A Study On Cleanth Brooks' Poetry Language Ideal Of Paradox

Cleanth Brooks is a representative of the American New Criticism school, and his ideal of paradox plays an important role in his theory. Taking an overall survey on Brooks' poetic theory of paradox is essential for us to get a comprehensive understanding of Brooks' theory and the strategy of constructing it. Then we can take a new perspective to grasp the idea of American New Criticism school.In this dissertation, we first review the background which Brooks' poetic theory generated. As a traditional southern intellectual in the United States, Brooks was deeply influenced by his cultural environment, which had a great influence on the construction of his poetical theory of paradox. At that time, those Southern intellectuals were unsatisfied with the artificial Southern culture. On the other hand, they hated the northern industrial civilization, took a skeptical attitude to science and technology. This group of intellectuals' mental state was in crevice then, they had to strive to establish a new Southern agricultural civilization which had a strong Utopian temperament. The physiocratism movement had to face its failure then. However, the social ideological trend brought up the Renaissance of Southern literature, and the movement of the fugitive. They sought to recover the former glory of the South from poetry and poetry criticism. This group of scholars want to prove that the language of poetry is different from the language of science. These concepts have a direct impact on Brooks' poetry language ideal of paradox.T·S · Eliot and I · A · Richards Provided the theoretical source for Brooks' concept of poetic language. Brooks learned the scientific research method of literary works from Richards, he adopted the semantic analysis method to replace the Richards psychology analysis method of poetry works. Richards emphasized the differences between scientific language and emotional language, the uniqueness of this has inspired Brooks to find poetry language, namely the paradox. Eliot's greatest inspiration to Brooks' poetry language ideal of paradox is his literary orthodoxy. Eliot stressed that the whole of the European literature in the Christian spirit, based on the development of classical literary orthodoxy. Under this kind of literary concept, the obscure metaphysical poetry has a high status. Brooks also emphasized the paradoxical features of poetic language under the influence of the concept of literature.The paradox is a special term in Brooks' theory. Besides, paradox is the only criterion for evaluating the language of poetry by Brooks. Brooks studies "paradox" in his book Literary Criticism: A Short History. And in his own criticism of the representative The Well Wrought Urn, he tried to prove a monistic tendency standard is beyond the era and personal perspective. The construction of Brooks' poetic paradox view is directly served the purpose of his poetry teaching and poetry criticism. In the development of his theory,Brooks also gradually established his own critical position and criticism, the new criticism of the text of the wide range of ways to bring into the classroom.The last part of the thesis makes a reflection on Brooks' poetry language ideal of paradox. Brooks' idea of poetry paradox may be the most representative of the poetic theory of Brooks himself. In a sense, it also carries the whole concept of the New Criticism. There is a close relationship between the acceptance of the new criticism school and the term of paradox. There is an idea that after World War II,the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war making the American academia widely produce the paradox of emotion. The concept of new criticism emphasizes even before the war has been widely questioned, but after the war quickly accepted. In addition, Brooks, as the representative of the new criticism in many colleges and universities to teach,they consciously expand their influence in Colleges and universities, the spread of new criticism text analysis. Brooks' poetic paradox of language was developed to challenge the academic authority and resist the mass culture. Therefore, this paper defines Brooks'paradox as a poetic theory based on pragmatism. Brooks, on the one hand, intends to gain the right to speak in the academic world. On the other hand, he hopes to provide a practical and effective method of text analysis in the teaching of poetry. His poetry language ideal of paradox mainly serves these two purposes. This kind of idea leads to the inevitable fall into the general defects of pragmatism, that is, the lack of theory.Therefore, we should understand Brooks' theory from a pragmatic point of view, as well as his influence on the American literary theory. Only in that way, we can get a broader and comprehensive theoretical perspective.