Richard L. W.

Clarke LITS2306 Notes 06C

W ILLIAM W IM SATT AND M ONRO E C. BEARDSLEY THE AFFECTIVE FALLACY (1949) W im satt, William , and Monroe C. Beardsley. The Affective Fallacy. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1954. 21-39. W im satt and Beardsley contend that this essay together with the previous one entitled The Intentional Fallacy constitute two roads which have seem ed to offer convenient detours around the acknowledged and usually feared obstacles to objective criticism (21) and in fact have actually led away from criticism, and from poetry (21). The so-called intentional fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its origins, a special case of what is known to philosophers as the genetic fallacy (21). It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism (21). The affective fallacy, on the other hand, is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistem ological skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall form s of skepticism (21). It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in im pressionism and relativism (21). The outcome of either fallacy, the intentional or the affective, is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgm ent, tends to disappear (21). W im satt and Beardsley state their intention here to discuss briefly the history and fruits of affective criticism , som e of its correlatives in cognitive criticism , and hence certain cognitive characteristics of poetry which have m ade affective criticism plausible (22) as well as to observe also the prem ises of affective criticism , as they appear today, in certain philosophic and pseudophilosophic disciplines of wide influence (22), not least that of sem antics (22). II W im satt and Beardsley point out that the separation of em otive from referential m eaning was urged persuasively about twenty years ago in the earlier works of I. A. Richards (22): through the types of m eaning which were defined in his Practical Criticism and in the Meaning of Meaning of Ogden and Richards (22) fashioned a clean antithesis between sym bolic and emotive use of language. In his Practical Criticism Richards spoke of aesthetic or projectile words adjectives by which we project feelings at objects them selves altogether innocent of any qualities corresponding to these feelings. And in his succinct Science and Poetry, science is statem ent, poetry is pseudostatem ent which plays the im portant role of making us feel better about things than statem ents would. (22) After Richards cam e the sem antic school of Chase, Hayakawa, W alpole, and Lee (22), all influenced by Count Korzybskis non-Aristotelian Science and Sanity (22). W im satt and Beardsley argue that C. L. Stevensons Ethics and Language has recently provided a m ore careful and explicit (22) account of this position than m ost of the others listed. Stevenson distinguishes between what a word m eans and what it suggests. To m ake the distinction in a given case, one applies what the sem iotician calls a linguistic rule (definition in traditional term inology), the role of which is to stabilize responses to a word. The word athlete m ay be said to m ean one interested in sports, am ong other things, but m erely to suggest a tall young m an. The linguistic rule is that athletes are necessarily interested in sports, but m ay or m ay not be tall. All this is on the side of what m ay be called the descriptive (or cognitive) function of words. For a second and separate main function of

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words that is, the emotive there is no linguistic rule to stabilize responses and, therefore, in Stevensons system , no parallel distinction between m eaning and suggestion. Although the term quasi-dependent em otive m eaning is recom m ended by Stevenson for a kind of em otive m eaning which is conditional to the cognitive suggestiveness of a sign, the m ain drift of his argum ent is that em otive m eaning is som ething noncorrelative to and independent of descriptive (or cognitive) m eaning. Thus, em otive m eaning is said to survive sharp changes in descriptive m eaning. And words with the sam e descriptive m eaning are said to have quite different em otive meanings. License and liberty, for exam ple, Stevenson believes to have in som e contexts the sam e descriptive m eaning, but opposite emotive m eanings. Finally, there are words which he believes to have no descriptive m eaning, yet a decided em otive m eaning: these are expletives of various sorts. (22-23) However, Wim satt and Beardsley contend that a certain further distinction, and an im portant one, which does not appear in Stevensons system . . . is invited by his persistent use of the word m eaning for both cognitive and em otive language functions and by the absence from the em otive of his careful distinction between m eaning and suggestion. It is a fact