note on three forms of art as described by Hegel in his lectures on Fine Arts?
Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel was perhaps the first western philosopher. At the same time he was an idealist, which means that he thought that
all that truly existed was rationality. In his famous words, "the real is the rational and the rational is the real." Hegel was an art lover and a student
of the arts, and developed a more complete philosophy of art than most philosophers before him. In keeping with his emphasis on the historical
development of ideas and of consciousness, he claimed that:
1) Art expresses the spirit of particular cultures, as well as that of individual artists and the general human spirit.
2) There is progress in art (no surprise here, as Hegel thought that history in general was moving forward to a climax).
When he first began thinking about the philosophy of art, Hegel was influenced by the ideas of Kant, Schiller and Schelling. He was inclined to think
that artistic expression and artistic consciousness were a kind of climax of the history of the human spirit, and that art reveals truth in a direct,
intuitive way. In his more mature work, from the Phenomenology of Spirit through the Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel backed away from Kant's
position, and held that the climactic stages of human history were purely rational, and did not involve intuition, emotion or image as the arts do.
The three main stages of art history recognized by Hegel in his lectures on Aesthetics are symbolic, classical, and romantic art. Each of these is
defined by the relationship beween idea and form that is common within it. In the first or symbolic stage, a powerful idea is expressed in a variety
of forms that are felt as not really adequate to its expression. As a result, the form is distorted in the attempt to accomodate the transcendent
power of the idea. Hegel took ancient Egyptian and Indian art as examples of this, with their animal-headed gods and monstrous demons and
heroes. Equally powerful examples could be seen in traditonal African and in ancient Inca art: e.g., fertility gods with exagerated sexual
characteristics, protective deities with ferocious animal teeth or claws.
The second stage is exemplified by classical Greek sculpture. Here the perfect, idealized human form embodies the ideal without any sense of
distortion. But while the perfection is evident, the depth of the idea expressed is limited. Hence the third stage, romantic art, stresses inwardness.
When it uses images, it often emphasizes the inadequacy of the image to carry the idea, now apprehended more adequately in an inward way.
Much Christian art has this character, focusing as it does on the crucifixion, on martyrdoms and sufferings.
Along with his division of western art into periods, Hegel also arranged the particular arts hierarchically, from those most tied to image and the
physical, and hence most suited to symbolic art (e.g., architecture) to those most suited to inwardness and the self-realization of Spirit (e.g.,
poetry). However, he did not stick woodenly to these categories, and recognized the ability of artists in each of the arts to make works representing
each of his three stages.
Perhaps the most famous of Hegel's claims about art is that art comes to an end. As Spirit reaches its full self-realization, the need for images and
symbols withers away, and with it goes the need for any art that uses physical means to express itself. This "end of art" thesis is puzzling in
somewhat the same way that his "end of history" thesis itself is puzzling. Hegel does not seem to have meant by it that art would stop altogether;
but rather that the need for it, and its role in the development of spirit would be fulfilled.
The end of art thesis has had a new incarnation in the work of Arthur Danto, who (with acknowledgments to Hegel), has advanced a similar thesis
about modern art. According to Danto, western visual art, in the period from the Renaissance to the very recent past (say, 1970), has had a linear
history. Whether one wishes to call it progress or not, at each stage in that history, one had to move forward if one wished to be a serious artist.
But that history has come to an end, with works like Warhol's Brillo Box, in which "art has become philosophy", and one can no longer tell works of
art from other things just by looking at them. Since then, the linear history has been replaced by a pluralism in which (almost) anything goes.
The idea of progress in art, and the need not to fall behind the prophetic movement of the avante-garde, has had a strong life in modern European
and American art. While it surely cannot be traced back to Hegel alone, it is a very Hegelian idea. So Picasso, for example, when he
blamed Bonnard for not being a modern painter (quoted in Smithsonian) was being very Hegelian, even though, one imagines, Hegel would have
thought such paintings as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon were throw-backs to symbolic art rather than representing progress in art. Kandinsky also
spoke of the true artist as a lonely visionary at the leading edge of human spiritual development.
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Hegel divides his “science” of aesthetics into three sections. The first concerns the idea of the beauty of art or what he calls “the Ideal.” He stresses
that the idea of beauty in art is not the Idea as such, which would be studied by metaphysics and which, I suspect. would be much like a Platonic
Idea. He speaks of the Idea of beauty in art rather as one which is “shaped forward into reality” and is immediately unified with this reality.
