theoryofliteratu00inwell

240 Theory of Literature
Neo-Classical theory does not explain, expound, or defend
the doctrine of kinds or the basis for differentiation. To some
extent, it attends to such topics as purity of kind, hierarchy of
kinds, duration of kinds, addition of new kinds.
Since Neo-Classicism was, in history, a mixture of authori-
tarianism and rationalism, it acted as a conservative force, dis-
posed, so far as possible, to keep to and adapt the kinds of ancient
origin, especially the poetic kinds. But Boileau admits the sonnet
and Johnson praises Denham for having, in
and the madrigal ;
Cooper's Hill, invented "a new scheme of poetry," a "species of
composition that may be denominated local poetry," and judges
Thomson's Seasons as a "poem ... of a new kind" and Thom-
son's "mode of thinking and of expressing his thoughts" in it
s original."
Purity of kind, a doctrine historically invoked by adherents
of classical French tragedy as against an Elizabethan tragedy
admissive of comic scenes (the gravediggers in Hamlet , the
drunken porter in Macbeth), is Horatian when it is dogmatic
and Aristotelian when it is an appeal to experience and to edu-
cated hedonism. Tragedy, says Aristotle, "ought to produce, not
any chance pleasure, but the pleasure proper to it. . . .
" 1S
The hierarchy of kinds is partly a hedonistic calculus: in its
classical statements, the scale of pleasure is not, however, quan-
titative in the sense either of sheer intensity or of number of
readers or hearers participating. It is a mixture, we should say, of
the social, the moral, the aesthetic, the hedonistic, and the tradi-
tional. The size of the literary work is not disregarded: the
smaller kinds, like the sonnet or even the ode, cannot, it seems
axiomatic, rank with the epic and the tragedy. Milton's "minor"
poems are written in the lesser kinds, e.g., the sonnet, the canzone
y the masque; his "major" poems are a "regular" tragedy
and two epics. If we applied the quantitative test to the two high-
est contestants, epic would win out. Yet at this point, Aristotle
hesitated and, after discussion of conflicting criteria, awarded the
first place to tragedy, while Renaissance critics, more consistently,
preferred the epic. Though there is much subsequent wavering
between the claims of the two kinds, Neo-Classical critics, such
as Hobbes or Dryden or Blair, are for the most part content to
give them joint possession of the prime category.