worth insisting upon that the term em otive m eaning, as used by Stevenson, and the m ore cautious term feeling, as used by Richards to refer to one of his four types of m eaning, do not refer to any such cognitive m eaning as that conveyed by the nam e of an em otion anger or love. Rather, these key term s refer to the expression of em otive states which Stevenson and Richards believe to be effected by certain words for instance license, liberty, pleasant, beautiful, ugly and hence also to the em otive response which these words m ay evoke in a hearer. As the term m eaning has been traditionally and usefully assigned to the cognitive, or descriptive, functions of language, it would have been well if these writers had em ployed, in such contexts, som e less preem pted term . Im port m ight have been a happy choice. Such differentiation in vocabulary would have had the merit of reflecting a profound difference in linguistic function all the difference between grounds of em otion and em otions them selves, between what is im m ediately m eant by words and what is evoked by the meaning of words, or what m ore briefly m ight be said to be the im port of the words them selves. (23-24) W im satt and Beardsley stress that a large and obvious area of emotive import depends directly upon descriptive m eaning (24) and, secondly, that a great deal of emotive import which does not depend . . . directly on descriptive m eaning does depend on descriptive suggestion (24). Disputing Irving Lees claim in Language Habits in Hum an Affairs that every m istake that anyone ever m akes in acting . . . in som e direct or rem ote sense . . . involves language or thought (25) and m ay be ascribed to bad language habits, a kind of m agic m isuse of words (25), they respond that there is no evidence that what a word does to a person is to be ascribed to anything except what it m eans, or . . . by what it suggests (26). W im satt and Beardsley believe that the question of the relation of language to objects of em otion (26) raises another question, about the status of em otions them selves (26). Parallel with the sem antics of Hayakawa, et al. Has flourished an attack by some anthropologists on the relation of objects them selves to emotions, or m ore specifically, upon the constancy of their relations through the tim es and places of hum an societies (26). In short, the sam e objects have elicited different emotions in various cultures while for different objects in different cultures there m ay be on cognitive grounds em otions of sim ilar quality (26). At this point, Wimsatt and Beardsley offer som e generalities about objects,

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em otions and words (26): they do not deny that em otion has a well known capacity to fortify opinion, to inflam e cognition (26) but they insist that it is always provoked by an object of som e kind: sim ilar em otions attach to various objects because of sim ilarity in the objects or in their relations (27), and vice versa. The doctrine of em otive m eaning propounded recently by the sem anticists has seem ed to offer a scientific basis for one kind of affective relativism in poetics the personal (27): to be precise, the ability of the reader / critic to respond subjectively to words independently of their cognitive m eaning. One school of anthropology has gone far to fortify another kind of affective relativism , the cultural or historical, the m easurem ent of poetic value by the degree of feeling felt by the readers of a given era (27). [A]ffective criticism . . . in its theoretical or scientific form finds strong support from . . . the historical scholar (28) who, while not m uch interested in his own personal response or in those of his students, is intensely interested in whatever can discovered by those of any m em ber of Shakespeares audience (28). III W im satt and Beardsley adm it that m any literary theorists have over the centuries discussed the emotional im pact of literature: Plato, Aristotle, Longinus, Leo Tolstoy and, last but not least, even Richards him self in Principles of Literary Criticism. In addition to this, what they characterise as the em otive (28) branch of affective criticism, there is another parallel and equally ancient (28-29) branch: the theory of em pathy, with its transport of the self into the object (28). This is represented by the figure of vividness so often m entioned (29) in Longinuss On the Sublim e and perpetuated later in the work of Addison and Steele on the pleasures of the im agination, Baum garten and, m ost recently, Max Eastm ans Literary Mind and Enjoym ent of Poetry. In the case of either branch, where the sincerity of the poet (29) is the prim e issue for the intentionalist critic (29), the sincerity of the critic (29) is the key issue for the affective critic. Criticism becom es a case of the soul adventuring am ong m