AbstractThe title of Ransom's book. The World's Body. illustrates his critical
emphasis on particularity against universality. and his ontological tenets
can be epitomized by the remark that a real thing is a bundle of
complementary qualities and an e...
AbstractThe title of Ransom's book. The World's Body. illustrates his critical
emphasis on particularity against universality. and his ontological tenets
can be epitomized by the remark that a real thing is a bundle of
complementary qualities and an exhaustible particularity or that ''the
object appears to us as a dense area of contingency.'' Relegating
scientific rationalism to the realms of abstract and quantitative
universality. and placing literary discourse in the realms of concrete and
qualitative particulality and so restoring its cognitive integrity, Ransom
may appear to be merely a dualistic advocator of irrelevant and local
textule. and Physical poetry dealing with the World's body. It is true
that in defense of art an poetly against the overflowing scientific point
of views Ransom divided the poem into the logical structure and the
local texture. and regarded the latter as the essential component of the
poem. However, his favor of local texture and the physical poetry
dealing with Dinglichkeit in the objects has a certain theoretical
reservation that true poetry should be impure and therefore contain
some irrelevant and foreign factors in itself. He never thought that a
poem can be made of subject matter of a single nature, but that an
unusual degree of complexity should be achieved in a poem, and this is
made possible with introducing the notions of excess, overplus.
roughening. undetermining. It means that not only texture but structure
participates in opening and achieving the indeterminate and rich
meaning and sound of a genuine poem. The mutual interaction and
coexistence of irreconcilable factors without destroying their natures and
identities in a poem can only promise the importation of indeterminacy
into a poern and the creation of true poetry imitating the world of
contingency in which we live. This paper attempts to explain and
discuss his basic theoretical ideas with such topics as logical structure
and local texture. science and art. the influence of Kant. the theory of
impure poetry inherited by R. P. Warren, and finally form as an
aesthetic principle. In the final section of the paper. an example of
practical criticisrn analysing Marvell's ''To his Coy Mistress'' is added
for the purpose of verifying the critical validity of Ransom's poetics.