theoryofliteratu00inwell

1 88 Theory of Literature
start with a psychological and ideological analysis and seek for
confirmation in the language. This would be unexceptionable if
in practice the linguistic confirmation did not itself seem fre-
quently strained or based on very slight evidence. Work of this
type often assumes that true, or great, art must be based on ex-
perience, Erlebnisy a term which invokes a slightly revised ver-
sion of the biographical fallacy. Furthermore, the assumption of
a necessary relationship between certain stylistic devices and cer-
tain states of mind would appear fallacious. For example, in the
discussion of the Baroque, most German scholars assume an in-
evitable correspondence between dense, obscure, twisted language
and a turbulent, divided, and tormented soul. 30 But an
obscure, twisted style can certainly be cultivated by craftsmen
and technicians. The whole relationship between psyche and
word is looser and more oblique than is usually assumed.
Thus German Stilforschung has to be treated with consider-
able caution. Frequently, it would appear to be only a disguised
genetic psychology, and assuredly its assumptions are very dif-
ferent from those of Grace's aesthetics, usually considered its
model. In Croce's system, which is completely monistic, no dis-
tinction can be made between state of mind and linguistic ex-
pression. Croce consistently denies the validity of all stylistic
and rhetorical categories, che distinction between style and form,
between form and content, and ultimately, between word and
soul, expression and intuition. In Croce, this series of identifica-
tion leads to a theoretical paralysis: an initially genuine insight
into the implications of the poetical process is pushed so far that
no distinctions are possible. It now seems clear that process and
work, form and content, expression and style, must be kept apart,
provisionally and in precarious suspense, till the final unity: only
thus are possible the whole translation and rationalization which
constitute the process of criticism.
If we can describe the style of a work or of an author, there is
no doubt that we can also describe the style of a group of works,
of a genre: the Gothic novel, the Elizabethan drama, the Meta-
physical poem -j that
we can also analyze stylistic types such as
the Baroque style of seventeenth-century prose. 31 One can generalize
even further and describe the style of a period or move-
ment. In practice, this seems extraordinarily difficult to do with