asterpieces (29), as Anatole Frank put it, for whom the critic ought to say: Gentlem en, I am going to speak about m yself apropos of Shakespeare, apropos of Racine (29). Similarly, George Saintsburys Longinian notion of Grand Style (29), which occurs whenever the perfection of expression acquires such force that it transm utes the subject and transports the hearer or reader (qtd. in Wim satt and Beardsley, 29), is itself the grand style . . . of nineteenth century em otive criticism (29). The em phasis on the bodily response of the critic to literature constitutes the third branch of affective criticism , what W imsatt term the physiological form (30) and is evident in a whole host of critics, ranging from Edm und Burke in the eighteenth century to book reviewers like Hans Zinsser (for whom a poem m eans nothing to m e unless it can carry m e away with the gentle or passionate pace of its em otion. . . . The sole criterion for m e is whether it can sweep me with it into em otions or illusions of beauty, terror, tranquillity, or even disgust [qtd. in W imsatt and Beardsley, 30]), to Em ily Dickinsons oft-quoted goose-flesh experience (30), to A. E. Housm ans shiver down the spine (30), etc. Wim satt and Beardsley m ention a fourth branch of affective criticism, the hallucinative (30), which is less developed theoretically but can be glim psed in the neo-classic conviction about the unities of tim e and place (30), Coleridges notion of the willing suspension of disbelief (30), and in the response of critics to the theatre, radio dram as and m ovies especially. IV W im satt and Beardsley point out that som e affective critics have coolly investigated (31) what poetry does to others (31), a path that has led into the dreary and antiseptic laboratory (31) and the testing of the effects of triangles and rectangles, to inquiring what kinds of colours are suggested by a line of Keats, or to m easuring the motor discharges

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attendant upon reading it (31) and the registering of the physiological changes which accom pany em otions. However, they claim that affective theory at the literary level has . . . produced little actual criticism (32). Moreover, the report of som e readers . . . that a poem or story induces in them vivid im ages, intense feelings, or heightened consciousness, is neither anything which can be refuted nor anything which it is possible for the objective critic to take into account (32). They quote the philosopher G. W. F. Hegel in this regard, for whom feelings rem ain purely subjective affections of m yself, in which the concrete m atter vanishes (32). They contend that vividness (or emotion, or any of the other products of the literary experience) is not the thing in the work by which the work m ay be identified, but the result of a cognitive structure, which is the thing (33). Wim satt and Beardsley stress that a criticism based on aesthetic distance, detachm ent, or disinterestedness . . . has already taken im portant steps toward objectivity (33). The best affective criticism (not least Richards), rather than flourishing in its own terms, has in fact contributed to recent schools of cognitive analysis, of paradox, am biguity, irony and sym bol (33). New Critics like Cleanth Brooks distinguish correctly between the poem itself and the em otions inspired by a poem , between what a poem is and what it does, diverging paths which lead to polar opposites in criticism , to classical objectivity and to rom antic reader psychology (34). The critic whose form ulations lean to the em otive and the critic whose form ulations lean to the cognitive will in the long run produce a vastly different sort of criticism (34): the m ore specific account of the em otion induced by a poem , the m ore nearly it will be an account of the reasons for em otion, the poem itself, and the m ore reliable it will be as an account of what the poem is likely to induce in other sufficiently inform ed readers. It will in fact supply the kind of inform ation which will enable readers to respond to the poem . It will talk not of tears, prickles, or other physiological sym ptom s, of feeling angry, joyful, hot, cold, or intense, or vaguer states of emotional disturbance, but of shades of distinction and relation between objects of em otion. It is precisely here that the discerning critic has his insuperable advantage over the subject of the laboratory experim ent and over the tabulator of the subjects responses. (34) The critic is not a contributor to statistically countable reports about the poem , but a teacher or explicator or m eanings (34). V Here, Wim satt and Beardsley cite Matthew Arnolds view that poetry attaches the emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact (34). The objective critic (34) finds it difficult to explain how this is done, how poetry m akes ideas thick and com plicated