A Study Of Cleanth Brooks’ Understanding Drama

Understanding Drama: Eight Plays(1945)is an important work of drama criticism,which focuses on the concept and practice of drama criticism of Cleanth Brooks,a famous American literary critic and representative of the New Criticism.At present,the study of Brooks’ poetry and novel criticism is relatively sufficient in China,but it is slightly insufficient in drama criticism.Understanding Drama: Eight Plays has been published for decades.It has been reprinted several times in foreign countries.It has been widely concerned in the field of literature education and research.Foreign scholars have studied this book to a certain extent,but the domestic academic circle still lacks of special research on the book.Based on this,this paper takes Brooks’ Understanding Drama as the research object,on the basis of clarifying the ideological resources of Brooks’ drama criticism concept,summarizes Brooks’ close reading practice of drama text structure,and finally analyzes the characteristics of Brooks’ drama criticism.When we study Brooks’ drama concept in the context of the history of Western drama criticism theory,we will find that his ideas of organic holism,situation,contrast and conflict were obviously influenced by Aristotle,Diderot and Hegel.He critically and creatively accepted the drama ideas of the above theorists,and integrated his own poetics thoughts into them,So as to guide his drama criticism practice.Understanding Drama: Eight Plays was published as a teaching material for literature major in Colleges.Its primary task is to make students understand the basic structure of drama,regard drama as a special form with its own methods and characteristics,and use this book as a learning guide to Shakespeare’s tragedy.For this reason,Understanding Drama: Eight Plays selects more than ten classic texts of Western drama and analyzes the script by careful reading.Brooks regards the script as an organic and unified "structure".Under the guidance of his structural view of organic holism,he analyzes the three elements of "character","action" and "theme" in the text structure of the drama,revealing the unique way in which the theme of a good drama displays itself in this organic and unified structure.Understanding Drama shows the uniqueness between Brooks’ dramatic criticismtheory and practice.The style of Understanding Drama: Eight Plays has both the form of “drama history” and “problem-based text criticism”.The former rewrites a history of Western drama from the synchronic dimension and structural logic,while the latter is a summary of the whole structure of the book and Brooks’ theory and practice.The stylistic arrangement of Understanding Drama: Eight Plays is an explicit expression rooted in Brooks’ critical characteristics of drama.Based on Brooks’ overall poetics to examine his drama criticism,we can find that there are two distinct tendencies: pursuing the absoluteness of criticism standard and taking the script as the center.Understanding Drama: Eight Plays,because of its unique criticism idea and practice of drama text,as well as its demonstration and enlightenment value,has already surpassed its initial position as a college literature textbook.It should be included in the field of literature research and criticism in China.The latter should draw on reasonable nutrients to enrich itself.