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A New Defense of Poesy
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17302 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1990 |
5,786 Words |
| Author
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Walter Poznar
Walter Poznar is professor of humanities at Saint Leo College,
Florida. He has published numerous articles on higher
education and literature. |
Every age seems fated to defend anew the cause of literature. Sir Philip Sidney felt compelled to write a defense, as did Wordsworth, Matthew, Arnold, T.S. Eliot, and others. In our own century, serious literature is threatened not by those who, as in the past, believe that certain works are agents of the devil, but by the pervasive pressures of pragmatism and overspecialization. Despite exposure to literature, college graduates generally abandon their interest in it when they enter the working world. Few continue to feel that the great works of literature have any vital relationship to their personal needs and goals, their sense of life, the intimate problems they must resolve. Why, after long-term academic exposure to literature, does this happen?
In the first place, it is clear that most people believe literature expresses experiences too far removed from their normal lives. The tragedy of Oedipus may be interesting because of the Oedipal complex, but few see any connection between their own situations and his. After all, how many men kill their fathers and marry their mothers? Beowulf may have been a great and valorous ruler, but there are few Beowulf's in American society. Wordsworth's passionate love of nature touches few modern lives. And is it likely that any of us will ever hunt Moby Dick? Or succumb to decadence with Mann's Aschenbach? Or confess our ideological crimes with Koestler's Rubashov?
Even in an age when literature deals largely with the common man, how many readers can identify intimately with Clyde Griffiths or Jay Gatsby? Times change and so do societies. Those who love Jane Austen's novels would admit that life in a small English parish is hardly like our urban existence. Even our small towns
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