enough to hold on to emotions (35). They gesture in this regard to T. S. Eliots notion of the objective correlative in this discussion of Shakespeares Ham let and Ivor Wynters distinction between the m otive . . . of logic of an em otion, and the surface or texture of a poem constructed to describe the em otion (35) and between rational progression (35) in a poem and qualitative progression (35), that is, the succession . . . of im ages, not substantiated by a plot (35). Wynter uses the term pseudo-reference (35) (and Richards pseudostatement [35]) to refer to the use of figurative language in this way and its lack of contribution, in their view, except in some superficial (and thus unnecessary) ornam ental way to the m eaning of the poem : the vivid realisation of metaphor com es from its being in some way an obstruction to practical knowledge (like a torn coat sleeve to the act of dressing). Metaphor operates by being abnorm al or inept, the wrong way of saying som ething (36). W im satt and Beardsley explain that there are two kinds of real objects which have em otive quality, the objects which are the reasons for hum an em otion, and those which by som e kind of association suggest either the reasons or the resulting

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em otion (36) (e.g. m urders and vultures). The arrangem ent by which these two kinds of em otive m eaning are brought together in a juncture characteristic of poetry is . . . the sim ile, the m etaphor, and the various less clearly defined form s of association (36). A statem ent like X feels as angry as a hornet (36) is m erely the qualitative poem , the vehicle of a m etaphor, an objective correlative for nothing (36) whereas the statem ent X whose lunch has been stolen feels as angry as a hornet (36) adds the tenor of the m etaphor, the m otive for feeling angry and hence m akes the feeling itself m ore specific (36). This distinction has a close relation to the difference between historical statem ent which m ay be a reason for em otion (37) and fictitious or poetic statement, whereby a large com ponent of suggestion (and hence m etaphor) has usually appeared (37). The point which Wim satt and Beardsley are m aking is that there is no such thing as a pure em otive poetry (37). Poetry m ust be a poetry about things. How these things are joined in patterns and with what nam es of em otions rem ains a critical question (38). W imsatt and Beardsley argue that poetry is characteristically a discourse about both em otions and objects, about the em otive quality of objects. The em otions correlative to the objects of poetry becom e a part of the matter dealt with not comm unicated to the reader like an infection or disease, not inflicted mechanically like a bullet or knife wound, not adm inistered like a poison, not sim ply expressed as by expletives or grimaces or rhythm s, but presented in their objects and contem plated as a pattern of knowledge. Poetry is a way of fixing em otions or m aking them m ore perm anently perceptible when objects have undergone a functional change from culture to culture, or when as sim ple facts of history they have lost em otive value with loss of im m ediacy. (38) There is a great deal of constancy for poetic objects of emotion (38) such as the m urder of Duncan by Macbeth (38) which has becom e an object of strongly fixed em otive value (38). Sim ilarly, certain objects partly obscured in one age wax into appreciation in another (38) in part through the efforts of the poet (39). Hence, Shelleys claim that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world (39). W im satt and Beardsley conclude by arguing that for the relativist historian of literature (39), the past when the poem was written and first appreciated (39) and the present into which the poem with its clear and nicely interrelated m eanings, its com pleteness, balance and tension has survived (39). Any structure of em otive objects . . . taken for great poetry by any past age will never wane with the waning of hum an culture (39). On the sam e grounds, a confidence seem s indicated for the objective discrim ination of all future poetic phenom ena (39) though the prem ises or m aterials of which such poem s will be constructed cannot be prescribed or foreseen (39). All in all, if the exegesis of som e poem s depends upon the understanding of obsolete or exotic custom s, the poem s are them selves the m ost precise em otive report on the custom s (39). In the poets finely contrived objects of em otion and in other works of art the historian finds his m ost reliable evidence about the em otions of antiquity (39). Chretien de Troyes sheds light on the phenom enon of courtly love in the Middle Ages; The Canterbury Tales on the attitudes of late fourteenth century England (39). In short, though cultures have changed and will change, poem s rem ain and explain (39).