Happy Birthday, Hugh Blair!

Hugh Blair, minister and rhetorician, was born on April 7, 1718. After his sermons, he is best known for his Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres, in which he argued against sophistry (defending a position you don't believe in yourself) and analysed works of literature from the ancient Greeks and Romans to eighteenth century French and English plays.

The University Bookman posts an appreciation:

One of the most successful of all nineteenth-century textbooks was Hugh Blair’s weighty Rhetoric. Between 1783 (the date of their first publication) and 1911 (the last full edition before that here under review) at least one hundred and thirty issues of this memorable course of lectures saw the light. Where English was spoken, Blair and rhetoric became almost synonymous; and in many another tongue translation brought similarly high repute. Now, thanks to the University of Southern Illinois’ “Landmarks in Rhetoric and Public Address” series, it is once again possible for the teacher and apprentice in this most civil and public of disciplines to inquire why his predecessors thought so well of the Edinburgh cleric-professor’s handiwork and to re-examine with Blair’s “original” in facsimile before them, the grounds and normative (i.e., historical) implications of their (ordinarily) very different preferences. . . .

Blair’s Rhetoric was by his own admission not a revolutionary, experimental, or speculative book, not a scholar’s treatise designed to rival George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric or Whately’s Elements of Criticism; instead (and most simply) it was intended as a useful tool—an adaptation of classical rhetoric and rhetorical criticism to suit the purposes of post-Augustan gentlemen, an affirmation of certain constants in the conduct and relations of civilized men and (by implication) of the “ethics” that belong to both: in the terms of two of its present-day admirers, a “rhetoric of belles lettres” for “all comparing in and judging of language.”

Blair knew very well what ends he would serve. For he was among the leading citizens of the old Scots capital in some of its greatest days, a friend of Lord Kames, Hume, and Robertson, a familiar of Boswell, Dr. Johnson, and Adam Smith; and for forty years he gave himself to the local university, to the perpetuation of his kind. As the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh—and even before—the rector of the High Kirk of St. Giles practiced upon Scotland’s future leaders and spokesmen what his own education, pulpit experience, and conversations with men of parts and learning convinced him was the art of rhetoric—of both the spoken and written word when considered as purposive, “designed.”

Please read the rest there.

The Southern Illinois University Press describes their latest (2005) edition of Blair's Rhetoric thus:

This new edition of Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, edited by Linda Ferreira-Buckley and S. Michael Halloran, answers the need for a complete, reliable text. The book seeks to generate a renewed interest in Blair by provoking new inquiries into the tradition of belletristic rhetoric and by serving as both aid and incentive to others who may join in the project of improving understanding of this landmark rhetorical scholarship.

This edition contains forty-seven lectures and remains faithful to the text of the 1785 London edition. The editors contextualize Hugh Blair’s motivations and thinking by providing in their introduction an extended account of Blair’s life and era. The bibliography of works by and about Blair is an invaluable aid, surpassing previous research on Blair.

Although the extent of its influence cannot be measured fully, Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres was undoubtedly a primary vehicle for introducing many eighteenth- and nineteenth-century scholars to classical rhetoric and French belletristic rhetoric—its success due in part to the ease with which the lectures combine neoclassical and Enlightenment thought, accommodating emerging social concerns. Ferreira-Buckley and Halloran’s extensive treatment revives the tradition of belletristic rhetoric, improving the understanding of Blair’s place in the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discourse, while finding him relevant in the twenty-first century.

Literary Criticism: Plato vs. Aristotle

From The Wall Street Journal, Barton Swaim reviews James Seaton's Literary Criticism from Plato to Postmodernism:

James Seaton, in his short but deeply perceptive book "Literary Criticism From Plato to Postmodernism," contends that the theorists who dominate literature departments can trace their intellectual heritage to a surprising source: Plato. This is surprising because literary theorists usually consider Plato the father of "logocentrism"—supposedly a "Western" tendency to see words as fixed to unchanging ideals rather than as arbitrary symbols. Yet Mr. Seaton argues that the academics who dominate literature departments today—disciples of a dizzying array of "postmodernist" philosophies, from New Historicism to feminist theory—are Platonists to the core. Plato sought to align human life and government strictly to the ideals of reason and justice; postmodern theorists, writes Mr. Seaton, "seek a society in which theoretical reason will rule, unconstrained by the customs or 'prejudices' of the past conveyed so seductively by novels, plays, and poems."

Plato actually expressed two contradictory views of imaginative writing, as Mr. Seaton explains. The Plato of "The Republic" distrusted poets because, of course, they lied. Homer said things happened that didn't happen. The Plato of the "Symposium," by contrast, allowed that poets can be and often are inspired by the gods. What else can explain their seemingly magical power to delight and inveigle? This idea was picked up by the Neoplatonists, particularly the third-century Greek philosopher Plotinus, and much later was employed by Philip Sidney (1554-1586) and other Renaissance writers to defend poetry on the grounds that it offered some form of metaphysical knowledge. In more indirect ways, the Romantic poets of the 19th century ( Wordsworth and Shelley especially) and the more strident proponents of literary modernism ( Pound, Joyce, Woolf ) embraced the notion that imaginative writing could get us closer to some higher or truer reality.