Whereas the Idea itself is “absolute truth” the Idea of beauty in art is both individual reality and reality destined to embody the Idea. This implies a
demand that the Idea and its configuration in reality should be adequate to each other. When the Idea is shaped in this way it is the Ideal. He
urges us not to confuse the Ideal with the notion of precisely representing the Idea in a shape. This would confuse truth of the Ideal with “mere
correctness,” i.e. correct expression of the meaning of the Idea in the shape. For contents can be represented adequately without having the
artistic beauty of the Ideal. In comparison with such an Ideal, that (overly precise) representation may appear defective. So defectiveness in art is
not just due to lack: defectiveness of form sometimes results from defectiveness of content. The Chinese, Indian and Egyptian religion and art is
defective in this way: they never get their god images “beyond formlessness or a bad and untrue definiteness of form.” Their mythological ideas
therefore fail to achieve true beauty. The reason is that the ideas are “indeterminate, or determined badly.” [By contrast, Kant believes that the
aesthetic ideas of an artistic genius are indeterminate.] They do “not consist of the content which is absolute in itself.” In one of my favorite
sentences he writes: “Works of art are all the more excellent in expressing true beauty, the deeper is the inner truth of their content and thought.”
(148) It may well be that this is true regardless of his own interpretation of it. He contrasts this approach to art against that which stresses
imitative accuracy, in which skill is able to imitate “natural forms as they exist.” There may even be an “abandonment and distortion of natural
formations” in the art which is based on “intentional alteration” coming out of the artist’s own mind. This passage seems to foretell the possibility
of modern art with all of its distortions. It follows that some art may be imperfect even though it is technically good in its “specific sphere.” It is
simply defective “in comparison with the concept of art itself and the Ideal.” [This is somewhat similar to Kant’s idea of merely academic art that is
not informed by genius.] In the highest art, of course, Idea and presentation are in accord with one another. The Idea also “must be determined in
and through itself as a concrete totality” which would give it the principle of its being. This principle is made particular in external appearance. The
Christians may represent God in human form because the Christian God [in Jesus Christ?] is known “in himself as spirit.” If the Idea is
determinate/concrete then this makes particularization possible. In other cases, as in other religions, the determinacy may be imposed from
outside and the shape is thus merely external to the abstract Idea. So “the truly concrete Idea [as in the Christian case] alone produces its true
configuration” and thus the Ideal.
The next stage in the argument concerns the development of the ideal into particular forms of the beauty of art. He writes that “because the Idea is
in this way a concrete unity, this unity can enter the art-consciousness only through the unfolding and then the reconciliation of the
particularizations of the Idea.” This development allows artistic beauty to acquire “a totality of particular stages and forms.” That is, artistic beauty
evolves through the totality made up by the Symbolic, Classical and Romantic stages. These forms are different ways “of grasping the Idea as
content” i.e. “different relations of meaning and shape.”
The Symbolic. Here the Idea is “in its indeterminacy and obscurity” or bad determinacy. Since it is indeterminate it does not have enough
individuality for the Ideal. It is too abstract and one-sided and this means it is “defective and arbitrary.” So it is merely searching to portray the
Idea and does not truly present it. It is “struggling and striving.” In the symbolic form the Idea has its shape in “natural sensuous material.” But it
is imposed on perceived natural objects in an external way. They are to be interpreted as if the Idea were present in them. This kind of art, [for
example, an Assyrian representation of a lion] can only give an abstract idea of, for example the lion’s strength. But since this relation is abstract
we are conscious of the fact that the Idea is foreign to the natural phenomena. The Idea then “seeks itself” in them “in their unrest and
extravagance.” It “exaggerates natural shapes” and “staggers round in them, it bubbles and ferments in them, does violence to them, distorts and
stretches them unnaturally” and tries to elevate them by way of “diffuseness, immensity, and splendor.” There is a contrast and incompatibility
between the Idea, as here indeterminate, and the natural objects as determinate. The Idea then takes a negative relation to the objective world
and is taken as sublime, above all of these non-corresponding shapes. The natural phenomena are seen as incompatible with their non-mundane
meanings. This is found in the pantheism of the East which either “ascribes absolute meaning to even the most worthless objects” or “violently
coerces the phenomena to express its view” and then becomes “bizarre, grotesque, and tasteless.” A third alternative is that it turns the abstract
freedom of the one substance or God against all phenomena “as being null and evanescent.” [Perhaps this refers to Zen.] In all of this the Idea and
shape remain incompatible.
