The Relationship Between Poetry And Truth Of The Historical Changes In Western Literary Theory

The relationship between poetry and truth is an eternal theme throughout the history of Western Literature. From diverse and historical aspects, combined with Western various historical periods of social, cultural, philosophical, and other backgrounds, this article specific analyzed the relationship between poetry and truth and their inheritance relations theory, explained and imaged its developmental trace and historical clue.In general, the theory of the relationship between poetry and truth that can be summarized as four basic concepts: First, the extreme rationalism represented by Plato, completely denied the truth of poetry, so it mainly negated the value of the no poetry; Second, the moderate rationalism represented by Aristotelian, recognized the truth and knowledge of poetry, and poetry is more rich than the philosophical history of history. They put the poetry as a demotic philosophy, and the readers can learn knowledge or receive education from it; Third,the irrationalism represented by the Sophists of ancient Greece, Nietzsche and modern aestheticism, denied the truth and knowledge of poetry, claiming that poetry is a lie. But they gave the full recognition and the highest praise to poetry, because poetry can give people pleasure or stimulate and strengthen people's vitality. So-called truth is existent. At least truth is not the highest value even ugly; Fourth, existentialism and hermeneutics representative by German Heidegger and Gadamer, Anglo-American New Criticism, through renewed explanation and definition the meaning of truth, they not only argued for the truth and knowledge of poetry for the poetry of truth and knowledge, but also supported that that truth and knowledge of poetry more than philosophy and science's.Easy to see, all the theory about the relationship between poetry and truth is connected with their temporal social environment and theory of vision, so difficult to avoid their own limitations and one-sidedness. We believe that all the theory about the relationship between poetry and truth is not mutually exclusive. Argument is sometimes just a word problem. From the standards of scientific truth, it is difficult to defend the truth of poetry, for the poetry do not have scientific knowledge. But from the aspects of moral truth which is the knowledge of correct behavior, poetry can lessons and inspiration to us by describing the behavior of characters and stories. From the aspects of existentialism or meaning of life, poetry can show the meaning of life or being, so we can say that poetry itself is the truth.