Aristotle to the rescue!--

The second half of Mr. Seaton's book deals with what he calls the "humanistic alternative" of Aristotle, who rejected Plato's thought on poetry. In the "Poetics," Aristotle formulated what proved to be immensely influential definitions of poetic devices, but "the significance of the 'Poetics' for the humanistic tradition," writes Mr. Seaton, "does not derive from the universal applicability of the 'rules' it supposedly establishes but rather in the approach to literature it exemplifies." That humanistic approach, he argues, "turns to works of literature for insight into human life, not for authoritative knowledge about ultimate reality."

The humanist critic, in other words, takes literature for what it is: neither divine revelation nor an intrinsically worthless "text" that merely expresses cultural biases or furthers oppressive social arrangements. The humanist critic begins with the literary work, not with political or philosophical views; he doesn't mistake art for life or aesthetic criteria for political ones; and he explains to literate, engaged people (not merely to specialists) how important works of literature illuminate moral and political questions. Mr. Seaton examines the criticism of (among others) Samuel Johnson, Alexander Pope, Henry James, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson and Cleanth Brooks—in each case distinguishing what these great critics did with poems and books from what their academic successors do with them now.

More about the book, including a sample and the table of contents, from Cambridge University Press:

This book offers a history of literary criticism from Plato to the present, arguing that this history can best be seen as a dialogue among three traditions – the Platonic, Neoplatonic, and the humanistic, originated by Aristotle. There are many histories of literary criticism, but this is the first to clarify our understanding of the many seemingly incommensurable approaches employed over the centuries by reference to the three traditions. Making its case by careful analyses of individual critics, the book argues for the relevance of the humanistic tradition in the twenty-first century and beyond.

• Provides a brief, readable overview of the history of literary criticism in the West, with substantial sections on Plato, Neoplatonism, Aristotle, Neoclassicism, the Romantics, the New Critics, and postmodernism 
• Illustrates the continuing significance of critics often overlooked by the contemporary academy, including figures such as Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, and Ralph Ellison 
• Argues the case for humanistic literary criticism in contrast to the cultural studies dominant today

Table of contents:

1. Plato and Neoplatonism
2. Romanticism and modernism
3. Theory and cultural studies
4. Aristotle and the humanistic tradition
5. Edmund Wilson and Lionel Trilling
6. Democracy, popular culture, and Ralph Ellison
7. Literary criticism, the humanities, and liberal education.

Looks fascinating; when I received my MA, fortunately for me, those gender, Marxist, imperialist etc, interpretative styles weren't "forced" upon us. We could read and interpret literature based upon language, structure, and authorial intent. Since the MA and the MFA students interacted so much, I think that had an effect on the way we read and responded to literature. I enjoyed explicating the meaning within the text, not imposing a meaning outside the text.

Touchstone on Tolkien and Peter Jackson

I came to The Lord of the Rings trilogy late: my husband was surprised that I had never read it, probably about ten years ago. Then we enjoyed the trilogy of movies, even though we noticed that Peter Jackson did not always "follow the book" and left out much of the poetry and some of the spirituality, over-emphasizing the battles and even the tempting power of the Ring.

Donald T. Williams, Professor of English and Director of the School of Arts and Sciences at Toccoa Falls College in Georgia, explains why Peter Jackson did not "get" much of the spirit of The Lord of the Rings in a Touchstone Magazine article, noting that Tolkien, following a long tradition in literature, created role models for us to follow that Jackson could not accept as realistic:

Literature, then, has the serious moral purpose of providing role models that help us form the ideals and aspirations we live by; it achieves that purpose through concrete images of virtue and vice. Great literature is also fun; as Horace said, it teaches and delights.

But it does teach. Where in history or experience will you find a better picture of wise counsel than Gandalf, of sacrificial service than Frodo, of loyal friendship than Sam Gamgee, of leadership than Aragorn, of single-minded devotion in love than Aragorn and Arwen, of personal integrity than Faramir? I would hate to have had to live my life without the example and the inspiration that those characters have provided along the way.

But he notes that Peter Jackson does not accept these models of virtue--they are too good to be true--and therefore, Jackson and his creative team introduce doubt and weakness where Tolkien depicts self-sacrifice, loyalty, love, and devotion:

Peter Jackson, by contrast, comes from a more modern tradition that is suspicious of such moral didacticism and is more focused on "realism" (though this realism is somewhat inconsistently pursued, one might think, when it leads to a rabbit-drawn sledge that can travel over dry ground and doesn't need snow, as in Jackson's The Hobbit). Jackson apparently thinks the characters Tolkien gave us are too simply good to be fully believable to modern audiences, and so he feels obligated to "complicate" them, to give them internal conflicts other than the ones they actually have, in the hopes that we will better be able to relate to them.

Or so his consistent changes to Tolkien's characters would suggest. By this process, Faramir's "I wouldn't pick this thing [the One Ring] up if I found it lying in the road" becomes "Tell my father I send him a powerful weapon!" By this process, Aragorn becomes ambivalent about taking up his kingship rather than devoted to his calling with fixed purpose. By this process, Arwen actually contemplates deserting Aragorn and going to the Grey Havens to escape from Middle Earth despite their earlier pact, and he thinks she would.

Read the rest here.