[The symbolic mode of art insofar as it is associated both with the sublime and with the indeterminate seems to be set up as an attack on Kant who
understood the aesthetic ideas as indeterminate and as sublime. It is as though Hegel believed that Kant’s idea of fine art and the artist genius is
stuck at the first stage of art.]
The Classical. Here, the double defect of symbolic art is “extinguished.” The defects are (1) Idea is presented as indeterminate “or determined
abstractly” and (2) meaning and shape have a defective correspondence which is “purely abstract.” Classical art is “the free and adequate
embodiment of the Idea in the shape peculiarly appropriate to the Idea..” Both shape and Idea are in harmony. Thus it gives us a vision of the
completed Ideal actualized. This is not a purely formal correspondence between content and configuration. If it were, then “every portrayal of
nature” for example of every flower or scene as contentwould be classical. The content of classical art is the concrete Idea in the sense of
concretely spiritual. The spiritual is the inner self. So what, in nature, “belongs to the spiritual in and for itself”? “The original Concept” [i.e. God?]
“invented the shape for concrete spirit.” That is, God created the world with the idea in mind of correspondence of spirit and natural shape. Now
the “subjective Concept,” i.e., in this case, the spirit of art has found the shape “and made it…appropriate to free individual spirituality.” The Idea,
as spiritual and individually determinate, assumes this shape, i.e. the human form. Some have seen [such] anthropomorphism as degrading the
spiritual but since the goal of art is to bring the spiritual before our eyes in a sensuous manner it must anthropomorphize “since spirit appears
sensuously in a satisfying way only in [this] body.” Physiology [biology] thus insists that life develops necessarily to the human form as the only one
appropriate to spirit. [Maybe in his time, not in our own!] The form of the human body in this regard counts only as the natural shape of spirit.
Because of this it is not affected by the “deficiency of the purely sensuous” or from the fact that our “phenomenal world” is merely contingent and
finite. Spirituality as content “must be of such a kind that it can express itself completely in the natural human form” and not tower above it. So,
spirit is determined here as “particular and human” and not as purely absolute and eternal, since it can only express itself in the latter sense as
spirituality. But this is a defect in classical art and this defect brings about its dissolution and “transition to a higher form.”
The Romantic. The romantic form cancels the unification of Idea and reality found in the classical and “reverts” in a “higher way” to the opposition
of these two sides as found in symbolic art. [This is also found in Nietzsche’s later idea of the conflicted marriage of the Apollonian and the
Dionysian. Indeed, Nietzsche’s account is similar to Hegel’s: the Dionysian (especially the pre-Greek Dionysian) representing the symbolic, the
Apollonian representing the Classical, and the tragic synthesis of the two representing a return to the Dionysian by way of the Apollonian.] Oddly,
Hegel holds that it is Classical art that achieves the “pinnacle” of what art can achieve, and that whatever is defective in it is what is defective in art
itself, i.e. that art takes spirit as its subject matter and yet can only give it in sensuously concrete form. In blending the spiritual and the sensuous it
fails to represent the true nature of spirit which is “the infinite subjectivity of the Idea.” As “absolute inwardness,” the Idea cannot freely “shape
itself outwardly” in a bodily form. The romantic form then goes beyond the classical. This content is what Christianity asserts of God as a spirit in
contrast to the Greek religion exemplified in classical art. The unity of the divine nature and the human in classical art is “only immediate and
implicit” and is manifested sensuously. It is because the Greek god is naively intuited that it is in human shape. Hegel contrasts the Greek god,
which is individual and particular in substance and power with [the Christian] which possesses oneness “as inward subjective knowledge.” The
content of Classical art is knowledge of implicit unity that can be perfectly presented in bodily shape. But once this is elevated into self-conscious
knowledge we come to the tremendous, even “infinite,” difference between, for example, man and animal. Unlike the animal, man is not confined
to the implicit and immediate but becomes conscious of his animal functions and lifts them into self-conscious science. Because he knows he is an
animal, he ceases to be an animal and knows himself as spirit. So the unity of divine and human nature “is raised from an immediate to a known
unity” and the truth is no longer the spiritual in the body but “the inwardness of self-consciousness.” Christianity brings God before our
imagination as “absolute in spirit” and thus no longer particular. It “retreats from the sensuousness of imagination into spiritual inwardness,” and
thus, this, and not the body, is the medium of truth’s content. The unity of the divine and human is “only by spiritual knowing and in spirit.” So this
new content is freed from immediate and sensuous existence which is now seen as negative. So, romantic art is “self-transcendence of art” but “in
the form of art itself.”

