Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

LESSON – II 
TWENTIETH CENTURY THEORETICAL STUDIES
WITH REFERENCE TO POETICS 
The development of the modern poetics, which emerged as a new kind of discipline, 
was neither a descriptive poetics, dealing with the 'description of form', rules or the technique 
of a work; nor a poetics which revolved around esthetic and philosophical notions; nor a 
poetics that emphasized individual features of an author who creates his own unrepeatable 
forms. It was a poetics which’ imparted a new sense to the tendencies implicit in older 
theories, placing them, as it were, in a new context. 
Poetics and its Place in Twentieth century Theoretical studies
Today's dictionary definitions originate from a long tradition, and they examine this 
tradition in various ways, generally they concentrate on several points. (1) Definition from 
existing treatises designated by the title 'poetica': categories and means and described with the 
aim of classifying the principles of the creative process or of codifying them. (2) Theories 
concerning the concept of a literary work (3) In a stricter sense characterization of the 
creative principle of a certain author, group, school and the like. (4) Less common today is 
the conception of poetics as the theory of poetry. (5) Sometimes poetics is equated with 
literary theory. This is because more general aspects of study, which exceed the limits of 
theories pertaining to the intrinsic composition of the work, to its realization by linguistic 
means, are included under the term 'poetics'.
Permanent and changeable
The evolution of science, philosophy and, above all, the theory of art has paved the 
way for diverse theories concerning the work of art and has introduced new elements, new 
aspects into poetics and its object. Despite all the differences in these views, and changes 
which historical evolution has brought, there remain stable elements that comprise the kernel 
of the field of poetics: certain principles, means and devices operate in creation, and the 
concretizations of a work consciously preserve and emphasize them, This awareness of the 
existence of the permanent in creation is expressed wherever emphasis is placed on 
normative or regulatory categories, on objective principles, but it also appears indirectly in 
conceptions which primarily pursue the change ability, the individuality of expression, for 
even in these cases the standard categories of poetics are used for description and analysis. 
Moreover, this very problem of the relations between the permanent and the changeable is the 
energy that invigorates not only creation itself but also its theory, and an emphasis on one or 
the other is only one side of the coin-the, literary work. Both sides will always attract 
attention, and their study will continue to reveal new aspects, just as literature will always 
continue to be new. These two sides will be an eternal problem; only the planes upon which 
they appear and the vector from which study approaches them will be different. They will 
constantly return in connection with the questions which Aristotle described in the first 
sentences of his Poetics: 'how plots ought to be constructed if the making is to be done 
beautifully'.

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