theoryofliteratu00inwell

CHAPTER X
Literature and Ideas
The relation between literature and ideas can be conceived
in very diverse ways. Frequently literature is thought of as a
form of philosophy, as "ideas" wrapped in form; and it is analyzed
to yield "leading ideas." Students are encouraged to sum-
marize and to abstract works of art in terms of such generaliza-
tions. Much older scholarship has pushed this method to absurd
extremes j one thinks especially of such German Shakespeare
scholars as Ulrici, who formulated the central idea of the Mer-
chant of Venice as "summum jus summa injuria." x Though to-
day most scholars have become wary of such overintellectualiza-
tion, there are still discussions which treat literature as though
it were a philosophical tract.
The opposite view is to deny any philosophical relevance to
literature. In a lecture on Philosophy and Poetry , George Boas
has stated this view quite bluntly: "Ideas in poetry are usually
stale and false, and no one older than sixteen would find it worth
his while to read poetry merely for what it says." 2 According to
T. S. Eliot, neither "Shakespeare nor Dante did any real think-
ing." 3 One may grant Boas that the intellectual content of most
poetry (and he seems to be thinking chiefly of lyrical poetry) is
usually much exaggerated. If we analyze many famous poems
admired for their philosophy, we frequently discover mere commonplaces
concerning man's mortality or the uncertainty of fate.
The oracular sayings of Victorian poets such as Browning, which
have struck many readers as revelatory, often turn out mere
portable versions of primeval truths. 4 Even if we seem to be able
to carry away some general proposition such as Keats' "Beauty
is Truth, Truth Beauty," we are left to make what we can of
these conversible propositions, unless we see them as the con-
clusion of a poem which has to do with illustrating the permanence
of art and the impermanence of human emotions and
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