Q. What according to Raymond Williams is the relationship between tragedy and contemporary ideas?
“Tragedy and Contemporary Ideas” is the third essay of part one of Raymond Williams’s book “Modern Tragedy”. As the name suggests, this essay
is a discussion of tragedy in relation to contemporary idea. Williams has tried to reinterpret the varieties of tragic experience by reference to the
changing conventions and institutions. Tragic experience, because of its central importance, commonly attracts the fundamental beliefs and
tensions of a period. Through tragic theory, the shape and set of a particular culture is often deeply realised. The major contributions to tragic
theory were made in the 19th century before the creative period of modern tragedy. Modern age is a major period of tragic writing directly
comparable in importance with the periods of the past. The writer has discussed the major points of the tragic theory; which are: Order and
accident; the destruction of the hero; the irreparable action and its connections with death; and the emphasis of evil.
It is generally said that there is no significant tragic meaning in “everyday tragedies” because the event itself is not tragedy, but only becomes so
through shaped response. Williams does not agree with this view. He cannot see how it is possible to distinguish between an event and response to
an event, in any absolute way. In the case of ordinary death and suffering, when we see mourning and lament, when we see men and women
breaking under their actual loss, we are in the presence of tragedy. Other responses are also possible: indifference, justification, even relief or
rejoicing. But where the suffering is felt, where it is taken into the person of another, we are clearly within the possible dimensions of tragedy. But
it is also possible for some people to hear of a mining disaster, a burned out family, a broken career, or a smash on the road without feeling these
events tragic in the full sense. Such events are called accidents and are not connected with any general meaning in them. Williams mentions Yeast’s
and Hegel’s exclusion from tragedy of certain kinds of suffering as “mere suffering”. This modern separation of tragedy from “mere suffering” is the
separation of ethical control and human agency from our understanding of social and political life.
What we encounter again and again in the modern distinction between tragedy and accident and in the related distinction between tragedy and
suffering is a particular view of the world which gains much of its strength from being unconscious and habitual. The events not seen as tragic are
deep in the pattern of our own culture: War, famine, work, traffic, and politics. To see no tragic meaning in them is a sort of our bankruptcy. We can
only distinguish between tragedy and accident if we have some conception of a law or an order to which certain events are accidental and in which
certain other events are significant. In the definition of tragedy as dependent on the history of a man of rank, some deaths mattered more than
others, and rank was the actual dividing line, the death of a slave was no more than incidental and was certainly not tragic. Ironically, our own
middle class culture began by appearing to reject this view: the tragedy of a citizen could be as real as the tragedy of a prince. The extension from
the prince to the citizen became in practice an extension to all human begins. The emerging bourgeois society rejected the emphasis on rank in
tragedy: the individual was neither the state nor an element of the state, but an entity in him. In this view, there was both gain and loss: gain-the
suffering of a man of no rank came to be regarded as important; loss-in the stress on the fate of an individual, the general and public character of
tragedy was lost. Eventually new definitions of general and public interest were embodied in new kinds of tragedy. But the idea of a tragic order
had to exist with the loss of any such actual order. What happened, at the level of theory, was then the abstraction of order and its mystification.
What had been a whole lived order, connecting man and state and world became, finally, a purely abstract order.
Order, in tragedy; is the result of the action. In any living belief, this is always the relation between experience and conviction. Specifically in
tragedy the creation of order is directly related to the fact of disorder, through which the action moves. There is an evident variation in the nature
of tragic disorder. It can be the pride of man set against the nature of things, or it can be a more general disorder which in aspiration man seeks to
overcome. In different cultures, disorder and order both vary, for they are parts of varying general interpretations of life. We should see this
variation as an indication of the major cultural importance of tragedy as a form of art.
It is often argued that tragedy was dependent, in the past, on ages of faith, and is impossible now, because we have no faith. This relation between
tragedy and stability of belief seems to be almost the opposite of the truth. The ages of comparatively stable belief, and of comparatively close
correspondence between beliefs and actual experience, do not seem to produce tragedy of any intensity. On the contrary, tragedy depends more
on an extreme tension between belief and experience than on an extreme correspondence. Williams concludes this discussion with these words:
“Important tragedy seems to occur neither in period of real stability, nor in periods of open and decisive conflict. Its most common historical setting
is the period preceding the substantial breakdown and transformation of an important culture. Its condition is the real tension between old and
new: between received beliefs, embodied in institutions and responses, and newly and vividly experienced contradictions and possibilities”

The most common interpretation of tragedy is that it is an action in which the hero is destroyed. This fact is seen as irreparable. At a simple level
this is so obviously true that the formula usually gets little further examination. But it is, of course, still an interpretation, and a partial one. If
attention is concentrated on the hero alone, such an interpretation naturally follows. Not many works that we call tragedies in fact end with the
destruction of the hero. Certainly in almost all tragedies the hero is destroyed, but that is not normally the end of the action. Some new distribution
of forces, physical or spiritual, normally succeeds the death. In Greek tragedy this is a religious affirmation in the words or presence of the chorus. In
Elizabethan tragedy, it is ordinarily a change of power in the state. To our consciousness, the important action has ended and affirmation,
settlement, restoration or new arrival is comparatively minor. This kind of reparations is not credible; it looks much too like a solution, which 20th
century critics agree is a vulgar and intrusive element in any art. It is not the business of the artist to provide answers or solutions, but simply to
describe experience and raise questions.
When we say that in tragic experience, the action is followed right through until the hero is dead; we are taking a part for the whole, a hero for an
action. We think of tragedy as what happens to the hero, but the ordinary tragic action is what happens through the hero. When we confine our
attention to the hero, we are unconsciously confining ourselves to the individual. The tragic action lies in the fact that life does not come back, that
its meanings are reaffirmed and restored after so much suffering and after so important a death. Death gives meaning and importance to life.
Human death is often the form of the deepest meanings of a culture. When we see death, it is natural we should draw together – in grief, in
memory, in the social duties of burial-our sense of the values of living, as individuals and as a society. Death is absolute, and all our living simply
relative. Death is necessary, and all other human ends are contingent. Within this emphasis, suffering and disorder of any kind are interpreted by
reference to what is seen as the controlling reality. Such an interpretation is now commonly described as a tragic sense of life.
To read back life from the fact of death is a cultural and sometimes a personal choice. A choice is always variable. To tie any meaning to death is to
give it a powerful emotional charge which can at times obliterate all other experience in its range. Death is universal, and the mean in tied to it
quickly claims universality. Other readings of life, other interpretations of suffering and disorder, can be assimilated to it with great apparent
conviction.
The connection between tragedy and death is of course quite evident, but in reality the connection is variable, as the response to death is variable.
What is generalised is the loneliness of man, facing a blind fate, and this is the fundamental isolation of the tragic hero. To say that man dies alone
is not to state a fact but to offer an interpretation. For indeed, men die in so many ways: in the arms and presence of family and neighbours: in the
blindness of pain or the blackness of sedation; in the violent disintegration of machines and in the calm of sleep. To insist on a single meaning is not
reasonable. When men die, the experience is not only the physical dissolution and ending; it is also a change in the lives and relationships of others.
Our most common received interpretations of life put the highest value and significance on the individual and his development, but it is indeed
inescapable that the individual dies. What is most valuable (life) and what is most irreparable (death) are, then, set in an inevitable relation and
tension. The tragic action is about death, but it needs not end in death unless this is enforced by a particular structure of feeling. Death, once again,
is a necessary action.
Evil is a traditional name but it has been appropriated by a particular ideology, which offers itself as the whole tragic tradition. What tragedy shows
us, it is argued, is the fact of evil as inescapable and irreparable. Mere optimists and humanists deny the fact of transcendent evil, and so are
incapable of tragic experience. Tragedy is then a salutary reminder, indeed a theory, against the illusions of humanism. The true nature of man is
now dramatically revealed against all the former illusions of civilisation and progress. The current emphasis of Evil is not the Christian emphasis.
Within that structure, evil was certainly generalised, but so also was good. The struggle of good and evil in our souls and in the world could be seen
as a real action. Culturally evil is a name for many kinds of disorder, which corrode or destroy actual life. As such, it is common in tragedy, through
in many particular and variable forms; vengeance, ambition, pride, coldness, lust, jealousy, disobedience, rebellion. In every case, it is only fully
comprehensible within the valuations of a particular culture or tradition. Tragedy commonly dramatises evil, in many particular forms. A particular
evil, in a tragic action, can be at once experienced and lived through. In the process of living through, we come not so much to the recognition of
evil as transcendent but to its recognition as actual and indeed negotiable. Good and evil are not absolute. We are good or evil in particular ways
and in particular situations, defined by pressures we at once receive and can alter and can create again.
Tragedy, as such, teaches nothing about evil, because it teaches many things about many kinds of action. Yet it can at least be said, against the
modern emphasis on transcendent evil, that most of the great tragedies of the world end not with evil absolute, but with evil both experienced and
lived through.